Does Religion Make People Moral?

Over the past 15 years, my country, Turkey, has gone through a colossal political revolution. The traditional secular elite that identifies with the nation’s modernist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, has been replaced by religious conservatives who, until recently, were largely powerless and marginalized. The religious conservatives have by now come to dominate virtually all institutions of the state, as well as the media and even much of the business sector. In short, they have become the new ruling elite.

This political revolution has had an inadvertent outcome. It has tested the ostensible virtues of these religious conservatives — and they have failed. They have failed this test so terribly that it raises the question of whether religiosity and morality really go hand in hand, as so many religious people like to claim.

The religious conservatives have morally failed because they ended up doing everything that they once condemned as unjust and cruel. For decades, they criticized the secular elite for nepotism and corruption, for weaponizing the judiciary and for using the news media to demonize and intimidate their opponents. Yet after their initial years in power, they began repeating all of the same behavior they used to condemn, often even more blatantly than their predecessors.

This is a familiar story: The religious conservatives have become corrupted by power. But power corrupts more easily when you have neither principles nor integrity.

Notably, some of the more conscientious voices among Turkey’s religious conservatives criticize this ugly reality. Mustafa Ozturk, a popular theologian and a newspaper columnist, recently declared that religious conservatives are failing the moral test miserably. He wrote: “For the next 40 to 50 years, we Muslims will have no right to say anything to any human being about faith, morals, rights and law. The response, ‘We have seen you as well,’ will be a slap in our face.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opinion/does-religion-make-people-moral.html 

The Sea Level Threat To Cities Depends On Where The Ice Melts — Not Just How Fast

The world's oceans are rising. Over the past century, they're up an average of about eight inches. But the seas are rising more in some places than others. And scientists are now finding that how much sea level rises in, say, New York City, has a lot to do with exactly where the ice is melting.
A warming climate is melting a lot of glaciers and ice sheets on land. That means more water rolling down into the oceans.
But the oceans are not like a bathtub. The water doesn't rise uniformly.
To understand why, think of the earth as a spinning top. When huge ice sheets — some are two miles thick — start to melt, it actually affects the Earth's rotation.
"What happens is when you change the mass of the ice," explains Eric Larour, who studies the frozen parts of the planet, "the modification itself makes the wobble change, and this in turn changes the shape of the ocean on the Earth."
When the wobble shifts, the oceans shift as a whole, as if you were shaking a mound of Jello at the Thanksgiving table.

That's part of the story, but something else happens too.
Many ice sheets and glaciers are so massive, they produce a significant gravitational field, almost as if they were small versions of the moon. The force is tiny, but it does attract nearby ocean water.
"So what happens when the ice melts," says Larour, "is that there is less of it, so the ocean recedes away from the mass of ice."

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/24/566280048/the-sea-level-threat-to-cities-depends-on-where-the-ice-melts-not-just-how-fast 

How to Detect When People Are Using the Truth to Lie to You

There are three types of lies: omission, where someone holds out on the facts; commission, where someone states facts that are untrue; and paltering, where someone uses true facts to mislead you. It’s not always easy to detect, but there are a few telltale signs.
A recent study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests the practice of paltering is pretty common, especially among business executives. Not only that, but the people who do it don’t seem to think they’re doing anything wrong—despite the fact that most people feel like it’s just as unethical and untrustworthy as intentional lies of commission. It’s not just execs who do it, though. If you’ve ever tried to buy a used car from a slimy salesman, been in a salary negotiation with a tough as nails boss, or watched basically any presidential debate, you’ve definitely seen paltering in action. 

