The Will of the People

On this day:
30 BC
Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian’s forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
1492 The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1790
The very first U.S. patent is issued: to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
2007
Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

***

Kamala Harris has dropped out of the California gubernatorial race. Her political success is very hard to explain but seems unconnected with philosophy or voter appeal.

***

The Sweeney jeans commercial controversy is funny, but does the White House really have to comment on it?

***

How's Biden's "minor incursion" into Ukraine doing?

***

The success of Pirate pitching is all the greater when you realize they don't get to pitch against the worst hitters in baseball, the Pirates.

***

The Will of the People

Whenever you hear someone defer to the "will of the people," you know it's time to hide the women. It sounds suspiciously like "manifest destiny," an undefinable excuse to do a lot of things.

The "General Will" is a concept introduced by Rousseau in Article Six of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, composed in 1789 during the French Revolution: "The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to contribute personally, or through their representatives, to its formation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, positions, and employments, according to their capacities, and without any other distinction than that of their virtues and their talents." Elsewhere he defines "law" as, "a public and solemn declaration of the general will on an object of common interest." Here is Rousseau trying to come to grips with a new idea in the West: Freedom and the people, not the nobility, not God, making law.

There is an organic, cohesive quality about the idea that does not hold up well to serious scrutiny, though. Individuals themselves are often conflicted. Households have only rare themes, and they are mostly defensive. It is hard to visualize a societal "general will" in any but the most extreme of circumstances. And law, at its best, is nothing more than a hodgepodge of interests--or the result of a successful campaign of special interest. 51% of votes can make a law; is that the "General Will?" Or is the general will more spontaneous, enthusiastic, and impassioned, like a riot?

Isaiah Berlin argued that Rousseau's association of freedom with obedience to the General Will allowed totalitarian leaders to defend oppression in the name of freedom, and made Rousseau "one of the most sinister and formidable enemies of liberty in the whole history of human thought."

Economic Decisions

On this day:

1419
First Defenestration of Prague: a crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.
1502
Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
1608
At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of the Crater – Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1945
World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen.
1971
Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission – David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
1975
Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again, and will be declared legally dead on this date in 1982.

***

One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia’s Far East early Wednesday, causing tsunami waves to wash ashore in Japan and Alaska and calls for people around the Pacific to be on alert or move to higher ground.
The 8.8 magnitude temblor set off warnings in Hawaii, North and Central America and Pacific islands south toward New Zealand, with officials warning that the potential tsunami danger may last for more than a day.

***

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."--Frank Borman

***

Putting kindness back in competition, hotels with more than 60 rooms must pay workers at least $25 an hour from July, rising to $30 for the Olympics, under the bill signed by Mayor Karen Bass on May 27.

***


Economic Decisions

Adam Smith explained how wealth develops. von Mises explained pricing.

Without the market forces of supply and demand (the trade that creates these forces) and private ownership of the means of production (which enables supply and demand to operate), all factories and industries would lose access to meaningful profit-and-loss accounting. Accounting signals relay information to owners about the success or failure of their enterprises. Without such accounting, there is no basis for managers to make informed decisions. You have no data on which to base your purchases, investments, production, hiring, wages, inventories, or anything else. You lose touch with the reality of the world around you. Such a system will be, quite literally, irrational and thereby subject to the whims of political elites. (Tucker)

Since pricing cannot guide purchasing, producers cannot anticipate demand or assign products. This creates shortages. And shortages substitute bribery for pricing and creates a culture of corruption.

It is not necessary to destroy an economy, as in Venezuela, to prove the point. There are all sorts of examples of "Socialism Lite" which disable pricing signals and create shortages and distortions. Rent control fixes the price of rental units, diminishing the surplus available for repair and enhancement. So rent control leads to disrepair and shortage. Price controls on gasoline in the 1970s led to gasoline shortages. 

Wage controls in California will reduce job availability.

If you want to eliminate smoking, fix the price of cigarettes.

Somehow, in our culture so obsessed with information, such basic and crucial information is seen as expendable. And the absence of such information is chaos.

How can anyone be casual about such risks? And how can anyone supporting the agent of such danger and corruption present themselves as "moral?"

Lost in A World of Entertainment and High Cheekbones

On this day:
1565
The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1567
James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.
1588
Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.
1848
Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt – in Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police.
1921
Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
1967
Vietnam War: off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.
1981
A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

***

U.S. ETFs are growing at a record pace this year with 464 new ones coming to market through June. They include the first public-private credit ETF and many new buffer, covered-call, active and crypto ETFs.

***

The Colbert kerfluffle continues. They believe great and unseen pressures are at the root cause of Colbert's decline.
Why is it that these people, who believe that economics is the root of every problem, don't believe it here?

***

Is the Constitution compatible with the power and conformity requirements of socialism and Islamism?

