Isle of Dreams

Zac Beauchamp provides a good summary (though lengthy) of the impossible twist of the knickers the Brits have gotten themselves into. The Brexit referendum only passed in the first place because its proponents lied to the voters. Even so, it depended on xenophobia and racism to attract a majority. Because it was premised on lies, it is literally impossible to produce the result that proponents promised, and are still pretending to demand.

I don't want to belabor the details here, some of which I have discussed before. The Ireland-Northern Ireland border problem is insoluble, as is the problem of British citizens living on the continent and continentals with indispensable jobs in Britain. So is the problem of not having trade agreements in place that will allow commerce to continue after March 29, and the "just in time" inventory practices of British manufacturers, and a whole lot else. But the posturing of Brexit proponents is driving the country toward catastrophe -- not to mention dissolution. The secession of Scotland is a likely outcome as well.

Astonishingly, the Brexit proponents are continuing to pretend that everything will be just fine on March 29. The mentality of people who stand on the beach and insist that the tide will not come in is incomprehensible to me. Reality will occur on that date. This is comparable to the insistence of U.S. wingnuts that Robert Mueller's got nuffin. Actually what we already know is plenty, but there will be an empirical test of what else he knows pretty soon. What profits it a person to pretend to know what is almost surely false?

Sunday Sermonette: The psychic

Genesis 40 continues Joseph's story with the literary craft that separates it from the rest of the biblical narrative so far. But if you read between the lines you might decide that something is going on here that is not what it seems.

 Some time later, the Egyptian king’s baker and wine taster did something their master didn’t like. ² So Pharaoh became angry with his two officials, the chief wine taster and the chief baker. ³ He put them in prison in the house of the captain of the palace guard. It was the same prison where Joseph was kept. ⁴ The captain put Joseph in charge of those men. So Joseph took care of them.

KJV has "butler" rather than "chief wine taster," as does ASV. One would think the Hebrew for butler and chief wine taster would be distinctly different, so this is odd. Keep in mind always that we are at the mercy of the translators.

Some time passed while they were in prison. ⁵ Then each of the two men had a dream. The men were the Egyptian king’s baker and wine taster. They were being held in prison. Both of them had dreams the same night. Each of their dreams had its own meaning.

The graceless repetitiveness of verse 5 reads more elegantly in the KJV.

⁶ Joseph came to them the next morning. He saw that they were sad. ⁷ They were Pharaoh’s officials, and they were in prison with Joseph in his master’s house. So he asked them, “Why do you look so sad today?”

Again we have this odd repetition of information.

⁸ “We both had dreams,” they answered. “But no one can tell us what they mean.”
Then Joseph said to them, “Only God knows what dreams mean. Tell me your dreams.”

Joseph's statement seems contradictory, unless he is claiming to have a direct line to God.

⁹ So the chief wine taster told Joseph his dream. He said to him, “In my dream I saw a vine in front of me. ¹⁰ There were three branches on the vine. As soon as it budded, it flowered. And bunches of ripe grapes grew on it. ¹¹ Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand. I took the grapes. I squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup. Then I put the cup in his hand.”
¹² “Here’s what your dream means,” Joseph said to him. “The three branches are three days. ¹³ In three days Pharaoh will let you out of prison. He’ll give your job back to you. And you will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand. That’s what you used to do when you were his wine taster. ¹⁴ But when everything is going well with you, remember me. Do me a favor. Speak to Pharaoh about me. Get me out of this prison. ¹⁵ I was taken away from the land of the Hebrews by force. Even here I haven’t done anything to be put in prison for.”
¹⁶ The chief baker saw that Joseph had given a positive meaning to the wine taster’s dream. So he said to Joseph, “I had a dream too. There were three baskets of bread on my head. ¹⁷ All kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh were in the top basket. But the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.”
¹⁸ “Here’s what your dream means,” Joseph said. “The three baskets are three days. ¹⁹ In three days Pharaoh will cut your head off. Then he will stick a pole through your body and set the pole up. The birds will eat your flesh.”

Of course, we know now that dreams are not prophetic. But they don't have to be in this case. Joseph and everyone else presumably know that Pharaoh's birthday is in three days. Furthermore, the prison warden presumably knows the men's sentences and Joseph is his trustee and confidante. So Joseph doesn't need magic powers to interpret these dreams, he already knows what's going to happen. He's trying to con the butler into getting him out of jail.

²⁰ The third day was Pharaoh’s birthday. He had a feast prepared for all his officials. He brought the chief wine taster and the chief baker out of prison. He did it in front of his officials. ²¹ He gave the chief wine taster’s job back to him. Once again the wine taster put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. ²² But Pharaoh had a pole stuck through the chief baker’s body. Then he had the pole set up. Everything happened just as Joseph had told them when he explained their dreams.
²³ But the chief wine taster didn’t remember Joseph. In fact, he forgot all about him.

 Both KJV and ASV have the baker beheaded and hung from a tree, but NIV has him impaled, for some reason.  I don't suppose it much matters, but it is an omission that we never learn what his crime was.

Suddenly we have permission to say what everybody already knew

The New York Times story about the FBI investigation into whether Individual 1 is actually a Russian tool is maybe news to some people. Evidently it is news to Benjamin Wittes who is moved to fundamentally reexamine his understanding of the FBI investigation of which the Office of Special Counsel is just a part. The Wittes piece is long but it's important.

The Mueller investigation is fundamentally a counterintelligence operation. The focus of the investigation is Russian interference in our election, and Russian infiltration into our government. There is no distinction between the "collusion" and "obstruction" portions of the investigation either. Obstructing the counterintelligence investigation into Russian actions is collusion.

The conclusion that Donald J. Trump is a Russian asset has been apparent to many people for a long time. The formal, legal charge of treason requires that a state of war exist. However, it is not illegal to use the term in a vernacular sense. Perhaps Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell will reflect on that.

Logical Fallacies

From time to time I point out common logical fallacies that unfortunately infest our public discourse. Today's lesson is argumentum ad hominem, in which the debater claims that some characteristic of the proponent of a view renders that person's argument invalid.

