Robert Jeffress, a follower of the Lamb of God¹ and a loving shepherd of His flock—and one of Donald Trump’s favorite pastors—is apparently pretty stoked at the idea of launching hellfire on North Korea:

When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.

The book of Romans, huh? It turns out that Jeffress is talking about Romans 13:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God….Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.

I always learn something interesting when I ask about Bible passages, so let’s ask about this one. Its meaning seems pretty obvious: Paul is talking about obeying the civil authority under which you live. I, for example, am required to obey the laws of the city of Irvine, the state of California, and the United States of America. But I don’t have to obey the laws of, say, Brazil, because I don’t live there and they aren’t my “governing authority.”

Jeffress, however, is suggesting that this passage is not just about the power of a governing authority over those it governs, but also over anyone it thinks is evil. I’m sure this is ridiculous, but it often turns out there’s some arcane but longstanding theological debate behind this kind of thing. So school me. Is there an interesting story to tell here? Or is Jeffress just a lone crackpot?

¹And you know he’s for real because he’s called Islam “evil,” Catholicism “satanic,” and Mormonism “a cult.”

Dave Weigel is attending some Republican town halls today to see what’s on the minds of real Americans in the heartland:

Also I’m finding that by FAR the biggest “what we’ve done this year” applause line for Rs is VA reform.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 9, 2017

This is a pretty good example of people believing whatever they’re told. Republicans say that they’ve reformed the VA, and everyone cheers. Promise made, promise kept!

So what have Republicans done? You might have missed this, but Congress actually did pass a VA bill a couple of months ago. It allows the head of the VA more latitude in firing workers. Donald Trump, naturally, called it “one of the largest reforms of the VA in its history,” because that’s what Trump calls everything he does, but it was actually a pretty modest and bipartisan bill.

What else have Republicans done? Well, after every other cabinet position had been filled and he had to appoint someone, Trump finally nominated a VA head in January. Was it some toughminded general? Someone who promised to take the place apart brick by brick and put it back together? Nope. It was David Shulkin, who was appointed to the #2 position at the VA two years ago by Barack Obama. Democrats and Republicans both approved him unanimously.

So that’s it. Republicans agreed to promote Obama’s guy at the VA and then wrote a minor reform bill. This is, roughly speaking, nothing. But they say they’ve reformed the VA, so they must have reformed the VA. Who cares if anything actually happened?

I’m a fan of all kinds of landscape photography, and one of my favorites is a picture of hills or mountains receding into the hazy distance, with the colors getting foggier and more washed out the farther away they are. Here’s an example if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I’ve tried taking pictures like this all my life, but they’re never any good. The photo never captures what the scene looks like in real life. On Saturday I was seduced once again as I was driving out to Silverado Canyon. There they were: our local foothills, receding into the distance. I felt like a bit of a chump, but I stopped and took some pictures. Then some more a mile later. Then some more. And some more. Finally I gave up and headed to the canyon.

When I got home, I was shocked: several of the pictures turned out pretty well. The best of the lot shows eight different shades counting the sky. And it required no manipulation at all except for some exposure compensation (the original was overexposed). I’d like to capture something even better, so I can’t quite check this photo cliche off my bucket list. But I almost can.

OK, fine, let’s write about the North Korea thing. When Donald Trump says something truly preposterous, the usual response is for someone in the White House to suggest anonymously that he didn’t really mean it. This can take many forms, and today it took this one:

WH officials take issue with “people on TV who know nothing about North Korea” interpreting “fire & fury” as nuclear escalation, per source. https://t.co/1uicBCesZL

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 9, 2017

Goodness. How could these morons interpret “fire and fury like the world has never seen” as a nuclear attack? He was just talking about, um, a new and improved kind of napalm. Or, you know, a really spectacular Aurora Borealis. Or a really nasty tweet. We also have this:

Per WH sources: Trump improvised ‘fire and fury’ — paper he looked was an opioid fact sheet. Kelly ‘surprised’ not shocked… more tk

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) August 9, 2017

Ah, so this wasn’t a prepared statement after all. I thought that sounded iffy from the start. Trump was just looking at an opioid fact sheet. This explains a lot of things, as my exclusive blow-up of the document shows:

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson is telling us that the US is totally willing to talk things over with the North Koreans: “I think the president just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime that the U.S. has the unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies, and I think it was important that he deliver that message to avoid any miscalculation on their part.”