***

Lost in A World of Entertainment and High Cheekbones

When news and entertainment couple, the resulting product is usually illegitimate.

As a sideline reporter for NFL games, Charissa Thompson wouldn’t always be able to talk to coaches. When that happened, Thompson would just fabricate having done so. She would simply make up an interview. He said this, he said that. Innocuous pablum but nonetheless untrue.

Last year, Thompson admitted to this professional fraud on a podcast without apparent remorse.

Thompson, who works primarily for Fox Sports, got no blowback from her employers for this and was at her post the following Thursday night, hosting Amazon’s broadcast of the game between Baltimore and Cincinnati.

There have been changes at FOX this year, but not with Thompson.

Fox Sports host Thompson said she’s looking forward to a “new beginning” after Peter Schrager and Michael Vick left the network, leaving two vacant seats on the Fox “NFL Kickoff” show.

Thompson, who reportedly landed a lucrative contract extension with Fox, hosts the show on Sunday mornings throughout the NFL season with a desk of analysts, including retired Patriots wideout Julian Edelman and Pro Football Hall of Famer Charles Woodson.

During a fan Q&A on Tuesday’s installment of the “Calm Down” podcast, Thompson explained that she is excited and curious about how the “shakeup” will affect the future of the show.

However that resolves, it is unlikely Truth will be involved. Or that anyone will care in the busy, bustling kingdom where Truth is just one of many variables in the mix.

One might be curious and suspicious about the development of a culture that accepts misrepresentation and mendacity as staples in its daily life. What is chilling is the casual way these people view their deceits, suggesting they, themselves, don't take themselves seriously. 

That is true nihilism.

Tom Lehrer

On this day:

1540
Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
1794
Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church – Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.
1868
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is certified, establishing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
1914
World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
1942
World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be immediately executed.
1943
World War II: Operation Gomorrah – The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1996
The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.
2005
The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

***

Billy Wagner and Whitey Ford are the only pitchers in the Hall of Fame who are shorter than 6 feet tall, and Wagner is the only pitcher from a Division III college (Ferrum College) to get to Cooperstown.

***

Thomas Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith.

***

Tyranny is not freedom just because you voted for it.

***

Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer died this weekend at 97. There was little notice of his passing, but he was a witty, irreverent guy who appealed to a segment of the older generation and, after significant success, simply faded away. One wonders if our culture became a self-parody, and there was nothing left to do.

The singer-songwriter died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to the New York Times.

Lehrer’s sardonic numbers, backed up by a dazzling prowess at the piano that reflected his love for up-tempo Broadway show tunes, enchanted audiences in the 1950s and 60s.

A child prodigy, he graduated from Harvard at 19 and later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Well ahead of his time on issues including pollution and nuclear proliferation, Lehrer made his mark with biting humor and zany rhymes.

He was also wickedly funny on random subjects including murder, conjugal discord, chemistry, and his distaste for pigeons.

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, one of his signature tunes, conjures up a couple enjoying a spring pastime of slaughtering pigeons with strychnine – “It just takes a smidgen!”

Another song, Folksong Army, mocked 1960s protesters.

But his activism was persistent, with songs including Who’s Next about nuclear weapons, and Pollution warning that: “You can use the latest toothpaste, then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.”

The seemingly bottomless well of sly, even cynical creativity captured audiences from 1953 until it appeared to go dry in 1965, although Lehrer briefly returned to performing in 1972 for a children’s public television show, The Electric Company.

Rumor had it that Lehrer stopped composing when his prophecies began coming true, or that he quit in protest over Henry Kissinger being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

But Lehrer, in an interview with the satirical news website The Onion in 2000, said he had “quit long before that happened”.

There was nothing abrupt about it, he said. “I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that’s not exactly a full-time job. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn’t. The second just outnumbered the first.”

He claimed to have gone “from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity”.

While most of Lehrer’s compositions were original, one adaptation stood out for its genius: his dizzying 1959 recitation of the chemical elements in the periodic table (102 at the time) to the tune of A Modern Major General from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance.

Born on 9 April, 1928 to a secular Jewish family, Lehrer grew up in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He attended the prestigious Horace Mann and Loomis Chaffee preparatory schools before entering Harvard at 15, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in mathematics three years later.

He went on to teach mathematics at MIT as well as Harvard, Wellesley College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. (from The Guardian)

Here are three songs with a little to offend just about everybody:

https://tomlehrersongs.com/wernher-von-braun/

https://tomlehrersongs.com/the-elements/

https://tomlehrersongs.com/the-vatican-rag/

Sunday/The Seduction of Angels

On this day:
1054
Siward, Earl of Northumbria invades Scotland and defeats Macbeth, King of Scotland, somewhere north of the Firth of Forth.
1794
French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 “enemies of the Revolution”.
1919
The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.
1964
Vietnam War: 5,000 more American military advisers are sent to South Vietnam bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
1974
Watergate Scandal: the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.
1996
Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in Atlanta, United States, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics. One woman (Alice Hawthorne) is killed, and a cameraman suffers a heart attack fleeing the scene. 111 are injured.
2005
STS-114: NASA grounds the Space Shuttle, pending an investigation of the continuing problem with the shedding of foam insulation from the external fuel tank. During ascent, the external tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam slightly smaller than the piece that caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; this foam does not strike the spacecraft.