This has three forms. Tu qoque is pointing out that the proponent has said or done something in the past which is contrary to his or her position. This may be embarrassing, but it does not in any way invalidate the argument the person is currently making. And of course, people can change their minds, although this is something politicians apparently are not allowed to do ("flip-flopping").

The second form is guilt by association. This essentially means pointing out that someone who we should consider unsavory holds or held the same position. For example, Hitler was a vegetarian so that invalidates arguments for vegetarianism.

But the one I specifically want to discuss today is called the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. This is claiming that some characteristics of the opponent make him or her likely to take the position, so why should we pay attention to the logic of the argument? Again, this is a distraction which is in no way a valid responses to an argument. Another problem with this is that it often is not even true.

For example, suppose someone made the claim that my argument for single payer national health care is invalid because I have never held a private sector job, or been self-employed, therefore I am not like most people and can't possibly understand what is good for them. A valid counterargument would have to show that for people in private sector employment, or people who are self-employed, having health insurance might be bad for them. This seems to me difficult to justify, but that's the only logical reason my employment history could matter.

However, I have in fact been self-employed and I have worked exclusively in the private sector my entire life, unless you count teaching a course for one semester at a community college when I was in graduate school. Some of my employers have been non-profit organizations, but many have not. My first job was as a stable hand. I managed the concession stand at the town beach in the summers when I was in college. I worked in a razor factory as a material handler, and I worked in a radiator factory bending tubes and pressure testing. I had a carpentry business with my brother-in-law. I worked as a security guard. I worked for a small mom and pop consulting business, then I worked for United Way. While I was getting my doctorate I was self-employed as a consultant to community organizations and government. I worked for a community organization in Boston for 15 years and only then, in my fifties, did I take a full-time academic job.

During my periods of self employment and low-wage employment I did not have health insurance. I wish I did. For one thing an untreated fracture in my left hand would not have led to osteoarthritis many years later which required very painful surgery and a long recovery period. If Obamacare had been available I would have been very grateful.

Oh, by the way, I do not hate America. I'm not sure why advocating for single payer health care would lead to that conclusion. You fucking moron.

Health Insurance 101

Over the course of the years, decades and centuries I have found I need to spell out some elementary facts for the newbies who come here unenlightened.

Health care is not like most commodities, say for example cheese or oven mitts. People who make remarks to the effect that it's a violation of their liberty to make them buy health insurance or tell them what the minimal contents of their insurance must be and how would you feel if the government forced you to buy cheese and it had to be cheddar only think they're being clever.

If you want to drive a car, the government requires you to buy insurance and tells you what that insurance must at a minimum cover. Think about that for a moment and also notice that just about nobody objects to it. True, you don't have to buy a car, but the difference is that you do have to live.

So what happens when somebody who doesn't have health insurance falls off a ladder or has a heart attack? The ambulance takes said person to a hospital where they receive services which, if they don't really cost $75,000 probably cost more than you can afford to pay. Which means the rest of us get stuck with the bill, one way or another. Furthermore, if you'd had insurance and been getting primary care you might not have had the heart attack in the first place.

As with motorcycle helmets, it is not merely and exclusively your own safety and well being that are at issue, in which case many people would agree that the nanny state should leave you alone. You likely have dependents, and you need to be able to work and make a living at the very least to take care of yourself. If you can no longer do that, you become a dependent of the state. And even if you think that people in that condition should just be turned out on the street to die, the people who live on the street on which you die will not like that. Society just won't accept that situation.

But health care is not like cheese and oven mitts in many other ways. You know what kind of cheese you like and whether or not you bake and therefore need oven mitts. However, you don't know what health care you need because you are not a doctor. The doctor has to make the diagnosis and tell you what the treatments are. Also, you cannot anticipate our need for health care, just as you don't know when or if you will crash your car or your house will burn down and you will therefore need a new car or a new house. That's why you have insurance. But again, if you're out of luck and don't have a car or a house, society can tolerate that, but again, they can't tolerate a lot of sick and dying people wandering around the neighborhood and they also don't want to have to take care of your kids.

Another thing about insurance is that some people have a lot of medical expenses and some people don't. Again, we can't entirely predict. So the way we get the money to pay for the expensive people is to have everybody pay into the premium pool. That way the money is there for people who need it, because of the premiums paid by the people who don't need it. If you have employer-provided insurance, you are in fact paying for it, whether or not you know it, because it's part of your overall compensation package and if the employer didn't provide it, you paycheck would be bigger.

All of this is to say that it is socially desirable for everybody to have health insurance. Also, everybody needs to buy into at least a minimal package that includes essential benefits because otherwise the risk pool for those essential benefits won't be big enough.

A single payer system is the simplest, most efficient way to organize this. And yes, people have to pay for it. You can do it through taxes, obviously. If you don't like to call it taxes you can call it premiums and have a sliding scale based on income. But it would be cheaper than it is for you now, unless you already get Medicaid or an ACA subsidy, because Medicare has much lower administrative overhead costs than private insurance and doctors and hospitals also wouldn't have to spend so much money on complicated billing systems to multiple different payers.

And yes, people who are now over 65 and receiving Medicare paid into it during their working lives, so what? If we provided Medicare to people under 65, they would obviously have to pay for it, again either through premiums or taxes, with a subsidy for low income people. That seems pretty simple.

Is this socialism? You can call it whatever you like but the people of Canada, Norway, France and the rest of Western Europe don't think they live in a totalitarian dungeon and in fact are very happy with their systems, which differ considerably but still provide everybody with basic coverage for a lot cheaper than what we spend here. That is an empirical fact. Yes, you can't opt out and not have insurance and yes, people have to pay for it. That is the inexorable logic of the problem.

If you don't like it, move to a different universe.

Update: Let's make a couple of concepts absolutely clear, although it's probably a waste of time because some people don't actually want to understand.

Insurance shifts risk to the risk pool --  the money accumulated by premiums, or if you prefer in a government run system, taxes. That's just a name, it comes to the same thing. You could isolate the premium on the tax return and withholding just as they do now with Social Security if you want to be transparent. People called actuaries calculate the likely future cost to the risk pool and adjust the premiums accordingly. Of course there might be an unexpected even such as a pandemic or an epidemic of idiocy -- oh sorry, that's already happening -- which might require an adjustment in next year's premium. Or we could have a good year and it would go down. But that's the idea of insurance, to spread risk. Its not your individual risk that's at issue, it's the population aggregate risk.

