Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 348

The courage of Susan Collins

FILE - In this June 21, 2016, file photo, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Republicans are eagerly planning initial votes next month on dismantling President Barack Obama’s health care law, a cherished GOP goal. “It’s going to be a difficult challenge to pass a replacement” for Obama’s law and make sure some people don’t lose coverage, said Collins. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) (Credit: AP)

As Republicans’ last-ditch proposal to drastically change the American health care system failed, much of the political world’s attention was on Arizona Sen. John McCain for casting the decisive vote against the party’s “Health Care Freedom Act.” But the person who did the most to thwart the drive to roll back health coverage is actually Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

It is probably true that some other Republican senators wanted to vote against the GOP’s health care bill. Several others, including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson held a press conference just hours before the hastily crafted “skinny repeal” measure was voted on, in which they called the GOP’s last effort a “disaster” that should never become law. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, the most vulnerable Republican up for re-election this year, has repeatedly denounced his party’s desire to kick millions of people off of Medicaid in order to save enough money to offset a massive tax cut for investors. West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito repeatedly expressed concern about Medicaid recipients as well.

In the end, however, all of the above senators still voted for the bill. Only Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined Collins and McCain in opposing the legislation. Both Murkowski and McCain deserve credit for halting the GOP’s abusive legislative process in which they tried to remake one-sixth of the nation’s economy without holding a single public hearing or consulting with any of the many organizations that deliver medical care.

And their process only became more hasty as time went on. Having repeatedly failed to garner enough votes for his Better Health Care Reconciliation Act, the Republicans’ Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, began trying to rush his members even more, encouraging them to vote for his stripped-down “skinny repeal” measure — not because they thought it was a good piece of legislation, but merely to advance the bill and further the process.

Throughout the entirety of 2017, Collins stood resolutely against the GOP’s urge to placate its anti-government billionaire donors by passing legislation that was historically unpopular with the public at large. Even before President Donald Trump began his term, the Maine Republican had the courage to stand athwart history telling her party to stop trying to take away people’s health care. Collins is literally the only GOP senator currently serving who declined to support the party’s numerous sham votes against the Affordable Care Act while Barack Obama was still the president.

Some people might argue that Collins has no real fear of a far-right opponent in a Republican primary election. But that assumption is based on an ignorance of Maine’s politics. It is by far the most conservative Northeastern state. The fact that Maine has been governed by bilious gasbag Paul LePage since 2011 testifies to this fact.

For her efforts on behalf of centrism within a GOP that has become infected with talk radio mad cow disease, Collins has become the subject of immense opposition and sexist attacks from fellow Republicans over the years.

Just during the recent debate over Trumpcare, Collins was dismissed as a “female senator from the Northeast” by Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold, who also said that he would challenge her to a pistol duel if she were not a woman. Collins (and Murkowski) were also threatened with physical violence by another GOP member of Congress, Rep. Buddy Carter, who said in an MSNBC interview that “somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass,” a Georgia regional slang expression that means to badly beat someone up.

Here it is: GOP Rep. Carter, asked about Murkowski: "Somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass." @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/1CVcENn9Kq

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Certainly, Murkowski, McCain, and the many activists who spoke out against Trumpcare deserve credit for their efforts but ultimately, Collins’ refusal to allow her party to play political sleight-of-hand with people’s health insurance is the main reason why the discussion in Washington is now about improving Obamacare, rather than eliminating it.

WATCH: Indie-rock band Algiers on the comeback of protest music in the Trump era

Protest music is making a comeback in our highly politicized era, and the indie-rock band Algiers is at the forefront of this return to an aesthetic that was popular in not just the 1990s, but also the ’60s and even the ’30s.

The band — which has a sound that combines hard rock, New Wave, grime, hip-hop and soul — is touring behind its second record, “The Underside of Power,” released by Matador Records. For Salon Talks, singer Franklin James Fisher and bassist Ryan Mahan discussed the reasons that political statement is a major part of their musical expression.

On the commingling of political expression and other forms:

Fisher: The four of us started this band as a way of processing the world as we experience it, and on terms that make sense to us. We’re just kind of reflecting this sort of language that we’ve forged, as a coping mechanism to engage with the absurdity of the current political situation that has been been for the past several decades, at least. People read into a lot of things that we do. Some people get it. Some people don’t. It’s an ever-evolving, growing, changing organism. We don’t always understand it completely.

On the impact of history on their music:

Mahan: It was borne out of a collective sense of frustration, a shared sense of frustration. Growing up in the South and coming to terms with deplorable history there and the violent racism that sort of embeds in the foundation of law and order in the South and in the United States, really was a point of frustration. And the fact that we were atomized and people in power and elites actually do everything they can to divide us on racial lines, on gender lines, on class lines. I think that’s one thing we would like to express, is this [idea] of coming together and collectivity.

On how music can humanize a political message:

Fisher: I think it’s important to emphasize this idea of reclaiming what is human and bringing that back into the politics of all this post-industrial, you know, postmodern experiment that is ever-decaying and is failing.