***

U.S. states have built less than 400 electric vehicle charging ports through April under $7.5 billion federal infrastructure programs, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday.

***

A survey:
1. Less than half of all adult Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis, in Hebrew, unfortunately, Bereshit,) or the four Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).
2. More than 80 percent of born-again or evangelical Chris­tians believe that "God helps those who help themselves" is a Bible verse.
3. More than half of graduating high school seniors guess that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.
4. One in ten adults believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. (My personal favorite.)

***


Sunday/The Seduction of Angels

In those days, the LORD said: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great,
and their sin so grave,
that I must go down and see whether or not their actions
fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.
I mean to find out."

God as explorer? As learner? And Sodom's crime is extraordinary: the attempted seduction of angels.

In today's Old Testament reading, God goes on an expedition to learn about Sodom. Abraham negotiates with God over the future of the city. It is a wild story, funny and grim. God seems to be egging Abraham on, conceding moral points, finally settling on not destroying the city if ten good men could be found.

The gospel reading has another parallel point. It is the "ask and you will receive" gospel where Christ introduces a rather surprising element of life to spirituality: Persistence. He encourages continual prayer as if God can be fatigued into acquiescing. Tenacity, not righteousness, rules. It is a funny idea, especially when connected to the Old Testament reading where Abraham bargains with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.  
God sits in almighty judgment; man wheedles.

But it should be remembered, God does destroy Sodom.

SatStats

On this day:

1533
Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors. His death marks the end of 300 years of Inca civilization.
1581
Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): the northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.
1863
American Civil War: Morgan’s Raid ends – At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.
1941
World War II: in response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
1944
The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.
1944
World War II: the Soviet army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, liberating it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.
1945
The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.
1945
The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.
1953
Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement
1956
Following the World Bank’s refusal to fund building the Aswan High Dam, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.
1989
A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

***

Belling the Cat Dept.:
The Europeans can't help being themselves. French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state is wonderful. And charming.
Like holding the door for a bloodied Charlie Manson.

***

In China's large cities, spaces have begun to spring up: companies that allow people to pretend to work.

For a daily fee of between 30 and 50 yuan ($4-$7), these companies offer desks, Wi-Fi, coffee, lunch, and an atmosphere that mimics any work environment. According to a report in Beijing Youth Daily, although there are no contracts or bosses, some firms simulate them: fictitious tasks are assigned and supervisory rounds are even organized. For a fee, the theatricality can reach unimaginable levels, from pretending to be a manager with his own office to staging episodes of rebellion against a superior.

***

De Gaulle was the target of about thirty serious assassination attempts, two of which — in September 1961 and August 1962 — nearly succeeded. For some anti-Gaullists, the fixation on de Gaulle became so incorporated into their personality that their original reasons for wanting to kill him were eclipsed by the hatred he inspired.

***

The White House is weighing initiatives to boost the number of births, ranging from a $5,000-per-baby bonus to awarding "National Medals of Motherhood" to mothers with six or more children.

***

SatStats

The national median existing-home price in June was $435,000, a record high and 2% increase from a year earlier

*

There is about $2.3 trillion in cash in circulation. But more than 80 percent of that is $100 bills, which are almost unusable in daily life, and are presumably being hoarded, largely outside the United States, rather than used in transactions.

*

The dollar had its worst first 6 months in 50 years

*

Los Angeles wildfires, Midwest tornadoes, and Mississippi floods caused over 100 fatalities and $125 billion in losses.

*

America’s big internal market means only about 13% of overall corporate profits come from abroad.

*

Former President Joe Biden sold his presidential memoir to the Hachette Book Group for an advance in the range of $10 million. Penguin Random House acquired the rights to books by former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama in 2017 for a price widely reported then as being in the $60 million range, and Alfred A. Knop paid $15 million for former President Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir “My Life.”

*

New York’s education spending per student is highest in the country, at about $35,000. Florida spends about $13,000 per student. Florida fourth-graders rank third in the country in reading and fourth in math. New York fourth-graders rank 36th and 46th.

*

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) has raised $15.4 million for her campaign committee this year, the most of any House member.

*

Official government data show that renewables are subsidized 30 times more than fossil fuels. Most of the subsidies are in the tax code, where 94 percent of the fiscal cost goes to green energy technologies.