Second, right now Medicare beneficiaries have to pay a premium for what's called Medicare Part B, and if they don't pay it they lose coverage for a period. I don't know whether that's a good idea or not, it probably isn't, but it's intended to make people who have the means put a little skin in the game. People who are too poor to afford the premium become what's called "dual eligible," which means they also get Medicaid and they don't have to pay the premium. The design of a Medicare for all system could or could not include that feature, it would be up to Congress.

And yes, if you were affluent and wanted to buy supplemental insurance you could do so, as is the case right now. Medicare beneficiaries can buy whatever additional insurance they want.

A charitable institution

A few days ago I told the bizarre tale of my mother's hospital bill. As you may recall it was itemized and came to total of more than $75,000. Then it had an "insurance adjustment" which reduced the bill to about $6,000. Then they actually billed her for $200.

We had a presentation here last week from Harvard researcher Ateev Mehrotra who studies, among other subjects, medical billing, and we got into a discussion of this weird practice. One of the many ill consequences of our fragmented system of organizing and financing health care is that hospitals and physician practices must interact with numerous different payers -- private, usually for profit insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. They post these ridiculous prices as a starting point, then they negotiate separately with the private insurance companies to set the actual price. (Medicare and Medicaid have fixed prices, that they just have to take.) So the price will be different for each insurer.

Another wrinkle: yes, my mother is a Medicare beneficiary. However, she has a Medicare Advantage plan, which means that Medicare pays the insurer a fixed amount for each patient and the insurer then negotiates prices with the hospitals. So many Medicare beneficiaries actually have private insurance. Anyhow . . .

"Price transparency" is an effort to get consumers to make economical choices by making providers post their prices. But posting the $4,500 a day room and board price is a) going to insure that nobody ever undergoes elective surgery and b) is totally fictitious since nobody actually pays it. For that matter, nobody pays the price the insurer pays because, you know, the insurer pays it. All you care about is your co-pay, and the insurance company tells you that.

Ordinarily hospitals will cut deals with all of the important insurers in their area, because obviously they want the business. They can actually send the bill for $75,000 to an uninsured person, but they aren't likely to collect. But now it turns out that Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital has deliberately not contracted with any private insurance plans because it wants to be able to send people with private insurance enormous bills. This includes emergency department bills and I think you can see the problem here: the ambulance crew takes people to the ED and generally doesn't ask them where they would prefer to go, especially if they are, you know, unconscious. Then they get billed for tens of thousands of dollars for services that other hospitals are happy to provide for $3,000 in insurance payments.

Does this seem, I dunno, unethical? For a supposedly non-profit charitable institution?

Here we go:

We need universal, comprehensive, single payer national health care. Badabing badaboom.

Sunday Sermonette: Count your blessings

Okay, the strange interlude is over and we get back to our pal Joseph in Chapter 39. This is a better yarn than most of what we've seen so far but in some ways it doesn't bear close scrutiny. Here goes.

Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.

 Okay this is maybe not a big deal but here's Genesis 37:36: " And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard." As we noted before, the story keeps mixing up the Ishmaelites and the Midianites. Somehow there must have been two versions of the story and the scribe never sorted them out.

² The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. ³ When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, ⁴ Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. ⁵ From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. ⁶ So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

Keep in mind that Potiphar does not worship Joseph's God. Ancient Egyptian religion was polytheistic, as  just about everyone knows. Pharaoh was himself divine, and had the responsibility of interceding between the people and the deities, who represented various natural forces and entities.

Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, ⁷ and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”
⁸ But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. ⁹ No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” ¹⁰ And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
¹¹ One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. ¹² She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

Here again the NIV seems to clean things up. Most translations, including KJV and ASV, have "garment" rather than cloak, and the implication is that Joseph flees the house naked. Using the word "cloak" makes this seem more plausible.

¹³ When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, ¹⁴ she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. ¹⁵ When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
¹⁶ She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. ¹⁷ Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. ¹⁸ But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
¹⁹ When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. ²⁰ Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.

I will just note that Potiphar immediately presumes that his wife is telling the truth, and makes no effort to get Joseph's side of the story. But note the pattern, which will continue. God supposedly favors Joseph, and the way he shows it is by continually screwing him over and then elevating him within his screwed-over status. First God sends him dreams in which his brothers are subservient to him, so the brothers sell him into slavery. Then God makes him head slave. Then Joseph gets thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit. Then .. . Well, read on. But it seems to me that God could have gotten to the denouement by a more direct route.

But while Joseph was there in the prison, ²¹ the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. ²² So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. ²³ The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

 So he goes from a cushy gig as a slave to a cushy gig as a prisoner. I dunno, if the Lord favored me, I'd hope for  a little better.

Hold onto your hats . . .

In about 2 billion years the Large Magellanic Cloud will collide with our galaxy. It's not actually a cloud, of course. It was named before people had powerful telescopes and could figure out that many of the so-called nebulae were actually galaxies. The LMC is a satellite of our galaxy, which we call the Milky Way. We have many such satellites but the LMC is the biggest.

The collision will result in an influx of material into Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, "waking up" the Milky Way to become an active galaxy, with powerful jets of high energy radiation emitted from the poles of A*. This won't affect the earth particularly, although there is a small chance the sun's orbit could be disrupted and the solar system expelled from the galaxy. I know you probably figure you won't be around that long . . .

This interests me because it's a reminder of how radically our understanding of the universe and our place in it has changed in a short time. In fact, it was less than 100 years ago that Edwin Hubble discovered the universe. Literally. Galileo figured out that the earth was not at the center of the universe, but it was not until just a couple of years before Hubble's discovery that Harlow Shapley was able to describe the Milky Way galaxy and expand our vision of the universe by what we now know was a minute increment. We now estimate that Hubble's universe contains about 200 billion galaxies, and that our own quite typical galaxy contains more than 200 billion stars.

This knowledge has not affected the philosophy of most people, who still put humanity at the focus of concern of an imagined creator God. If in fact God created this universe of 200 billion galaxies 14 1/2 billion years ago for the essential purpose of bringing to consciousness some bags of organic carbon soup in a thin layer of slime on an infinitesimal speck of dust, he is mighty damn inefficient.