Reince Priebus gets pushed out of the White House: Trump fires his chief of staff

(Credit: AP)

A week after his loyal ally Sean Spicer resigned as White House press secretary, Reince Priebus followed suit — finally succumbing to the increasing pressure to push him out.

As chairman of the Republican Party, Priebus was reluctant to back Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Nevertheless, he helped lead the former reality TV star from Trump Tower to the White House during the transition and somehow lasted six months in a dysfunctional administration as White House chief of staff.

But late Friday, the president tweeted out what had become readily apparent: Priebus wouldn’t survive the very public and very ugly intra-party assault he faced from incoming White House communications director Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci.

I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017

…and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017

I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017

According to multiple reporters, Priebus offers his resignation to Trump on Thursday. Also on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters that “Reince is doing a fantastic job at the White House and I believe he has the president’s confidence.”

Priebus still flew on Air Force One with Trump earlier on Friday to an appearance in Long Island, New York. Scaramucci, who called Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic” in a shockingly profane interview published in the New Yorker late Thursday night, also traveled with the president.

The announcement of Priebus’ departure from the White House, the fifth high-profile official to leave in Trumps’s first six months in office, comes only hours after the president and his party suffered an embarrassing late-night defeat after Senate Republicans failed to pass any version of a repeal of Obamacare.

3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why @BarackObama can't manage to pass his agenda.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2012

Priebus’ successor John Kelly is a retired Marine Corps general and the current Homeland Security secretary. Trump tweeted that Kelly “has been a true star of my administration.” According to the Washington Post, “Kelly has a warm rapport with White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has worked closely with him on shaping the administration’s border enforcement policy.”

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia praised the pick of Kelly on Friday. “You can’t find a finer human being and a more committed patriot than John Kelly,” he told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

He is a great American. Be smart enough to treat him like one. https://t.co/3mKMkRGf1I

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) July 28, 2017

“Americanism” revisited

(Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

“Americanism” has been invoked as a base concept from the muscular Teddy Roosevelt to the merely vain Donald Trump.

In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality.

The key challenge is to find a proper balance of assertion and restraint in order to secure the core interests of the United States and its allies.

For all the deeply troubling features of Donald Trump, perhaps the real shocker is that even during the Obama presidency evidence of a smart reconceptualization of that much-needed balance was scant, if at all existent.

Not so surprisingly, that also holds true for large parts of the country’s foreign policy community. They may all be eggheads, but they love to underscore their manliness by advocating plenty of “muscle” — read: military force.

Guidelines for a reorientation

The real reason for the inability to tackle the problem of scaling back the seemingly limitless aspirations of Americanism is this. The underlying insecurities that encourage the perpetuation of an unrealistic conception of America’s place in the world are not limited to the “experts.” They extend to the nation as a whole. That, however, means that it cannot be treated directly.

Group therapy for a nation of 310 million is not in the cards. To resolve the situation, ways should be found to make practical adjustments whose cumulative effect will be to restrain impulses and to dispel fanciful visions.

That would be a behavioral approach rather a therapeutic one. Of course, it does depend on leadership that has some self-awareness of why and how some of the country’s tenets of faith and belief are hampering the United States’ ability to meet its most basic obligations to itself as well as to others.

And that is precisely the point where the presidency of Donald Trump will prove so disastrous.

Rather than see through a long-delayed adjustment process, Trump has embarked on the opposite course — American gigantism on steroids.

Intemperate and completely impulse-driven as he is, Trump is hallucinating constantly. Worse, he only sees the sky as the limit.

Guidelines for a transition

But at some point, the day of reckoning and adjustment will become inevitable. Here are some guidelines for making the transition:

1. Set aside the creed that proclaims the existence of an American mission to reshape the world.

America may well remain a model and a beacon for many — as it was for East Europeans. However, our experience in other regions, especially the Middle East, underscores the limits to active promotion of “Americanism.”

2. Inescapable trade-offs between native idealism and the dictates of realism should be openly acknowledged.

It serves no useful purpose to propagate make-believe narratives as the United States strikes unsavory deals with regimes like those in Egypt, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. That simply perpetuates illusion at home and evokes charges of hypocrisy abroad.

3. Scrutinize skeptically the premise of the Global War on Terror that sees potential threats in unlikely places, groups and local circumstances.

4. Establish a clear hierarchy of priorities and act on it. The present subordination to the Saudis and the Gulfies is illogical.

5. Avoid being entangled in other peoples’ ideological passions.

A clear line must be drawn — and observed — between partnerships based on a convergence of interests and the serving of sectarian agendas that powerfully shape their aims and objectives. The Sunni/Shiite divide that exacerbates our dealings throughout the Middle East is the outstanding case in point.

6. Pragmatism and candor are two distinctive American traits that can be assets in our relations.

While cultural sensitivity and awareness of local political conditions are valuable, they become liabilities when they impede the transmission of essential messages. The current distortions resulting from Washington’s excessive deference to Jerusalem and Riyadh are testaments to how costly that can be.