*

$2 trillion went into clean energy last year, $800 billion more than fossil fuels, and up almost 70% in ten years.
And new data released today from the International Renewable Energy Agency shows that solar – not so long ago four times the cost of fossil fuels – is now 41% cheaper.

*

Europe has more heat deaths per year than the United States has gun deaths.

*

Nearly 90% of companies are privately owned.

*

Over 24,000 drones have been launched at Ukraine by Russia since the beginning of this year.

*

Over the past decade, the excise rate per cigarette has tripled from 46c to $1.40. The excise now accounts for $28 of the average $40 price for a packet of 20 cigarettes.
For some time, a rising tax was associated with the twin benefits of falling smoking rates and rising revenue, but after peaking at $16.3bn in 2019-20, federal excise receipts have plunged.

The Night King

On this day:
306
Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.
1603
James VI of Scotland is crowned as king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.
1609
The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, is deliberately driven ashore during a storm at Bermuda to prevent its sinking; the survivors go on to found a new colony there.
1755
British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council order the deportation of the Acadians. Thousands of Acadians are sent to the British Colonies in America, France and England. Some later move to Louisiana, while others resettle in New Brunswick.
1759
French and Indian War: in Western New York, British forces capture Fort Niagara from the French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.
1783
American Revolutionary War: The war’s last action, the Siege of Cuddalore, is ended by preliminary peace agreement.
1799
At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha.
1814
War of 1812: Battle of Lundy’s Lane – reinforcements arrive near Niagara Falls for General Riall’s British and Canadian forces and a bloody, all-night battle with Jacob Brown’s Americans commences at 18.00; the Americans retreat to Fort Erie.
1861
American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.
1934
The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.
1943
World War II: Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.
1978
Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube baby” is born.
1993
Israel launches a massive attack against Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call Seven-Day War.
1994
Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration, which formally ends the state of war that had existed between the nations since 1948.

***

Police in India have arrested a man accused of running a fake embassy for illicit activities like scamming folks looking for overseas employment. The alleged grifter went to serious lengths to appear legit, like photoshopping himself next to world leaders, adorning luxury cars with fake diplomatic plates, and faking seals for a dozen different countries.

He apparently told his victims he was an ambassador for the fictional countries of Seborga and Westarctica.

***

Apparently, 7/22/25 was 1.34 milliseconds shorter than the normal 24 hours due to Earth’s rotation, making it one of the shortest days in recorded history.

***

Approximately 28,000 IRS employees have been eliminated by buyouts and layoffs through May, according to a new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The cuts will return the agency to a workforce of about 77,000, roughly where it stood before Biden supersized it.

***

A UK study suggests cooling your home by smearing yogurt on your windows.
Where would we be without these studies?

***

Is it really true that Ghislaine Maxwell has never been interviewed by federal prosecutors?

***

Pirate prospect K.onnor Griffin was ranked No. 43 on the preseason Top 100 and has had an in-season jump to No. 1. That is unprecedented.
That said, whatever happened to Termarr Johnson?

***



The Night King

Communism was doomed from its inception. Adherents who sneered at the "invisible hand" saw a mysterious invisible force in history that picked its fights toward an idyllic endpoint of incentive-less, motiveless production of peace and wealth, leaving behind a path littered with the bodies of those poor souls only placed on this earth to facilitate as antagonists to communism's great march. This strange, murderous idealism violated all the laws of human reality yet staggered on, storming trenches, deracinating appropriate families, and slashing and burning the present to plant the seeds of the future. It is said that it attracted the idealist--but who could say its mayhem and murderous creed was, in any way, idealistic? No, it attracted the foolish, the embittered, the cynically ambitious, the irrational, and the overtly psychopathic, who unsurprisingly rose in its hierarchy. But eventually, after years of misery and death, the cause flagged, failed, and died.

The death of communism was perfectly predictable, and those critics who predicted it can be rightfully proud. But they must be surprised by its stubborn death throes. How many people were drafted into its horrible, morbid experiment? How many had to die to prove this was a stupid, unworkable, and unnatural pipe-dream? And what are the responsibilities of those clear-thinking observers who coolly watched this nightmare without interfering? After all, it took the Russian communist state three generations to die.

And how should those people react when confronted with communism's new iterations, like socialism and Nazism?

The imbalance of Evil

On this day, many things:
1148
Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.
1411
Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.
1487
Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against ban on foreign beer.
1534
French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.
1567
Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and is replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.
1715
A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain. Seven days later, 9 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1847
After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City. Celebrations of this event include the Pioneer Day Utah state holiday and the Days of '47 Parade.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown – Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1901
O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
1911
Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, “the Lost City of the Incas”.
1915
The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
1922
The draft of The British Mandate of Palestine was formally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations; and which came into effect on 26 September 1923. The beginning of the end.
1923
The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.
1929
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers). This is truly precious.
1943
World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
1969
Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1974
Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
And, finally, 2009
The MV Arctic Sea, reportedly carrying a cargo of timber, is allegedly hijacked in the North Sea by pirates, but much speculation remains as to the actual cargo and events. An astonishing story.