Yeah. Trump was just trying to avoid any miscalculations. That’s the ticket.

This is apropos of nothing except that (a) I really don’t want to write about nuclear war with North Korea, and (b) Ross Douthat happened to point to it as part of an argument that other countries are stupid too. Anyway, here are the results of a 2011 study about the beliefs of Europeans:

Apparently 43 percent of Europeans think astrology is pretty scientific, though only 14 percent think horoscopes are pretty scientific. Astrology handily beats out economics, which some people—*cough* Paul Romer *cough*—would consider a pretty sophisticated take on modern macro. And in a huge upset, medicine beat out physics.

Also: Finland had the least belief in astrology as scientific. They also invented Linux and the Molotov cocktail. Pretty pragmatic, those Finns.

I’m pretty sure I’ve posted a chart like this one before, but no matter. This one is better. It’s from David Leonhardt, and it shows income growth for various income levels over two periods of recent history:

As we all know, incomes of the working and middle classes rose steadily in the decades after World War II. Then, in the mid-70s, their income growth suddenly slowed down. Finally, after 2000, their income growth went from sluggish to completely stagnant. Between 2000 and 2014, median household incomes didn’t increase by a single penny.

There are several reasons we had such robust middle-class income growth in the 50s, 60s, and 70s: strong unions, cultural norms about executive pay, catchup growth from the Great Depression, Democratic control of Congress, weak international competition, financial repression, and so forth. As those things disintegrated in the late 70s and 80s, the rich were able to siphon off bigger and bigger shares of economic growth. And they did.

That’s a familiar story. But this chart illustrates two other things as well:

• In the postwar era, incomes of the working and middle classes actually grew faster than the incomes of the rich.
• However, income growth was relatively evenly spread, ranging from about 3 percent per year for the poor to 1.5 percent per year for the rich.

That second point is easy to miss. We look at the chart, and the first thing that catches our eye about the gray line is that it’s going down. But it doesn’t go down all that much. Pretty much everyone is doing well.

In the post-1980 era, that changed dramatically. It’s not just that things turned around, it’s that the red line isn’t anywhere close to flat. The poor and working class have seen virtually no income increase at all. But the rich have seen gigantic increases, and even among the rich, the billionaires have done far better than the mere millionaires.

That dynamic started around 1980, and has grown since then. However, it’s only since 2000 that it’s spiraled out of control. That’s when middle-class incomes stagnate completely and the income growth of the rich starts to skyrocket past 3 percent. In the recent American economy, 1973 was the first watershed year and 2000 was the second watershed year. The start of the 21st century is when our economy suddenly changed and became crazy. But I still don’t think that anybody knows why.

Apparently Trump O’Clock came while I was busy writing about humans incinerating the earth. It turns out that Donald Trump is thinking along the same lines:

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and, as I said, they will be met with fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.

I’m not quite as worried by this as some people. Trump blusters this way routinely, and anyway, he’ll probably consider anything he does to be so heroic that it’s unlike anything the world has seen. Just yesterday, referring to a fairly routine bit of resume fudging that was exposed a decade ago, he tweeted, “Never in U.S. history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal.” Uh huh. Plus Trump is surrounded by advisors who can probably keep him in line.

The bigger worry is the one I talked about a few days ago: that all the pressure over North Korea might prompt Trump to do something stupid. This in turn might provoke North Korea into launching an attack first. If they decide that Trump is serious, it might seem the best option.