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-detect-when-people-are-using-the-truth-to-lie-to-1820767005

How a House Dem accused of drunken shenanigans revealed another secret ‘hush fund’

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva quietly arranged a “severance package” in 2015 for one of his top staffers who threatened a lawsuit claiming the Arizona Democrat was frequently drunk and created a hostile workplace environment, revealing yet another way that lawmakers can use taxpayer dollars to hide their misbehavior on Capitol Hill.
While the Office of Compliance has been the focus of outrage on Capitol Hill for hush-money payouts in sexual harassment cases, the Grijalva payout points to another office that lawmakers can use to sweep accusations under the rug with taxpayer-funded settlements negotiated by the House Employment Counsel, which acts as the attorney for all House offices.
The employment counsel negotiated a deal for taxpayers to give $48,395 — five additional months’ salary — to the female aide, who left her job after three months. She didn’t pursue the hostile workplace complaint further.
The arrangement appears to run contrary to House rules that constrain severance packages, and it caught the eye of watchdogs who were already demanding answers about payouts in the wake of harassment complaints.
“It seems like all of these House bodies are designed to help cover for members of Congress,” said Melanie Sloan, an ethics lawyer in Washington. “A large part of the problem is that each member of Congress can treat their staff as their own fiefdom and also know that it will remain silent.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/27/raul-grijalvas-secret-deal-exposes-second-hush-fun/ 

GOP Tax Plan Heads to Senate Floor for Vote Likely This Week

The Senate Budget Committee sent Republicans’ massive tax-cut bill to the full Senate for a marathon debate and vote as early as Thursday -- a major step toward getting a plan enacted by the end of this year.

The 12-11 party-line vote Tuesday came after Republican leaders addressed objections raised by GOP committee members who threatened to block it. The House passed its own tax-cut measure last month, and Senate Republicans can afford to lose no more than two votes among their ranks to pass the measure without Democratic help.

More from Bloomberg.com: These Eight Senators Can Make or Break the GOP Tax Plan

The bill would cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent in 2019 and reduce individual rates and double the standard deduction until 2026 -- adding $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade. The legislation also would open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling.

Just one GOP senator on the panel would have had the power to block the bill given the majority’s one-vote margin in committee.  

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gop-tax-plan-heads-senate-195835093.html?.tsrc=bell-brknews

Nancy Pelosi Has Been Enabling Sexual Predators For Decades

As Guy has thoroughly exposed, over the weekend House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Congressman John Conyers as an "icon" amid allegations he fired a woman on his staff after she refused to give him sexual favors.

Over at Vox, Pelosi is being called out as the ultimate enabler of sexual harassers and abusers. "That woman." She'll also being held accountable as part of the reason why women don't come forward more often when they are victims of sexual misconduct.

Conyers is the credible one. He is an “icon,” she told Todd. The woman? “I do not know who they are. Do you?” she asked the host. “They have not really come forward.” (The woman came forward three years ago, dogging her case through an opaque process in Congress that bars her from speaking about it. She spoke to BuzzFeed anonymously.)

Conyers is the real victim. Pelosi is withholding judgment until Conyers gets “due process,” she said. But Conyers got something better than due process. Congress wrote the rules for how sexual harassment claims are handled, exempting members from requirements that most other employers must follow. The woman, meanwhile, got less. She didn’t have a right to free lawyer. She couldn’t speak about her case. And it took months. Then she couldn’t find a job on the Hill. “I was basically blackballed,” she told BuzzFeed. “There was nowhere I could go.”

But that's exactly what Pelosi is: That woman, a faux feminist who has been enabling sexual predators for decades.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/11/27/nancy-pelosis-history-of-defending-sexual-abusers-n2414627

Will Washington Ever Learn? Apparently Not

The messiness of the long-proverbial "mess in Washington" stands out this post-holiday week like a picked and evacuated turkey carcass. To itemize:
1) The tax debate, so-called.
2) The furor over who's to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- assuming you've heard of this enterprise, which is disliked by many on account of its claimed self-sufficiency and virtual non-accountability to the rest of the government.
If we didn't know before that the federal government is too big for Republicans or Democrats, either one, to bring under control, my, oh, my, we should know it now.
Let me rehearse the sorrowful record.

https://townhall.com/columnists/billmurchison/2017/11/28/will-washington-ever-learn-apparently-not-n2414876