***


Thailand launched airstrikes against Cambodian military targets along their long-disputed border, escalating tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors.

***

The Pirates' second-round pick Angel Cervantes commits to UCLA instead of signing an MLB contract.

***

A Belgian regulator has upheld a complaint against a ticket inspector for saying “bonjour” in a Flemish-speaking area.

***

The general practitioners know less and less about almost everything, and the specialists know more and more about almost nothing.

***




The imbalance of Evil

Mr. Kohberger shows we are stalked by the bell curve. But the curve is only an estimate of how typical one thing is among many.

Freud dominated medical classrooms and offices for decades. His teachings saturated the culture. People's lives were impacted, if not changed. Research was conducted, and therapies were applied. People changed their view of their lives, their experiences, their friends, and their families. 

Lives and actions became indirect and symbolic. 

And derivative. Life and growth lost any hope of independence. The best we poor souls could hope for was to make peace with our inevitable tendencies and conflicts. We were all to spend our lives at a table negotiating a treaty with demons.

And then Freud, and it, melted away.

Royal wrote about Freud recently. "Freud, who wrote influential tomes like The Future of an Illusion (i.e., religion) and Civilization and Its Discontents (everyday sadness), was almost blind to the rise of the greatest evil of his time: Nazism. He only survived by fleeing from Vienna to England just before the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany. His awakening came too late to save his sisters, all in their eighties; one died in Auschwitz, another at Theresienstadt, and two at Treblinka. Even then, the master of the human psyche didn’t really take the full measure of the most obvious, real-world evil in his day. "

Freud viewed evil as some manifestation of the unconscious mind's repressed instincts. Or something.

After fleeing the continent, apparently, he wrote a letter from the safety of London saying that he expected the Catholic Church would sort out the Nazi problem.

One would have expected more. You would think a guy who imagined the basics of relationships was partly due to infant incestuous homicidal lust could do better. But the creative genius in Freud did not recognize evil when he saw it. Perhaps he felt it represented some subterranean thought, some deep-water prowler in us that needed to be talked out.

What it needed was war, death, and atomic weapons to bring the evil to despair and surrender. That seems to be a bit much for an unresolved psychological imbalance.

And a philosophy that does not recognize evil probably needs rethinking.

Immigrant Rights and Wrongs

On this day:

1914
Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Serbia will reject those demands and Austria will declare war on July 28.
1929
The Fascist government in Italy bans the use of foreign words.
1945
The post-war legal processes against Philippe Pétain begin.
1952
General Muhammad Naguib leads the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real power behind the coup) in overthrowing King Farouk of Egypt.
1967
12th Street Riot: in Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It will leave 43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.
1968
Glenville Shootout: in Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins and lasts for five days.
1972
The United States launch Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
1983
The Sri Lankan Civil War begins with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Terrorist group. In the subsequent riots of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils are slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils flee to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many find refuge in Europe and Canada.
1995
Comet Hale-Bopp is discovered; it will become visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.


***

Just weeks after Elon Musk’s xAI raised $10 billion through sales of stock and debt, the startup is working with a trusted financier to secure up to $12 billion more for its ambitious expansion plans.

***

The Guardian has an article implying that autocracies may not have the world's interests in mind.

***

Families of the four University of Idaho murder victims will get the opportunity to speak directly to their children's admitted killer, Bryan Kohberger, at his sentencing. The confrontation of a criminal by his victims and their families is peculiar. We grope for justice, and closure can not be declared.

***

One of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country now warns that the administration's policies have thrust Black Americans — and the entire country — into a "state of emergency."

***

Immigrant Rights and Wrongs

"Our children and grandchildren may yet curse the day we began hyping race and ethnicity. There are countries where that has led to slaughters in the streets, but you cannot name a country where it has led to greater harmony.

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.

The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his “basic rights.”

Thanksgiving may be our most old-fashioned holiday. Gratitude itself seems out of date at a time when so many people feel “entitled” to whatever they get—and indignant that they didn’t get more.

It is a little much when people come to this country preaching hatred against others and demanding tolerance for themselves."--Sowell

America has always been a refuge from Europe's homicidal fads. But these ancient warriors with their ancient grudges and ridiculous homicidal sociologies always come here because it is safe. You can berate a warlord from the safety of Newark when, back home, that warlord would kill you.

It is debatable whether America should allow itself to be the ground zero for the world's revolutions and bitter harangues. Perhaps we should make sure our visitors understand the house rules. The Constitution does not protect you from us, but us from you. 

That's why we're here.