7. Cultivate modes and methods for sharing responsibilities.

Multilateralism is the future

Whatever the leanings and instincts of the current U.S. president, multilateralism — formal and informal — will be the primary basis for whatever degree of international order that we can achieve in the future.

An America that recasts its global strategy along more sober, realistic lines would be less exceptional, but more effective.

In defense of the east coast hyperloop

A recovery vehicle moves a sled down a track after a test of a Hyperloop One propulsion system, Wednesday, May 11, 2016, in North Las Vegas, Nev. The startup company opened its test site outside of Las Vegas for the first public demonstration of technology for a super-speed, tube based transportation system. (AP Photo/John Locher) (Credit: AP)

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk set the internets aflame last week with a vague boast that he had received “verbal government approval” (whatever that means) to build the nation’s first intercity hyperloop. The 700 mph compressed-air transit system would be constructed in an underground tunnel (which hasn’t been dug yet) between New York City and Washington, D.C.

As with so many things Musk, the tweet was both widely reported and met with a fair bit of skepticism from, well, pretty much everybody.

I’ll say categorically that building an operational, underground hyperloop from NYC to DC is harder than taking a spaceship to Mars.

— Nathan Bomey (@NathanBomey) July 20, 2017

Guys, big news. Just received verbal govt approval for The Beam Me Up Company to build a transporter. NY-DC in 2 seconds.

— Second Ave. Sagas (@2AvSagas) July 20, 2017

Early concept footage of Elon Musk’s NYC-to-DC hyperloop pic.twitter.com/WSRwjjaGXP

— Andrew J. Hawkins (@andyjayhawk) July 20, 2017

Musk, who is trying to simultaneously make things better here on Earth and send folks to Mars, is brand-new to the tunnel-digging business. His latest venture, The Boring Company, so far consists of not much more than a second-hand tunnel-boring machine and a website.

As Musk himself said in January: “We have no idea what we’re doing — I want to be clear about that.”

This isn’t the first time Musk has spread hyperloop mania — or overestimated its feasibility. Initial plans for above-ground hyperloop systems in the Bay Area are already running about five to 10 times more pricey, per mile, than Musk’s initial estimates back in 2013, when he first proposed the idea.

Assuming hyperloop costs of $100 million per mile, and tunneling costs of about the same, the 226-mile span between New York and D.C. might cost about $45 billion. And Musk wants to start digging as soon as possible — in months, not years.

Keep in mind that no human has yet ridden in a full-scale functioning hyperloop.

So, yeah. This is a really expensive, really ambitious idea. But just stick with me here.

Put in proper context, the hyperloop actually represents an incredible bargain. Just the proposed transit and airport improvements needed to keep New York City functioning in the coming decades would cost more than Musk’s entire project. That includes renovations to LaGuardia Airport ($4 billion), other regional airport improvements ($6.5 billion), the rest of the Second Avenue Subway line ($17 billion), improved access at Grand Central Station ($10 billion), a new Penn Station ($1.6 billion), a revamped bus station on the city’s west side ($10 billion), and repairs to the Hudson River tunnels damaged in Hurricane Sandy ($23.9 billion).

In California, construction on an eventual Bay Area to Southern California high-speed rail line approved in 2008 was initially expected to cost about $40 billion. (Its top speed would reach about 220 mph, less than one-third of the hyperloop.) A recent report found that the rail project was already about 50 percent over budget and seven years behind schedule.

There’s no reason to expect a hyperloop wouldn’t run into the same sort of cost overruns. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that a New York to D.C. hyperloop actually happens, at whatever cost: It would utterly transform the congested East Coast transit corridor.

Musk said a trip between the two cities would take just 29 minutes — less time than an average subway trip from lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side. The ease of long-distance travel along the nation’s most populous corridor would revolutionize transportation as we know it. It would inspire urban planners around the world. And it could be one of the single most-important steps to reduce carbon emissions and curtail global warming in U.S. history.

A functioning hyperloop would cannibalize air travel. It would also be a nearly ideal way to move cargo, greatly reducing the burden on the region’s highways and rails and providing new meaning to just-in-time shipping. Because aviationand shipping are projected to be the fastest-growing sources of new carbon emissions worldwide in the coming decades, the hyperloop — which could be operated entirely on renewable energy — is exactly the kind of technology that’s needed at exactly the right time.

On its own, the East Coast hyperloop wouldn’t displace a significant fraction of global emissions. Assuming a pod leaving every minute (filled with either 20 people or a shipping container of goods), a single hyperloop line between New York and D.C. could displace half of all air traffic and half of all passenger rail traffic between those two cities, saving about 375,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Sounds like a bunch, but that’s actually only the equivalent of the annual emissions of the island nation of Samoa, about 0.001 percent of the world total. (For comparison, President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, if fully enacted, would have averted about 1,000 times that much each year.)