In reality, it doesn't matter what happens to us. We are nothing. The earth, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, will go on without us until they do no longer, billions of years after we are gone. We only matter because we matter to ourselves. This profoundest of all revelations, once again, is less than 100 years old. Think about that.

A republic if you can keep it

Sean Illing interviews historian Edward Watts about the fall of the Roman Republic and parallels to the present day United States. The comparison is somewhat strained in ways that Watts and Illing do not discuss. The republic really dissolved in a civil conflict between competing warlords. Caesar seized power by military force, which is not a likely scenario for us. (The end of the Republic is usually formally said to have happened in 27 BC with the bestowal of the title "Imperator" on Octavian who was also allowed to call himself Caesar Augustus. However, the Republic had ceased to function as such under Julius Caesar, in 48 BC.)

Nevertheless Watts sees the failure of the Republic as essentially a loss of legitimacy of its representative institutions. As Watts says:

There’s a pivotal period in Rome, around the middle part of the 2nd century BC, in which there’s an economic revolution that displaces a lot of people who had belonged to a hereditary aristocracy and moves them off the top economic rungs of the state.

At the same time, it’s creating economic conditions that prompt people in the middle to basically become very frustrated that their economic prospects are not increasing either. And what ends up happening is the people who win from this economic revolution try to preserve their gains through just about any means they can, and that includes gross political obstructionism, the rigging of elections, and a total unwillingness to compromise.

While the rise of economic inequality and the stagnation of working class incomes are clearly central to our present institutional crisis, it has important other dimensions that do not resemble the Roman case. Carlos Lozada in WaPo reviews some books by lapsed conservatives and a couple of them put it well.

Charles J. Sykes: "For me 2016 was a brutal, disorienting, disillusioning slog. There came a moment when I realized that conservatives had created an alternative reality bubble and that I had perhaps helped shape it . . . Did we — did I — contribute to this prairie fire of bigotry and xenophobia that seemed to grip so many on the Right? . . . For years, we ignored the birthers, the racists, the truthers, and other conspiracy theorists. We treated them like your obnoxious uncle at Thanksgiving . . . whose quirks could be indulged or at least ignored."

Max Boot: "Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the whole history of modern conservatism is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, ignorance, isolationism, and know-nothingism."

The essential problem of conservative politics is that the true goal of conservatism is to protect the privilege of the wealthy. In order to win elections, conservatives need to get people to vote against their own interest. And that is what the racism, conspiracy mongering and ignorance are all about. They take the place of Caesar's army, in other words.  And so they must be defeated, or we will lose our republic.

Sunday Sermonette: Strange Interlude

We have seen that Genesis is a conglomeration of stories and fragments from various sources. Most of it likely existed in some form as pre-literate oral tradition before being written down. These have been stitched together into the semblance of a historical narrative, but it's filled with continuity errors, contradictions, impossibilities and absurdities, multiple versions of the same story, omissions and elisions, gratuitous factoids. The story of Joseph, as we noted, seems more coherent and better crafted than most of what has gone before. It was likely the thoughtful creation of a relatively skilled author, rather than a transcript of old campfire tales by a scribe. It is interrupted, however, by the bizarre digression of chapter 38. And I do mean bizarre. As is often the case, the NIV seems to try to sanitize this. I don't read Hebrew, but other translations I have looked at make some of this even weirder.

At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah. ² There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; ³ she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. ⁴ She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. ⁵ She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him.

Neither the KJV nor the American Standard Version say that Judah married the unnamed daughter of Shuah; he just boinked her. Note that up till now, it has been shameful for Hebrews to marry Canaanite women, but in this case it seems to be okay with God.

⁶ Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. ⁷ But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.

We are given no indication of how Er got on the Lord's bad side. This is the first time we have heard of God killing a specific individual, actually. (Yeah, he did destroy most of creation in the flood, then wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah.) Massacring all the men of a town and taking the women and children as slaves, because you suspect one of them of raping your sister, does not warrant punishment. Neither does selling your brother into slavery. But Er's mysterious transgression gets him whacked. 

⁸ Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” ⁹ But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. ¹⁰ What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.

Like much of biblical morality, this is completely alien to contemporary culture. Anybody who actually did "live biblically," shaping conduct to the morality of the Bible, would be in prison or committed to a psychiatric institution. The requirement that a man impregnate his brother's widow was likely compassionate. There was no way for women to make a living or acquire wealth and there was no Social Security. Tamar needs children in order to survive. It is not clear, however, why Onan didn't want to give her any. As the story clearly says, Onan would not have been responsible for any child, so it's no skin off his nose. Something about the motivation is missing. (Later, it seems that men are required to marry their brother's widow rather than just knock her up.) For some reason some people have interpreted Onan's sin to have been masturbation rather than what it clearly is, coitus interruptus. And it is not that, per se, but rather not fulfilling his duty to impregnate Tamar.

¹¹ Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Live as a widow in your father’s household until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He may die too, just like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s household.
¹² After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went with him.
¹³ When Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep,” ¹⁴ she took off her widow’s clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.
¹⁵ When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. ¹⁶ Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”
“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.
¹⁷ “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.
“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.
¹⁸ He said, “What pledge should I give you?”
“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. ¹⁹ After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.

It's mildly interesting that prostitutes wear veils. It is quite implausible that Judah would not have recognized her nevertheless, but we'll let that go. Note that there is no indication that there is anything sinful about this, on either side of the transaction, until later.

²⁰ Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her. ²¹ He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”
“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.

Again, NIV seems to be cleaning things up. The ASV glosses what is here translated as "shrine prostitute" as "kedeshah, that is, a woman dedicated to impure heathen worship." According to Wikipedia, however, kedesah literally means "consecrated." It apparently refers to sexual rites in certain cults. As the Wikipedia entry discusses, this is a complicated subject about which the historical truth is unknown. In any case, there is no indication in this story that Tamar was purporting to be anything but an  ordinary prostitute, Hebrew zonah.

²² So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’”
²³ Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”
²⁴ About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”
Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”
²⁵ As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”
²⁶ Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.