America the Observant

On this day:
1099
First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1298
Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town of Falkirk.
1706
The Acts of Union 1707 are agreed upon by commissioners from the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, which, when passed by each country’s Parliaments, lead to the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1797
Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Battle between Spanish and British naval forces during the French Revolutionary Wars. During the Battle, Rear-Admiral Nelson is wounded in the arm and the arm had to be partially amputated.
1937
New Deal: the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.
1942
Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
1946
King David Hotel bombing: a Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, site of the civil administration and military headquarters for Mandate Palestine, resulting in 91 deaths.
2003
Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year-old son, and a bodyguard.
2005
Jean Charles de Menezes is killed by police as the hunt begins for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.
2011
Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first being a bomb blast which targeted government buildings in central Oslo, the second being a massacre at a youth camp on the island of Utøya.

***

Can a society subsidize what opposes it?

***

What, exactly, is Gabbard saying about the intel agencies?

***

Both the left and the right are collectivist and opposed to the individualism of classical liberalism and libertarianism. This distinction between collective and individual choices seems to be the main line of fracture in modern ideologies.--Lemieux


***

Suwinski is hitting .103. Skenes is pitching 1.95

***

The French government proposed cutting two public holidays per year to boost economic growth as part of a budget plan that it billed as a “moment of truth” to avoid a financial crisis. But in a country where vacations are sacred, the idea — unsurprisingly — prompted outrage across the political spectrum, suggesting it may have little chance of becoming law.

***

America the Observant

For a government so often criticized for its decisions, the American government is slow to take the reins. America evolves over time, often through significant mistakes. Our own 'dialectic.' We mature into things.

Now we are at a historic moment of opportunity—one that offers serious options. The world remains in its traditional chaos: wars, ethnic cleansings, nations pursuing historically disastrous economic policies, and incompetent, grasping masters threatening citizens, their families, and their futures. America's citizenry is protected because its constitution has withstood all the usual foolish and malicious attacks, and it upholds a political philosophy that encourages personal and economic freedom and growth. It is the world's destination for liberty and safety. 

But America has a problem, one unrelated to the usual malice and envy. It needs people to fill in its shrinking population. It needs innovators and workers to maintain its momentum.

Why is this a crisis and not an opportunity? Why are we not advertising and holding lively interviews, looking for people who understand our life and can improve our country, instead of passively watching our borders collapse and our city streets burn?

 

'Disappearence' Shortfalls

On this day:

365
A tsunami devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami was caused by the Crete earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale. 5,000 people perished in Alexandria, and 45,000 more died outside the city.
1403
Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV of England defeats rebels to the north of the county town of Shropshire, England.
1861
American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run – at Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the war begins and ends in a victory for the Confederate army.
1925
Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
1961
Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission – Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).
1969
Space Race: Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission (July 20 in North America).
1973
In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.
2005
Four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar July 7 bombings, target London’s public transportation system. All four bombs fail to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers are captured and later convicted and imprisoned for long terms.
2011
NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135

***

While I have no sympathy for the pompous, posing, insincerity of the "Washington Redskin Debate," I find the president's entrance into the debate terminally wearying.

***

Sixteen years after Bitcoin was created, there are still no clear use cases for cryptocurrency that don’t involve illegal activity. Yet at the time of writing the value of crypto assets was approximately $3.3 trillion. . . .--Krugman

***

There must be a shift in polling. FOX News is focusing on deporting only illegal immigrants who are rapists and murderers. Yet, legal entry into the U.S. is provided for by law, and illegal entry is illegal, requiring the identification and deportation of the offender by law, regardless of whether the individual is a nice person.

***

The worst team in the AL played three games against the Pirates this weekend, scored 27 runs, and allowed 6.

***


'Disappearance' Shortfalls

If you've missed a recent decade or two of world events, you can always wait for them to show up again in America.

The end of the nineteenth century was filled with episodes where Eastern European anarchists immigrated to the U.S. and looked for a tsar to blow up. Desperate to participate in the bloody European hangover of WWI, America joined WWII. Trying to catch up on what they missed in the bloody revolutions in imagined class warfare, America joined the Korean War, then the Vietnam War. Having missed literally centuries of pointless combat in the Middle East, the U.S. joined the endless fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa.

More recently, violent campus groups opposing the creation of Israel in 1948 have been visited upon us. And, of course, the undead have returned in the person of Mamdani.

When AI recalls falsities, they are called 'hallucinations;' when Americans apply foreign experiences to America, it is called 'journalism.' We are now suffering another flashback completely foreign to us.

The hills are alive with the accusations of American 'disappearings.'

Where, you ask, have I heard that phrase? South America. Up to 30,000 people were “disappeared” by the state during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” a period during which the country’s military dictatorship turned against its own people from the mid-1970s to early 1983. San Salvador picked up the banner early this century. 

Now tens of millions of people are pouring across the U.S. border to safety and freedom, and, when apprehended, have raised the echo of 'disappearing.' They actually have the audacity to accuse America of the crimes of the hellholes they are fleeing.

