Tuesday

Patriotism

Why the Anthem works for Trump - Good post. Still the anthem has worked for the ruling class forever. Trump is the just the current huckster.

          on that note.... John Prine, from 1971

Money can buy happiness

We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being and analyzed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating with time. The estimated treatment effects on happiness and mental health are significantly smaller, suggesting that wealth has greater long-run effects on evaluative measures of well-being than on affective ones. Follow-up analyses of domain-specific aspects of life satisfaction clearly implicate financial life satisfaction as an important mediator for the long-run increase in overall life satisfaction.

American Middle East Policy

The US warns allies to halt business with Iran

"US Treasury official for terrorism and financial intelligence Sigal Mandelker issued a warning Tuesday to governments and private firms to avoid doing business with Iran in breach of the sanctions the US re-imposed after quitting the nuclear deal. They risk being caught in Tehran’s deceptive web and exploited to fund its nefarious actions in the region, she said. “We will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account.”

This line cracks me up. 

They risk being caught in Tehran’s deceptive web and exploited to fund its nefarious actions in the region, she said.

It sounds like a line from the old Batman TV show.. "deceptive web"..  "Nefarious actions"

She is Sigal Mandelker, a former Bush official and Trump's current "Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence" who was born in Israel.