But there’s so much freight and so many people traveling along the East Coast that the region could support far more than just a single hyperloop line. More than 110 million people travel on the region’s highways (about nine hyperloops worth) and 800 million tons of freight move within the region each year (26 hyperloops worth). If even 20 percent of that huge volume were captured by a hyperloop system, its impact would be magnified tenfold.

Admittedly, that’s still not a huge impact globally. In further tweets last week, Musk said the East Coast route would provide a testbed for the technology; his real goal is to revolutionize transportation worldwide. Further hyperloop systems are also imagined for California, Texas, and several other key places around the country. A system connecting the Nordic countries is in the planning phase, and a Dubai-to-Abu Dhabi route is already scheduled to be built.

Hyperloop’s biggest potential, then, would come not on the U.S. East Coast, but in its ability to leapfrog air travel and truck-based logistics entirely in large parts of the burgeoning developing world, like India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. If, inspired by the success of an East Coast hyperloop, the technology catches on around the world in the next decade, 20 percent of the entire world’s intercity transportation could be served by mid-century.

That, finally, would yield an enormous impact: About 1.25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be averted per year by 2050 — more than double the impact of the soon-to-be-defunct Clean Power Plan.

The nerds at Wait But Why figured out that all this means the hyperloop would be the most energy-efficient form of transportation in history. (Sorry, covered wagons.) Much safer than driving. Faster than air travel. And it could cost about the same as a bus ticket.

Buses. Airplanes. Those are bold transportation ideas that skeptics would have scoffed at around the same time that Edison and Westinghouse were fighting over who invented the lightbulb. Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss something that could help remake our world, for the better.

The US health economy is big, but is it better?

(Credit: Getty/Cecilie Arcurs)

The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world. So why does it underperform relative to many peer countries by most measures?

While the Affordable Care Act increased access and coverage, its reforms are years away from full implementation and are now in danger of repeal.

And changes to our health care system could have a powerful and meaningful impact on our economy. In 2015, health care made up US$2.9 trillion of the $18 trillion U.S. GDP and accounted for more than 12 million jobs.

My research, described in my book, “The Essentials of Health Economics,” as well as that of others, shows how the size of the health care economy continues to grow, without corresponding improvements in treatment outcomes. Looking at the evidence on health care costs, it is not surprising that the U.S. falls behind on access, quality and efficiency.

The size of our health economy

In 2014, the U.S. spent 17.1 percent of GDP on health care. Meanwhile, France spent 11.5 percent, Germany spent 11.3 percent and the United Kingdom spent just 9.1 percent.

What’s more, the health economy is quickly becoming the largest employment sector of the U.S. economy. This is largely due to the rapidly expanding health care economy, a result of the Affordable Care Act.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in this industry is expected to grow 21 percent between 2014 and 2024. The areas that have the most opportunities for growth in this sector are home health care services, outpatient care centers, health practitioner offices and ambulatory health care centers. Much of the growth is due to added emphasis on primary and preventive care services for an increasingly sick population with numerous chronic conditions presenting at earlier ages.

Money versus results

The large size of the U.S. health economy might make it seem like Americans are more likely to visit their doctor. However, studies of how consumers use medical services suggest that the opposite is true. Americans make fewer inpatient visits than people in other countries, but their visits are more expensive.

For example, in 2013, the U.S. had only 125 hospital discharges per 1,000 population, compared to 252 in Germany and 166 in France.

A similar profile is seen for physician visits. That year, the average American visited only four doctors. Meanwhile, Canadians saw 7.7 and the Japanese saw more than a dozen.

The comparatively high spending on health care in the U.S., coupled with lower rates of using health care services, can lead us to believe that medical prices in the United States must be significantly higher than in other countries due to more technologically advanced care or higher-quality care.

Although anecdotal evidence suggests that waiting times are lower in the U.S. than in other countries, true quality indicators are difficult to derive due to measurement errors. So it’s difficult to say definitively that U.S. consumers get better-quality care than people in other industrialized countries, but their care is definitely the most expensive.

Is growth good or bad?

The debate continues as to whether the growth of the health economy in the U.S. is beneficial or neutral to the economy as a whole, given that the health outcomes of the nation are not as good as in other countries.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health care, the U.S. needs to improve in a variety of ways, including safety, costs, efficiency and equity.

As of 2014, approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population did not have health insurance coverage throughout the year. In contrast, universal coverage exists in the other industrialized countries. I believe that our country would have similar statistics as other countries if we had universal coverage and greater government involvement.

Though health care spending makes up a larger fraction of our overall GDP, the U.S. ranks last among industrialized countries in terms of mortality, infant mortality and healthy life expectancy at age 60.

The growth of the health economy relative to other sectors of the nation’s economy implies that a greater share of resources is devoted to health care relative to other goods. This can result in the public sector putting more scrutiny on health care spending. That may cause the private sector to cut other business expenses – perhaps by reducing wages and health benefits and requiring employees to provide a greater share of the costs of health care.