And, true to the American tsar shortages the anarchists experienced in the past, the 'disappearance' shortages in the U.S. have inspired some illegal immigrants just to make them up.

We will have to see if, like some of the assessments of the anarchist nonsense, these episodes are viewed 'in the proper historic and social context' of the mendacious and angry immigrants and whether their imagined plight is supported by an understanding and charitable Press.

Sunday/Mary and Martha

On this day:

70
First Jewish-Roman War: Siege of Jerusalem – Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots.
1807
Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon Bonaparte for the Pyréolophore, the world’s first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône in France.
1903
The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
1944
World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
1950
Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.
1960
The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
1969
Apollo Program: Apollo 11 successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on another world almost 7 hours later.
1976
The American Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
1977
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.
1977
The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.

***

Famed investor Warren Buffett has quietly executed a series of multi-billion-dollar exits from major US banks.

It appears to be a strategic shift that analysts say signals a sharp turn in sentiment from the world's most closely watched investor - and a growing belief that America's booming financial sector is headed for turbulence.

***

The use of subatomic particles to process data could represent a breakthrough that’s unmatched in modern human history, according to analysts at Bank of America, who compared it to the discovery of fire. “A technology that can perform endless complex calculations in zero-time, warp-speeding human knowledge and development.”

***

Just to be fair:
An 18-year-old has more at stake in an election than an 80-year-old. Should his vote be weighted more?
An 80-year-old has more money at stake than an 18-year-old. Should his vote be weighted more?

***

Poland announces it’s sending the Polish Army to the country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania to stop illegal migrants from crossing into Poland

***

Sunday/Mary and Martha

In the Old Testament, when Moses invites Pharaoh to the Wilderness for a time of contemplation, Pharaoh condemns him as idle. Even the ancient Egyptians had a lot to do.

Today's gospel is the Mary and Martha gospel, another take on the constant battle in the gospel between the practical and the spiritual. Mary has the better part.
But it is a "part," a portion of life. Christ recognizes the dichotomy, indeed the very need for it. Somebody has to feed Mary. No less a mind than Cardinal Newman, in explaining his defection from the Anglican church to the Catholic, said that the practical infrastructure of the Church allowed and enhanced its contemplative nature.
"Sabbath" means "stop."

The "Sons of Martha" by Kipling is a different, surprisingly American, take:

Sons of Martha

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and troubled heart.

And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary’s Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, ‘Be ye removed’. They say to the lesser floods, ‘Be dry’.
Under their rods are the rocks reproved – they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit – then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves’ end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matter hidden, under the earthline their altars are;
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their work when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand.
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s days may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat:
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that:
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed, they know the angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet – they hear the Word – they see how truly the Promise Runs:
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and – the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons.

SatStats

On this day:
711
Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete – Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic. This began the successful invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, less than 100 years after the death of the Prophet.
1333
Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Halidon Hill – The English win a decisive victory over the Scots.
1545
The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth; in 1982 the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1553
Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days of reign.
1701
Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy sign the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.
1843
Brunel’s steamship, the SS Great Britain, is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.
1863
American Civil War: Morgan’s Raid – At Buffington Island in Ohio, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s raid into the north is mostly thwarted when a large group of his men are captured while trying to escape across the Ohio River.
1864
Taiping Rebellion: Third Battle of Nanking – The Qing Dynasty finally defeats the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
1942
World War II: Battle of the Atlantic – German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.
1963
Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
1981
In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French Prime Minister François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.
1997
The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

***

"Liberalism is not about finding all life’s meaning in a shopping list, it just says that we need more meaning than can be found in a ballot paper. And that those who seek the meaning of life in collective projects that they try to enforce on everybody have less of a sense of the beautiful richness and diversity of human nature than the alleged cold and robotic market liberals."--Norberg

***

A French-led team of researchers has lifted 22 massive stone blocks out of the Mediterranean Sea that were once part of the legendary Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

***

Is it possible to have a mantle of authenticity?

***

Killer AI is already here. It’s called "drones."


***

New findings from the University of Colorado Boulder suggest that erythritol, a commonly used sugar substitute, may carry unexpected health risks. According to the research, erythritol can affect brain cells in ways that may increase the likelihood of stroke.


***

SatStats

46.9% of Pakistan’s federal budget will go toward debt servicing.

***

In his 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich proclaimed that the "battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death despite any crash programs embarked upon now." Instead of that doomsday scenario, farmers deploying modern tech have boosted the number of daily calories per person by more than a third since the 1960s. Instead of rising death rates, global life expectancy rose from 57 years in 1968 to 73 years now.