Okaaaaaaay. So Judah was going to burn Tamar alive for engaging in prostitution until he discovered that he was the John. So now it's more than okay. So why was he planning to give the woman a goat, rather than burn her alive, until he learned her identity? Prostitution is only sinful if done by your daughter-in-law? BTW does Tamar get to keep the goat?

²⁷ When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. ²⁸ As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand; so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his wrist and said, “This one came out first.” ²⁹ But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, “So this is how you have broken out!” And he was named Perez.^{[a] 30} Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out. And he was named Zerah.^[b]

Babies obviously don't stick their hands out first, ordinarily. Not clear why the midwife tied a thread on his hand in any case. According to Luke 3, BTW, Perez is an ancestor of Jesus. Well, not really, he's an ancestor of Joseph, who was not actually the father of Jesus.  But Luke tries to have it both ways, because Perez is in the line of the Messiah according to Jewish tradition. Anyway, Live Biblically! We return to our friend Joseph and see how things are going for him as Potiphar's slave in our next episode.

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 38:29 Perez means breaking out.
2. Genesis 38:30 Zerah can mean scarlet or brightness.

Weird accounting

I manage my mother's affairs. She's been in a nursing home since she was hospitalized last July for 11 days. So all of a sudden, on December 26, I get a bill from the hospital. I didn't expect one since she has a Medicare Advantage plan, but apparently there is a copay for this. Here's the itemization of the bill:

CT Scan: $5,075
EKG/ECG: $198
Emergency Room: $2,609
Laboratory: $3,429
Medical/Surgical Supplies/Devices: $2,192.76
Occupational Therapy: $2,901
Other Care Items: $3,734
Pharmacy: $1,369
Physical Therapy: $5,913
Room and Board: $46,838

Total: $74,259

In case you're wondering, room and board comes to $4,258 a day. That's a pretty fancy hotel.

The good news is that the insurance company paid $6,605.43. Don't know how they got to the 43 cents. Then there was an "insurance adjustment" for $67,454.12. The net result is that my mother owes 200 bucks, which she does happen to have so I sent them a check as I assume this is legit, but how am I to know?

So what's going on here? The answer is that they have a negotiated price for all this stuff with the insurance company, which is less than $4,258 a day for room and board, and comparably less for all that other stuff. The list price is entirely fictitious, except that they will in fact try to extract it from uninsured people. Why do they do this? Beats the hell out of me. It seems completely nonsensical. And I'm a health services researcher.

Deep and Lasting Damage

Individual 1's tantrum over his inane border wall has real consequences. It will cause substantial economic damage in the short run, and further damage the legitimacy and reputation of the federal government in the long run. The latter, I suppose, is a feature, not a bug, for many conservatives.

The political discourse about immigration is very much about cultural resentment vs. inclusiveness and compassion. It isn't very much about facts. The Balance is a web site that offers financial advise, but it covers issues of economic importance with accessible fact sheets. Their discussion of immigration seems to me pretty well balanced, in other words they earn their name here, although I do have a couple of quibbles.

The first important fact that seems to get lost is that immigration has a substantial net benefit to the U.S. economy. This is partly because immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial, and because we admit quite a few people with high level technical skills. It's also because we face a structural problem with our aging population, and the fertility rate is not high enough to replace retirees in the labor force and pay for future Social Security and Medicare benefits. In other words, we really need the workers. Undocumented workers are actually a bonus because many of them pay social security and income taxes but aren't eligible to receive Medicare or Social Security.

Many politicians claim, and many people believe, that people enter the U.S. illegally in order to collect "welfare." This is 100% false. Undocumented people, and even people with green cards who have held them for less than 5 years, are ineligible for public benefits of any kind. The only arguable exception is that children do receive a public education, although it's not clear that the marginal cost of a few extra children in a school is significant. (You'd need to have enough to require a whole new classroom.) And U.S. born children are citizens and so may be eligible for Medicaid. But remember, like all children, they will go on to become workers and contribute to the economy, which is why we educate U.S. born children (among other reasons), so long-term, again, this is all good.

Undocumented immigrants do disproportionately work in certain low-wage occupations -- farm labor and restaurant kitchens -- and also in construction where they may do relatively skilled jobs such as carpentry.  Kitchen and construction work may indeed displace some U.S. born workers or keep wages in those fields lower. On the other hand, that means lower prices for consumers. Housing and restaurant meals would be more expensive without immigrant labor, including undocumented immigrant labor. However, this is not true of farm labor. Even with rising wages, U.S. citizens won't do it, in some cases leaving crops to rot in the fields.

So, we need comprehensive reform in order to supply the immigrant workers who are absolutely necessary in agriculture, and the industrious and entrepreneurial immigrants who keep our economy vibrant and innovative, while at the same time providing farm workers with dignity and personal security. Right now they are exploited and vulnerable to wage theft and sexual assault.

I don't know that there are a lot of citizens who are hurting right now because they can't get that dishwashing or food prep job they desperately want, but construction workers, at least in times of slack demand, can be said to have a legitimate beef about illegal immigration. So that should be discussed rationally.

Now, as for the inane border wall. In the first place, the majority of people who are in the U.S.  illegally did not cross the border illegally, they overstayed visas. In the second place, much of the border wall already exists. There are 640 miles of physical barriers along the 1,933 mile U.S.-Mexico border. Much of the unfenced area is essentially impenetrable because of geography. Other areas are desert in which it is possible to cross but many migrants perish. According to Dinah Bear of the organization Humane Borders:

Whereas it was common in the 1990s to see large groups of 20, 30, or even 40 migrants at a time, Bear said, Humane Borders volunteers typically only see one or two people at a time these days.

"Most of the migrants now don't come from Mexico. They come from Central America, which is much further," Bear said. "So by the time they get to the border, they're already in pretty bad shape; they've just been traveling from much further away."

Bear said it's now far more common for the nonprofit to find human remains than to find living migrants.

"When we do see a migrant, on the very few occasions we do see migrants these days, inevitably they ask us to call the Border Patrol, because they are in really bad shape and they need help," she said.

In other places border fencing would cause catastrophic environmental damage. There are Arizona ranchers who support building physical barriers in their own area. The U.S. has been steadily adding border fencing for decades and one could certainly make an argument for more fencing in specific areas, and some is already underway.