Therefore, health costs will be shifted more toward consumers of care with increased co-payments and insurance premiums as the share of business benefits decrease over time. If the ACA is successfully repealed and/or replaced, there will be a cut in government spending, which will also contribute to an increased share of health care expenses paid by consumers.

The ultimate impact may be that rapidly rising health care spending lowers GDP and overall employment, while raising inflation.

The question for the nation is whether we are willing to give up growth in the overall economy in order to continue on our current path of ever ballooning health spending, regardless of health outcomes.

Diane Dewar, Associate Professor of Health Policy, Management and Behavior, University at Albany, State University of New York

The Mooch goes on the warpath: Seven of the most jaw-dropping quotes from Anthony Scaramucci’s call to Ryan Lizza

Anthony Scaramucci; Reince Priebus (Credit: AP/Richard Drew/J. Scott Applewhite)

Reince Priebus never wanted Donald Trump to hire Anthony Scaramucci. An aide to the White House chief of staff recently confirmed to the New York Times that Priebus blocked a job offer for Scaramucci during the transition, based on fears that the man known as “the Mooch” would be a destabilizing force in the administration.

Now, less than a week after being introduced as the new White House communications director — and only hours after embattled White House press secretary and Priebus ally Sean Spicer announced his resignation — Scaramucci is getting his payback on Priebus. In one of the most bizarre, expletive-riddled interviews any White House adviser has ever offered on the record, Scaramucci made clear to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza that he is on the warpath all throughout the West Wing.

Here are Scaramucci’s most explosive quotes from Thursday’s story:

1. “I want to fucking kill all the leakers.”

“What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people.”

2. “They’ll all be fired by me.”

“I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you,” he explained to Lizza. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago … This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”

3. “I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”

“You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country,” Scaramucci told Lizza, while demanding the latter reveal a confidential White House source. “So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.” 

4. Reince Priebus is a “paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”

“Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly,” Scaramucci threatened. He then did a Priebus imitation: “’Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’”

In a CNN interview Thursday morning, Scaramucci said, “If Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that.”

5. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.”

Like Priebus, Trump’s top White House strategic adviser reportedly worked to prevent Scaramucci’s appointment as communications director. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country,” Scaramucci said of Bannon.  

Bannon declined to comment to the New Yorker.

6. “They’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures.”

7. “[L]et me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make [Priebus] crazy.”

After ending his phone call with Lizza Wednesday night, Scaramucci sent this now-deleted tweet.

He sent out another tweet on Thursday after Lizza’s interview was published:

I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump's agenda. #MAGA

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 27, 2017

Read the whole Scaramucci interview here. 

How do you work out if a signal from space is a message from aliens?

FILE-This Aug. 31, 2015, file photo shows the Gemini Telescope, right, and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea near Hilo, Hawaii. (Credit: AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)

Astronomers working at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico have detected a weird radio signal, spotted when pointing their telescope at the nearby star Ross 128. They’re not getting too excited about the prospect of an alien civilisation contacting us just yet though. “In case you are wondering, the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations,” said Abel Mendez, the scientist leading the campaign.

Of course, this doesn’t stop others speculating that the signal may be just that. And it begs the question, how do you work out if a strange signal from space really is a message from aliens? The simple answer is that you have to rule out everything else first and only then can you think it may be aliens. As Sherlock Holmes said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” But eliminating all the other possibilities isn’t exactly easy.

When radio pulsars were first detected in 1967, “little green men” were at least considered a possibility – before it was that they are rapidly rotating neutron stars. The discovery opened up a whole new area of astrophysics, so could hardly be considered a disappointment.

There have been other cases. In 1977, astronomers detected a radio burst dubbed the “WOW signal” — and they have been debating its origin for decades. Only recently was it suggested that there could be a natural explanation: emission from a passing comet that happened to lie in the right part of the sky. However, other astronomers have cast doubt on the comet idea, so it can’t be considered to be settled just yet.

Another mysterious signal is that from Tabby’s star, which displays strange quasi-periodic dips in its brightness. Could this be evidence of orbiting alien megastructures, or is it merely a cloud of natural debris surrounding the star? Once again, the jury is still out on that one, but we have certainly not ruled out all natural possibilities yet.

The signal seen from Ross 128, which is 11 light years from Earth, consisted of quasi-periodic radio pulses across a wide range of frequencies. The observations were made on May 12 in the range 4-5 GHz and lasted about ten minutes. A periodic signal naturally draws attention to itself and could indicate an artificial origin. However, some natural processes can give rise to periodic signals too. The pulses could be due to something like solar flares coming from the red dwarf star (a small and relatively cool star). Such stars are indeed prone to this type of activity, but the researchers say the radio pulses are unlike anything ever seen from other similar stars.

Perhaps more likely is that the signals originate closer to home — arising as interference from a high altitude, Earth-orbiting artificial satellite which happened to pass through the field of view of the telescope during the observations. However, such a signal from a satellite has not been seen before either. The Arecibo team are planning further observations to try and check these possibilities.