I don’t think that will happen either. Kim Jong-un isn’t crazy, he just likes to act that way. He’s probably completely rational, in the same murderous kind of way that Josef Stalin was. He might bluster like Trump, but he knows perfectly well that any war involving the United States would end with the obliteration of his country.

All that said, this represents one of the reasons that Trump is so much worse than garden variety Republicans. With, say, Ted Cruz in office, I think there’s a 0 percent chance of nuclear war. With Trump in office there’s a 1 percent chance. That’s not much, but it’s 1 percent more than I’d like.

In addition to the ducklings on our lake, we have a gaggle of brand new Egyptian goose babies and their noisy parents. But no lunchtime photo. Sorry. Instead, we have a very special episode of Lunchtime Video! Enjoy.

A draft version of the Fourth National Climate Assessment has been leaked to the New York Times. Why? Because scientists were naturally afraid that the Trump administration might just decide to bury it. After all, here’s what it says:

Many lines of evidence demonstrate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century….The likely range of the human contribution to the global mean temnperature increase over the period 1951-2010 is…0.6ºC to 0.8°C….Significant advances have been made in the attribution of the human influence for individual climate and weather extreme events since NCA3.

And now, because I’m a chart lover, here are a few selected charts from the NCA4 report. First up is projected storm activity if we keep pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere. Check out the West Coast in 60 or 70 years:

That’s a lot more big storms for Baja California. The rest of the world will be getting a helluva lot stormier too. However, there’s also plain old rain, and outside of the West we’re going to get a lot more of it:

Sea level is also rising. Add that to the increased rain and the increased number of storms, and you get a lot more floods. Note that the increase in flooding is going to happen pretty soon: as early as 2020 in some places and 2030 or 2040 in others.

Out here in California, we’re mostly worried about the opposite of floods. We’ll be getting a lot more wildfires and a lot more drought thanks to the steady decline of the Sierra snow pack:

This doesn’t have to happen, of course. We could, if we wished, do something about it. Unfortunately, our current president doesn’t even believe this stuff, let alone have any desire to stop it from happening. Feeling better yet?

A reader writes that he’d like my take on “the single weirdest trend I’m aware of in American opinion: small business optimism.” I aim to please, so here’s my hot take. First off, here’s the small-business optimism index from NFIB, via Calculated Risk:

Next up are a couple of other charts from NFIB’s website:

There are a few things to note:

• In the top chart, small business optimism unquestionably spiked after Donald Trump’s election.
• At the same time, as the eyeball trendline shows, this was basically a reversion to trend, making up ground from a mysterious decline in 2015.¹
• The two bottom charts don’t measure optimism. They measure what small businesses are actually doing. And the answer is: nothing much. Hiring has gone up slowly but steadily since the end of the recession, with no particular Trump bump. Plans to hire have done the same.

There’s more data at the NFIB site, but it tells a reasonably consistent story: economic conditions have been getting better since the recession ended, and small businesses have responded the way you’d expect. If you take a look at what they’re actually doing—and planning to do—Trump’s election appears to have had only a modest effect.

In other words, small business optimism is mostly a false front, not anything real about how he’s expected to affect the economy. There was sort of a pent-up demand to rebound from the unwarranted fall in optimism during 2015, and when you combine that with a lot of support for Trump, you get a spike in reported optimism. When it comes to actual hiring decisions, however, it’s obvious that small businesses aren’t all that optimistic about what a Trump administration will do.

Bottom line hot take: small business owners surveyed by NFIB just really love Trump. That’s it.

¹Why did small business optimism decline so much in 2015? Well, 2015 was the first year of the recovery in which workers saw healthy pay increases. This made business owners sad. Wage increases stopped in 2016, and that made them happy. There’s probably not much more to it than that.

POSTSCRIPT: I will mention one other little oddity. In the full NFIB report, small businesses report a noticeable uptick in actual sales and earnings since Trump was elected. This makes no sense, since the economy has been growing pretty steadily for the past several years. It makes you wonder just how reliable these reported numbers are.