However, most of the unfenced border consists of the Rio Grande in Texas.

A host of laws and regulations — from international treaties to flood-zone requirements — make wall-construction along the Texas-Mexico border a daunting task.

All those obstacles mean that when fencing does get constructed, it usually ends up being placed far inland, cutting across private property. And Texas landowners haven't taken too kindly in the past to government officials attempting to co-opt their land. . . .

Texas Border Volunteers, essentially a private militia group, says:

The group has observed a massive downturn in border-crossing traffic in recent years. They attribute the change less to Trump's tough-talk on border security, and more to the enhanced technology that Border Patrol agents and state authorities now use.

For TBV, which patrols private lands some 70 miles inland near Falfurrias, the heightened technology means that Border Patrol is "responding quicker" to migrant traffic, which "never gets a chance to make it [to] where we're at."

Gibson said the technology, combined with increased manpower of the Border Patrol and National Guard troops, will ultimately make more of a difference in securing the border than any physical wall could.

And this is the sensible action democrats want. More physical barriers in certain places where the locals want them and the environmental impact is acceptable; and high tech surveillance technology where the damage that would be caused by a physical barrier is unacceptable, or a barrier is technically not feasible.

There is no political disagreement about whether the border should be secure. There is only disagreement about the sensible, affordable, and non-destructive means of achieving this. The border wall is an idiotic campaign slogan, not a sensible or even possible solution.

Sunday Sermonette: The rules of commerce

Today we'll finish Genesis 37, which ends at another cliffhanger so that's in keeping with the usual strategy of serial publication. Again, keep in mind that this story is most likely entirely fictitious. We need to keep in mind the actual intent of the author. Note that there is no point of view. This is what's called the Omniscient Author form of fiction. Unlike, say, Moby Dick, where we observe events from the point of view of a narrator, this author knows what is happening to people in various places, who have no knowledge of what is happening to each other. In order to reconstruct a true story in this way, the writer would have to interview various people and piece their stories together. Okay, here goes.

²⁵ As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.

 I've noted this a few times but just to remind you, camels had not been domesticated at the time these events supposedly happened.

²⁶ Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? ²⁷ Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
²⁸ So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels^[b] of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.

An obvious continuity problem here, maybe a transcription error or a conflation of two versions of the story. The Midianites and the Ishmaelites are completely different people. Which is it? It is also kind of interesting that a few guys sitting around eating lunch can offer to sell a person into slavery to passing strangers. The rules of commerce here are not the ones we observe today.

²⁹ When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. ³⁰ He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”
³¹ Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. ³² They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”
³³ He recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
³⁴ Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. ³⁵ All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him.
³⁶ Meanwhile, the Midianites^[c] sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.

Again, the brothers sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites but the Midianites sold him to Potiphar. But this writer probably doesn't have an editor. Also, too, note that God renaming the guy Israel still hasn't stuck. He stubbornly remains Jacob.

Note that the overland journey from Bethlehem to Cairo is quite substantial, even for people who actually do have camels. It's about 200 miles, mostly across the Sinai desert, so Joseph is probably done with the sackcloth by the time Joseph gets there. We'll learn more of his fate next week.

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 37:3 The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain; also in verses 23 and 32.
2. Genesis 37:28 That is, about 8 ounces or about 230 grams
3. Genesis 37:36 Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac (see also verse 28); Masoretic Text Medanites

New International Version (NIV)

On Syria and Afghanistan

I haven't been keeping it up lately, but for many years I have maintained a blog called Today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have followed the U.S. involvement in these places closely since the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan. Here are some thoughts on the recent abrupt announcement of troop withdrawals.

The sudden announcement by Individual 1 that the U.S. military will withdraw entirely from Syria, and troop strength in Afghanistan will be reduced by half, has created shock around the world. I have tried to be circumspect about my own opinions here, but I think it's clear I view the Afghanistan operation as a Sisyphean and pointless folly. I haven't referenced the U.S. presence in Syria much although it is obviously closely linked to the Iraqi operation. My general position is that the U.S. is far too  inclined to try to solve problems militarily. However, since the U.S. created the catastrophe of IS,  we did have an obligation to help solve it. Staying back and providing logistical and some air and artillery support to local troops was probably the best of bad choices.  The question of when to go, and on what terms, is still critical. Here is Adam Silverman on Syria.


"So what, exactly, are we actually doing in Syria? What is it that will stop as a result of this withdrawal order? We are basically doing two things in Syria. The first is a train, advise, and assist mission with our local Syrian partners who are predominantly Kurdish, but some are Arabs, who are fighting ISIS. This is a Special Forces mission supported by a some Marine Corps artillery. The second thing we’re doing is, as an extension of the train, advise, and assist mission, conducting stability operations among the Syrian population where we are partnered with and training our local Syrian partners. This is being done within a “by, with, and through” strategy of partnering with vetted local groups. If we pull out there will be four immediate effects.

1. The collapse of the local stabilization we’re contributing to. This will result in increased internally displaced Syrians and Syrian refugees who will flee ahead of both Syrian and ISIS efforts to fill the vacuum the withdrawal will create.
2. As a result of the first effect, we will see an increased humanitarian crisis in the areas we withdraw from.
3. We will once again have abandoned the Kurds despite the promises we’ve made to them, which further diminishes the United States ability to exercise any form of national power (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic), because it further demonstrates that we can’t be trusted, won’t keep our word, and can’t be counted on.
4. The vacuum and destabilization created by the withdrawal will be filled by both Syrian forces and ISIS. They will move to occupy and control the areas we’ve left, will fight each other in them, and this will lead to further destabilization in Syria and, potentially, throughout the Levant. It creates new stresses, challenges, and threats for Iraq and Lebanon, as well as for Israel and Turkey even though both of those states have been pursuing their own interests in Syria. And because of increased refugee outflows, it will increase pressures and problems for our allies in the EU."

 So, this is not a combat operation. There have been at least a few commando operations in Syria that we know about, to apprehend specific individuals and gather intelligence, but none have been publicly known for quite a while.