Exoplanets and life

So, what are the chances the signal is evidence of aliens? The last 20 years have seen an explosion in the number of planets found orbiting other stars. It is likely that a large proportion of the stars in the Milky Way harbour habitable exoplanets, yet we still have no evidence of life elsewhere.

The lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life lies at the heart of the Fermi paradox. Simply put, if planets and life are common in the galaxy, why have we not found aliens yet?

My best guess, based on what we now know, is that simple life may well be common — there are probably billions of Earth-like planets out there, so it is almost inconceivable that life has only evolved on one of them. However, intelligent, communicating life may well be extremely rare — either because it doesn’t arise or because when it does, it gets wiped out fairly quickly. This idea is known as the great filter.

The best chance of spotting life in the galaxy may therefore not come from looking for radio signals, but from looking for the signature of a biosphere as an exoplanet transits across the face of its star.

By measuring the spectrum (breakdown of light according to wavelenght) of a star while its planet passes in front, then subtracting the spectrum of the star seen alone, any tiny difference must be due to the signature of the planet’s atmosphere. This signature could reveal the presence of gases like oxygen and methane, which may mean the planet hosts life — although this may just be microbes. But it may indeed be our best bet to find life in the galaxy.

What if you do spot an alien signal?

Let’s return to the signal from Ross 128. What if the astronomers at Arecibo rule out solar flares and artificial satellites as the origin of the signal? The problem is, we can only rule out the things we know about. So even if these possibilities are discounted, there may still be other causes that have not been thought of yet. In fact, this is how all science works. We can’t ever claim anything is definitely true, we can only rule out the things that are false and make a hypothesis that something else is true until proved otherwise.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t one day receive a signal that is unambiguously of alien origin. If a signal is received with such a high level of structured information that it can’t be a natural signal, then there may be no other explanation.

In this case, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), have clear protocols for what happens next. These specify that the discoverer must notify other signatories to the protocols, other astronomers around the world, and also the United Nations. All data surrounding the discovery must also be made public. Importantly, no response to the signal should be sent until international consultations have taken place. Whatever (if anything) is transmitted back in the direction the signal came from would indicate our presence, so we’d better be sure we want to announce our existence before doing so.

Maybe one day these protocols will be invoked, but until then, astronomers will keep looking for more prosaic explanations for all the weird signals they detect.

Andrew Norton, Professor of Astrophysics Education, The Open University

Kenneth Starr: “Stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general”

(Credit: (Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune Herald, via AP, File))

Kenneth Star, the former independent counsel during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinski investigations of President Bill Clinton, pleaded with President Donald Trump to “cut it out,” in a Washington Post op-ed published Wednesday.

“Tweet to your heart’s content,” Starr wrote. “But stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general. An honorable man whom I have known since his days as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, Jeff Sessions has recently become your piñata in one of the most outrageous — and profoundly misguided — courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital.”

“What you are doing is harmful to your presidency and inimical to our foundational commitment as a free people to the rule of law,” he continued.

Besides his former role as independent counsel, Starr is also a former U.S. solicitor general and federal judge, according to the Post. Starr has also served as the dean of Pepperdine University’s law school, and the president of Baylor University.

Starr added that Sessions can’t be used as the president’s “hockey goalie,” which is how Sessions was described by Anthony Scaramucci, the White House’s new Communications Director. “Indeed, the attorney general’s job, at times, is to tell the president ‘no’ because of the supervening demands of the law,” Starr wrote.

Starr said that while “the attorney general needs to be a loyal member of the president’s team” it’s also imperative that “he must have the personal integrity and courage to tell the president what the law demands — and what the law will not permit.”

“Independence of judgment, as opposed to blind loyalty, characterizes great attorneys general,” Starr wrote.

The op-ed comes after Trump publicly and harshly criticized Sessions — one of his earliest supporters — because of his recusal from the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Starr concluded by asking Trump to heed his advice. “Mr. President, for the sake of the country, and for your own legacy, please listen to the growing chorus of voices who want you to succeed — by being faithful to the oath of office you took on Jan. 20 and by upholding the traditions of a nation of laws, not of men.”

He only wants to serve: Transgender and ready to enlist in the military

Chad, a proud ROTC graduate (Credit: Courtesy of Chad)

When Chad came back to his grandparents’ house for Christmas in 2010, he found Iowa unbearably cold. He had spent the last few years living in a desert climate as a university student in Nevada. Being back in Iowa, Chad was inundated with childhood memories: playing GI Joes in the living room and sledding down the hill in the backyard with his sister and me, their cousin.

“Hey, grandpa,” said Chad with excitement. His grandfather, sitting in his worn-down recliner, looked up from whatever was catching his eye on TV, most likely CNN or an old Western. “Could I show you my ROTC uniform?” Al nodded, and Chad raced off down the hallway.

