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“Meg”: Look, the reason Chinese cars are affordable is that they are subsidized by the Chinese government. Heavily. Removing import restrictions on these cars would devastate the American car industry. We are talking hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. How about instead we have the American government subsidize affordable cars here, or return to requiring CAFE gas mileage standards which created all those options in 2012. Clifford Winston: If you want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions, charge them a vehicle-miles-travel tax. Some states are exploring the idea. Eissendad*: Actually if you "want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions" shouldn't you charge a fuel tax? Charging "a vehicle-miles-travel tax" doesn't incentivize fuel efficiency it incentivizes driving fewer miles, something that is harder to do in rural America. Clifford Winston: A VMT tax has the...

Let’s start with some basics. Prior to uniting during fertilization, a human sperm and a human egg are both alive and human. That they are both human is undeniable, based on their sourcing. That they are alive can easily be demonstrated by autoclaving them and then testing whether they can still participate in fertilization (they can’t; autoclaving kills gametes). So in a real and meaningful sense, human life precedes fertilization. Indeed, there has been no point in the history of our species when human life began, since it is a continuum. Are you with me so far? So if by “human life,” you mean human diploid life, then does it begin when the sperm head (containing the paternal haploid complement) fuses with the oocyte (containing the maternal haploid complement)? Well, no, because it takes several hours for the two pro-nuclei to fuse. Then there’s the small matter of when the zygote implants in the uterus. Without implantation, the zygote is lost. Most human conceptuses are lost that ...

“ . . . nationalism in its early eighteenth-century stages was closely aligned with liberalism. Early liberals, seeking to establish a political foundation for their countries other than monarchy, appealed to sentiments of national unity built on language and culture. This early nationalism wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a political project built on aspirations for self-determination, a better life, and respect for other peoples.   “Such liberal nationalism is connected to collective aspirations for better things and healthy pride in one’s national history, both of which are closely connected to the capacity to feel shame. A person feels shame when he recognizes that he has failed to live up to his high standards and ideals, when he has failed to demonstrate the quality of character of which he is capable. A nation feels shame when its people recognize they have failed to live up to their principles, to the image of themselves as a noble people pursuing a better future. In bot...

As a professor of biochemistry, I’ve always been puzzled by the equation of red meat with dietary protein. Setting aside the fact that fish, crab, shrimp and lobster are as rich in protein as red meat and poultry, what do people think plants are made of? There’s protein in nuts, fruits and vegetables, too. “Meat is indeed packed with protein, but it comes with some well-established health drawbacks. “Saturated fat we’ve known about for decades,” said Dr. Sarah C. Hull, a cardiologist at Yale Medicine. It’s common in red meat and contributes to increasing LDL cholesterol levels, hardening the blood vessels and, in turn, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke. “Moreover, “all mammalian meat tends to be very inflammatory,” said Hull, who studies the diet-related risks of heart disease and cancer. “More recently we’ve come to understand that the many pro-inflammatory compounds found in red meat” can have other downsides, she said, including “deleterious interactions with the gut microb...

  I just saw a headline in the Independent that “not even Hitler attacked the pope so directly.” Well, OK but there’s a big difference: the Nazi government signed a concordat (a treaty) with the Vatican on July 20, 1933, known as the Reichskonkordat. The Church agreed to keep priests and religious orders out of political activity. There is no similar treaty between the Vatican and the Trump Administration. I’m not justifying Trump’s uncivilized behavior, but Hitler wasn’t more civilized, he just sidelined the Vatican in advance, something the Vatican agreed to in exchange for the rights of Catholic education and worship, and the protection of Catholic organizations.

It’s important to note that [Orbán] was defeated by what is essentially a center-right party, led by a defector from Orbán’s party. But from appearances, at least, it’s a center-right party that plans to operate within the structures of civic democracy. I wanted to note that, perhaps in spite of himself, Orbán, bad as he is, managed to again illustrate just what a weak and fraudulent man Donald Trump is. He managed to do what Trump has never been able to do: concede defeat. ~Josh Marshall