Extraction of the U.S. forces without producing catastrophe would require, at a minimum, guarantees from Turkey to  refrain from attacking the Kurds while working toward a rapprochement such as they have with Iraqi Kurdistan. That would require the Syrian Kurds to repudiate the PKK. I don't know if they would do that but it's their only long-term hope, in my view. The Kurds would also have to be left with the means to defend themselves, and they would also have to negotiate federal status with Damascus, again analogous to Iraqi Kurdistan. Such arrangements would take time to negotiate, might be impossible, but certainly cannot happen without U.S. involvement.

As for Afghanistan, obviously the Kabul government is slowly but inexorably losing, even with the 14,000 U.S. troops who are there currently. I can't say what difference removing 7,000 will make, but this was done abruptly, without consultation with the Afghan government or NATO allies.

The Taliban, not suprisingly, have welcomed the announcement because they have made withdrawal of foreign troops a precondition for peace. However, of course, this actually complicates prospects for peace because they can wait until all the U.S. forces are gone and then largely dictate terms to the Kabul government, a view shared by many Afghans. Nevertheless NATO remains committed to Afghanistan so perhaps this will make little difference. In any case it was done impulsively and without proper planning and coordination.

The Far Right Goes Anti-Vax

A phenomenon which has always puzzled me is popular resistance to vaccination. It goes back to the very beginning, vaccination against smallpox, which was a terrible scourge that killed 30% of its victims and left the rest disfigured. When Edward Jenner proved in 1796 that inoculation with cowpox, which caused only mild disease, conferred immunity to smallpox, the world was given a priceless gift.

Yet popular movements arose almost immediately to oppose vaccination, both in England and the U.S. Eventually smallpox vaccination became widely accepted, and smallpox was eradicated from the earth. Later, the terror of the polio epidemic of the 1950s, which is nearly forgotten today, was ended when Jonas Salk developed a safe and effective vaccine. He became the most celebrated scientist in the world and a popular hero.

And yet now we have growing resistance to safe and effective vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, and other diseases. Right wing parties in Europe, as well as Individual 1, are denouncing vaccination as some sort of conspiracy against the people. As a result, the incidence of measles has risen sharply in parts of Europe. We have also had outbreaks in the U.S., and all but three states allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children because of political resistance. As The Guardian reports:

Populist rightwing politicians, from the US to Italy, Poland and France, have jumped on the anti-vaccine bandwagon, supporting the sceptics and championing the right of parents not to immunise their children in countries where it is mandatory before starting school. . . .

Populist rightwing politicians and others leading anti-establishment parties have said they were against globalisation and profiteering multi-national corporations, the commissioner noted. They give credence to “fake news” stories on social media claiming drug companies are disseminating viruses into the population in order to sell vaccines. And they support calls to overturn mandatory vaccination where it could win them votes.
Andriukaitis said: “It is very dangerous. My message is very simple now – you elected a lot of anti-vaccine politicians into parliament and now you have them in some governments. Are you ready to follow their decisions based on fake news or decisions based on evidence? There are only two options – fake news or evidence-based.”

Denial of science has become a basic feature of right wing politics around the world. Scientists were once celebrated in popular culture and the idea of the progress of knowledge was a common frame for understanding the world. Now we have a movement that wants to take us back to the 12th Century. It's terrifying.

This could be a problem

I have long wondered why people who want to cause chaos and disruption -- terrorists of any stripe, or nutjobs, or foreign adversaries -- don't use a little imagination. Setting off bombs or driving into crowds or shooting people is effective, certainly, but there are ways to cause very big trouble that cost very little and probably won't get you caught.

Flying drones over airports is one of them. You could cause economic catastrophe by doing this in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. You could go away for a couple of days and then come back -- they would never know when you were coming. You could intentionally fly one right in the path of a plane taking off or landing, and this possibility makes the tactic impossible to ignore and means you can't re-open the airport with any confidence.

There are a lot of comparable asymmetrical warfare tactics that people oddly avoid. I don't want to give people ideas, you can use your own imagination. Not that we need one more thing to worry about . . . 

Terms of debate recede like a desert mirage

Here's Martin Longman having a dispassionately reasoned debate with himself about whether the hush money payments constitute grounds for impeachment. Yeah yeah, they're crimes because Michael Cohen is going to jail for them and it isn't fair that the guy who ordered him to do it is not, but is this a high crime?

I dunno about that either, but listen folks, this is what it's come down to.

The malignant clown known as Individual 1  was installed in office by the machinations of a foreign adversary. The same foreign adversary that rescued him from bankruptcy by using him as a high throughput cash washer. The same foreign adversary for whom he is a toady. Is any of that grounds for impeachment? Apparently nothing can be grounds for impeachment unless it can be proved that he was a co-conspirator in the election rigging. Not anything, no matter what, including:

He launched his political career by aggressively promoting the absurd racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Shortly after the election, he settled a lawsuit for $25 million, over a fraud that victimized 6,000 people. Why the fraud was not criminal is unclear.

His campaign chair and campaign foreign policy adviser are both in prison. His National Security Adviser has pleaded guilty to felonies. His lawyer, as noted above, will soon be in prison. These would at least be minor embarrassments to  most presidents.

He continually spews lies, several times a day, including multiply repeating lies which have been fully debunked.

His charitable foundation was a fraud and a scam and has been forced to liquidate under court supervision. The investigation is continuing and may well result in criminal charges.

He employs undocumented immigrants in his  hotels. Funny thing, ICE has never raided any of them. Undocumented nannies have 86ed a couple of cabinet nominees over the years, BTW.

Here's a funny thing. A DoD official thinks he is making critical national security decisions in order to distract from scandals.

He is facing a lawsuit from a woman who who claims he sexually assaulted her and defamed her by calling her a liar. At least a dozen women have made similar allegations, and he has boasted of sexual assault in a recorded conversation.

We don't know what Robert Mueller knows, or what's in the National Inquirer files that are now in the possession of the Justice Department, or what indictments the Attorney General of New York is going to produce. We already know that Trump University and the Trump Foundation were fraudulent enterprises. Apparently that's not enough. But they could yet result in criminal indictments. What if we get definitive proof of the money laundering, of co-conspiracy with Paul Manafort to subvert U.S. foreign policy to the will of Vladimir Putin, indictments from the NY AG for Trump Foundation or University, more sex scandals from the bowels of American Media Incorporated? Will any of that be sufficient?