Chad adored his grandfather’s sense of humor and respected his drive. He had come from a poor background and had worked incredibly hard to provide for his family. If he was going to do something, he would do it. He never gave up. Al had served in World War II, although he rarely talked about it.

Chad slipped into his combat uniform and went back out to show his grandfather, who recognized the rank symbol on Chad’s hat.

“I was a corporal, too,” said Al.

Al talked briefly about his time as a combat medic at the 91st General Hospital and how he had been stationed in Belgium and England during the war. Chad felt a huge sense of pride to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.

He got out his camera, took off his hat and placed it on Al’s head. Al smiled with a wide grin and gleaming eyes.

Chad didn’t want to be in the photograph himself. He had been self-conscious about how he looked for as long as he could remember. Chad was dealing with an identity crisis, but at this point, he couldn’t quite understand it. He had been named Brittany at birth, the name his family still called him at that point. He knew that he hated his name, hated how he looked and knew that the pronoun “she” was not right. These were concerns that he brought up often with his girlfriend, Ana, who his grandfather and grandmother knew nothing about at this point. They didn’t even know that Chad was attracted to women — and that was not a topic he felt ready to broach during Christmastime.

That holiday in 2010 was the only time Chad was able to show his grandfather his uniform. For as long as Chad could remember, he had wanted to be in the military. In 2010, Chad didn’t even know what the word transgender meant — he didn’t know he could be anything but “Brittany.” Al passed away in 2013, a short while after Chad started to understand himself as transgender.

Chad wishes that his grandfather could have lived long enough to know him as his authentic self; to see the day when he would be able to enlist as a real soldier, whenever that day may come.

* * *

Chad was the kind of kid who would watch “Band of Brothers” or war documentaries for fun. He had always wanted to learn more about the military. Over time, his curiosity grew into a patriotism that would become part of his identity. He felt a call to serve his country in any way he could.

When he was younger, his parents were supportive of his desire to shop in the boys’ department for clothes. He was home-schooled most of his life and does not have fond memories of the bullies in his few years of public school.

When Chad began puberty, he started to think there was something wrong. His body went through changes that he wanted to stop. Still, he didn’t know there was a name for what he was experiencing.

For his sixteenth birthday, his parents gave him an engraved dog tag. One side of the tag said “Love, Mom and Dad.” Chad, unsure what to do with the gift at the time, hung it on his car’s rearview mirror.

At 17, he went away to college. A passion to fight for his country and his love for his grandfather inspired him to enlist in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

He wanted to enter active duty eventually and saw ROTC as the easiest route to do that while still obtaining a college degree. But many positions he was interested in were not open at that time to soldiers who were perceived to be women, like field artillery officer, a combat position that works with fire support systems. With ROTC, he found a passion and a home — the cadets became a tight-knit group, a brotherhood.

That same year, Chad started dating Ana, a development his closest friends and immediate family accepted. But being in what would be perceived as a same-sex relationship while being in ROTC was far from easy in early 2011, because “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy which stated that openly gay, bisexual and lesbian officers could be released from service, was still in place. At first, Chad tried to keep his personal life separate from his ROTC life, but eventually he became annoyed by the rigidity of the rules. After he posted several images of the two of them on Facebook, a friend from ROTC approached Chad and warned him to be more careful.

In September of 2011, “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed. Chad and Ana were free to make their relationship public without potential repercussions. On a family Christmas vacation in Florida at the end of 2011, Chad got down on one knee on the beach and asked Ana to marry him.

* * *

One day during the following semester, Ana, with an engagement ring on her left hand, went to her Human Sexuality class, excited to start the day. This was by far her favorite class she had taken at college so far. The professor had inspired Ana to continue her work after graduation with LGBTQ groups.

Chad would accompany Ana sometimes to these classes and knew her professor as well, and the two of them would often discuss ideas about sexuality from the class over lunches or dinners. The class had brought them closer together and helped them understand their own identities.

This particular day’s lecture was about transgender individuals. Her professor dispelled the myths and stereotypes that the term “transgender” could bring to mind — outdated terms such as cross-dressing or transsexual — and discussed with the class how a transgender person might feel: being in the wrong skin, feeling like certain parts of their body or genitalia were wrong, feeling that their brain was a different gender than what their body indicated.

Ana leaned forward in her seat and starting asking follow-up questions to almost every sentence her professor uttered. Ana had never learned about what being transgender truly meant, and yet this subject matter felt so familiar to her. It made her think of her partner.

* * *

Ana met up with Chad for lunch later that day. As Ana started to describe what being transgender meant, something in Chad’s mind clicked. These things that he had been feeling since puberty, maybe even longer, were valid and real. After further research, he concluded he was in the wrong body, and became determined to start identifying as male.

Chad took his mom out to lunch at Great Harvest Bread Company and told her that he was transgender and wanted to transition. His mother told his father later that week, and Chad was overwhelmed by the amount of support that he received from his family. Once they understood what being transgender meant, they found that this idea made sense with who their child had always been.

He asked his parents what they would have named him if he had been designated male at birth. “Chad,” is what they told him, and so that became his name.

Chad’s decision affected his life plan. The repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” had not changed the military’s strict ban on transgender enlistment. If Chad did enlist in the military, he could not go forward with testosterone hormonal therapy and would have to pretend that he was and felt female, even though now he knew he was a man. The way Chad saw it, transitioning into the gender he was, was the only option. If he wasn’t true to himself, how would he be able to lead troops or give command?

Chad told his ROTC supervisor that he would be dropping out of the program. His supervisor was understanding, as were Chad’s ROTC friends. They only seemed to want everyone to do a good job — it didn’t matter to them what gender Chad was. He realized that military policy that was the problem, not the people.

When Chad started to transition with hormonal injections, he began to worry about everyday things like locker rooms and restrooms. He used the women’s room for the first year, but sometimes women would report that a man was in there. But using the men’s room felt unsafe to him.

Chad wanted to tell his grandfather about being transgender, but he never found the right time. His grandfather became ill in 2012 with kidney failure and an infection. Chad traveled back to Iowa with Ana, his sister and his parents. His grandmother knew that Ana was Chad’s girlfriend, but Chad couldn’t bring himself to tell his grandmother or his grandfather about being transgender then.

For the first time since Chad had started hormone therapy, his family used she/her pronouns and called him Brittany. It bothered him, but he also knew this was not the time to tell his grandparents; he would wait until his grandfather got better. But in March 2013, Al passed away.

Chad ultimately decided not to go to the funeral, knowing that his grandmother was grieving and that showing up as Chad could be jarring to her during this time. Chad had started to see his body look like how he always wanted — his voice had deepened, and he was able to grow facial hair.

It was months after Al’s funeral when Chad’s father told his grandmother. His grandmother’s response was, “Okay. And?”

Chad felt relief at his grandmother’s acceptance of him, but he also wished that his grandfather could have been around to know him for who he truly was. At Chad and Ana’s wedding, Chad took his grandmother by the arm and showed her a specific table by the reception area. There was a photograph of Chad’s grandfather in his military uniform set up that his grandmother had given him when he was a child. Al was with Chad still, watching over his grandson.

Later in 2013, Chad and Ana moved to another state for him to pursue his master’s degree in educational leadership and her a PhD in couples and family counseling. Chad was still thinking about the military, perhaps more than ever now that his grandfather had passed. He set up Google alerts so he would know right away any new information regarding the transgender ban in the military. He obtained a job at the university in its diversity and equity office, and his life went on. And he waited.

* * *

Chad’s research into military policy on transgender enlistment made him anxious for change. Prior to 2016, under military medical law, being transgender was considered a “psychosexual disorder.” In 2014, the Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that 15,000 transgender individuals were in active service in the military, but there are no actual statistics because transgender individuals could be discharged for revealing their true gender identity. In 2015, the military started to consider revoking the ban on transgender individuals.

Chad received a Google alert on June 30, 2016, which said that the ban on transgender enlistment had been lifted. After that work that day, Chad parked his Jeep outside of the U.S. Army Recruiting Station and gathered his confidence.

Inside, he met with a recruiter, and Chad told him that he was transgender and wanted to enlist. The recruiter said he would have to do some more digging into policy to see what they could do.

Chad went home and told Ana. Behind Chad’s enthusiasm was apprehension; the opportunity to enlist without any complications sounded too good to be true. Two days passed, and then Chad got a phone call from the recruiter during dinner at their house. The new policy, at this time, on open transgender enlistment would not take effect until July 1, 2017, because the military was working first with current service members. The recruiter told Chad that he would have to wait until then to enlist. Chad hung up and stood there in silence until Ana got up from the table and gave him a hug.

July 1, 2017, had been marked on Chad and Ana’s calendars. Ana and Chad knew what that day was supposed to mean for both of them: open enlistment and time apart, while Ana finished her PhD and Chad went off to basic training.

And then the date changed. A request for delay on revoking the ban was sent by military chiefs in late June. On June 30, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis officially approved a six-month delay, which meant the policy wouldn’t be re-evaluated until December 2017.

On July 26, President Donald Trump wrote a series of tweets officially stating that he would ban all transgender service members from the U.S. Army. Chad’s faith was tested again as he felt a wave of hurt, anger and sadness sweep over him.

For Chad, the opportunity to openly enlist, whenever that may be, would be his chance to be a military man, like his grandfather. With his gleaming eyes, square jaw, and round nose, those who knew Al can see that Chad even looks just like him.

Chad doesn’t necessarily agree with every U.S. policy, but his patriotism for his country has never wavered. He wants to acknowledge the struggles the nation faces and become a part of the solution by dedicating the rest of his life to serving his country.

The dog tag that his parents gave him for his 16th birthday still dangles from the rearview mirror of his Jeep. It’s hung in every car he’s owned, and it’s been there through his entire journey. The light from each sunset reflects off of the tag, illuminating the words engraved on the other side: “Never Give Up.”