The answer is no, because the Republican party has long ago abandoned truth, basic morality, and democracy. Individual 1 is not actually the problem.

Sunday Sermonette: More family values

With Genesis 37 and the story of Joseph we enter new literary territory. Scholars now generally agree -- and it makes sense to me -- that this is essentially the artful creation of a single author. In other words, unlike what we have seen so far, generally crudely rendered transcriptions of what was originally oral tradition and vital records, pieced together from various sources by scribes, this is a novella. It has vivid characters whose emotional lives are visible to us; strong plot elements including suspense, reversals of fortune, foreshadowing, theme and variation, changing affections and character development.

However, it also has a political agenda, or agendas. This is about the origin of the 12 tribes and an argument for their relative standing. So think of it like Shakespeare's histories, which reflect his loyalty to the Tudor monarchs. Also, perhaps because of sloppy editing, it does have a couple of continuity errors and ambiguities. There is no evidence that any of this is based on historical fact. Its rather a founding myth of the Israeli nation. It will take a while to get through it. Here goes.

Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.

² This is the account of Jacob’s family line.

Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.

Here's a continuity error, not internally but with other material. Bilhah and Zilpah were concubines -- handmaids to Rachel and Leah, given to Jacob as sex slaves, not wives. Also, we still have Jacob rather than Israel.

Joseph is obnoxious the first time we see him, tattling on his half brothers about some unspecified misbehavior.

³ Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate^[a] robe for him. ⁴ When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.

The footnote says that the meaning of the Hebrew word translated as ornate is uncertain. KJV has "a coat of many colours" which is the familiar phrase. 

⁵ Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. ⁶ He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: ⁷ We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
⁸ His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
⁹ Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
¹⁰ When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” ¹¹ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

KJV has "his father observed the saying." I'm not sure what it means either way.  I'm also not clear about the "eleven stars."  Joseph is certainly obnoxious and I can't blame his brothers for disliking him, but they do seem to take things a bit far . . .

¹² Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, ¹³ and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.”
“Very well,” he replied.
¹⁴ So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron.
When Joseph arrived at Shechem, ¹⁵ a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?”
¹⁶ He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?”
¹⁷ “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’”

You should know that these are long journeys. It's about 50 miles from Hebron to Shechem, and another 13 to Dothan. So this must have taken him a week or more.

So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. ¹⁸ But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
¹⁹ “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. ²⁰ “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
²¹ When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. ²² “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
²³ So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— ²⁴ and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.

We'll pause here till next week. You know, cliffhanger. As I say, Joseph is obnoxious but killing him is probably taking things too far. But as you probably know, they end up with a plan B.

Ad Hominem

There are many logical fallacies that have been formally identified and you may profit from following the link and seeing a big long list.

A particularly common fallacy is called ad hominem. The linked Wikipedia article defines it as "attacking the arguer instead of the argument." There are sub-types, for example "Circumstantial ad hominem - stating that the arguers personal situation or perceived benefit from advancing a conclusion means that their conclusion is wrong," and "Traitorous critic fallacy (ergo decedo, 'thus leave') – a critic's perceived affiliation is portrayed as the underlying reason for the criticism and the critic is asked to stay away from the issue altogether."

We have a commenter who thinks it's clever to claim that we should ignore the information I linked to yesterday because the writer is often critical of Individual 1. That is an inane form of argument. You must assess the evidence the writer provides. Attacking the writer -- in this case because he has a consistent opinion, no less -- is not refutation. But suppose you want additional analyses to support the claim that Individual 1 has been laundering money for Russian mobsters for many years.

You might check out David Leonhardt in the New York Times. Or Sean Illing in Vox. Or maybe you'll be interested in what Craig Unger had to say in The New Republic. Or Adam Davidson in the New Yorker. Or Garrett M. Graff in Wired. Or even Michael Gerson, who is officially a conservative columnist, although as I say, that doesn't matter. And I could continue. Many people have looked at this and it's just completely obvious. Michael Cohen was totally mobbed up with the Russians and he was responsible for a lot of these deals. Which the Justice Department now knows all about.

Now it is true that all of these people are consistently critical of Individual 1. Why is that? It's because they know he is a criminal.

Individual 1 and cash washing

A commenter (unpublished, because I'm responding to it here) asks why I'm so confident that individual 1's business consists of laundering money for Russian mobsters. The case is made here, by John Feffer, and it's pretty compelling. Too long, do read, but a couple of money shots:

Before he became president, Donald Trump was basically an unsuccessful businessman who managed, time and again, to fail upward. He filed for bankruptcy six times — five times for his casinos and once for the Plaza Hotel.. . . An astounding number of his other business ventures have gone belly up too, including Trump Airlines, Trump University, and Trump Magazine.

Trump’s business failures over the years and his unorthodox financial behavior pushed him to the margins of the financial world. . . . Trump began to rely on some questionable characters and networks. He created baroque financial arrangements involving shell companies. He used pseudonyms on contracts. He became squirrely about his tax returns. And he started to use large amounts of cash. For instance, he purchased huge properties — golf courses in the UK ($79 million), a Scottish estate ($12 million), a Virginia winery ($16 million) — in cash. In all, since 2006, he paid for properties in cash to the tune of $400 million. It just so happens that these are all telltale signs of money laundering: the cash, the shell companies, the pseudonyms, the lack of transparency and due diligence.. . .

Many of the purchasers of Trump properties are Russian. A Reuters investigation last year discovered that Russian buyers purchased nearly $100 million in condos in Florida from Trump. A Russian-Canadian billionaire poured millions into a Trump property in Toronto, including a $100 million “commission” to a Moscow fixer to attract other Russian investors. In 2008, a Russian oligarch paid $95 million to Trump for a Palm Beach mansion that the Russian never subsequently occupied. It was an extraordinary mark-up for a property Trump had bought four years before for $41 million. . . .

Yes, it's unfortunate that the practitioners of journamalism weren't interested in all of this before Individual 1 became president -- Hillary Clinton's e-mail management practices were obviously far more important. But some people have finally noticed.