The total fertility rate—that is, the number of children the average woman has throughout her lifetime—has been falling for decades. On a global scale, it has dropped from 5 kids in the 1960s to 2.2 children now. In the U.S., the rate has fallen from around 3.6 in 1960 to 1.6 today. That is well below the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

People like Erlich are not cranks, they're just wrong. And scientific and academic accomplishments are not necessarily qualifications for general expertise in all fields. Nor are trends written in stone. 

***

Of the 195 countries doing or trying to do business internationally, the U.S. manufactures and sells more products than all but one of them – China, which has a population four times larger.

Blind tampering with such a successful system seems risky.

***

Before Castro’s communist revolution, Cuba had the fifth-highest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere, ranking third in life expectancy. Its literacy rate of 76% was the fourth highest in Latin America.

See "risky" above.

***

Japan's population of over-65s reached a record high of 36.25 million in 2024, up 20,000 from the previous year, according to government data released on Sunday, underscoring the Asian country's rapidly aging society.

Those aged 65 and older, defined as the elderly in Japan, accounted for 29.3 percent of the total population, also a fresh high.

Will it be long before the youth turn against the aged?

***

Bitcoin has become the world’s fifth-largest asset by market capitalization, behind only Gold, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple.

***

Today, the US economy represents nearly one-quarter of global GDP, despite being home to just five percent of the world’s population.

***

A study finds that “high interior deportation,” with removals gradually rising to 437,500 a year, would cut economic growth by 0.83 percentage point this year and 0.84 in 2027.

If there’s a “self-deportation wave,” meaning half of the people with TPS leave the U.S. before mid-2026, that would shave GDP growth by 1.01 point this year and 0.45 in 2027.

Under “mass interior deportation,” with removals rising over the next two years to a million annually, growth would be 0.89 point lower this year and 1.49 in 2027.

***

The poorest state in America currently has a higher per capita GDP than Britain and is about to overtake Germany in per capita GDP growth terms this year.

***

The tariffs on Vietnamese goods continue. Yet the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says, “U.S. goods exports to Vietnam in 2024 were $13.1 billion, up 32.9 percent ($3.2 billion) from 2023.” And this figure doesn’t include U.S. exports of services to Vietnam, which are also in the billions.

***

England and Wales are one of the few exceptions in Europe with an increased birth rate.

That's due to a surprising rise in babies born to fathers over 60 years old (+14%), which helped trigger the first increase in the number of births in England and Wales since 2021 (+0.6%).

On the contrary, births to young mothers and fathers fell.

Huh?

Democracy/Socialism

On this day:
390 BCE
Roman-Gaulish Wars: Battle of the Allia – a Roman army is defeated by raiding Gauls, leading to the subsequent sacking of Rome.
1290
King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B'Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.
1870
The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility.
1925
Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.
1942
World War II: the Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time.
1944
World War II: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.
1966
Human spaceflight: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.
1969
After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.

***

The Kopechne affair ended forever the myth of even-handedness in the American political culture. That the Democrats recovered is astonishing, but not in their framework of slavery, Wilson, Roosevelt, and the international minuteman wars that eventually became the culture of the land.

***

Is the firing of Maureen Comey as stupid and tacky as it looks?

***

The kerfuffle over the Epstein case makes you wonder how the National Enquirer could have failed. But it does give the Democrats an identity.

***

Hundreds of detainees at a newly opened detention center in the Florida Everglades don't have underlying criminal records, according to a Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times investigation published Sunday.

Does that include illegal entry to the country?

***

If something is valuable, why do we assume that it should be federally funded?

***

A scary notion from Cowen: The very smart and talented AIs are listening, much like young children might hear their parents arguing outside their bedroom door late at night. It may not matter much now, but as the children grow up and assume a larger role in the world, it will.

***

Apparently, the core message of "Superman" is that AI, drones, biotech, and nanotech will elevate the power of private companies and individuals over states.

***

According to multiple reports, T. J. Watt has agreed to terms on a three-year contract extension that will make him the league’s highest-paid non-quarterback in league history.

***

Democracy/Socialism

"Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other contemporary American advocates of democratic socialism lean heavily on the democratic part, which is at least in part a matter of marketing.
……..

In the United States, we use the word “democratic” as though it were a synonym for “decent” or “accountable,” but 51 percent of the people can wreck a country just as easily and as thoroughly as 10 percent of them. That is why the United States has a Bill of Rights and other limitations on democratic power.

………………

The destructive nature of socialism comes not from its tendency to trample on democracy (though socialism often does trample on democracy) but from its total disregard for rights — rights that are, in the context of the United States and other liberal-democratic systems, beyond the reach of mere majorities. We have the Bill of Rights to protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the free exercise of religion, etc., not because we expect that majorities will reliably support and protect these rights but because we expect that majorities will be hostile to them." (from somewhere)

The demand of the majority to have its way will never end. That's why the Constitution was written and why it has been such a success. Majority vote is not sacred without a hard, basic framework of individual rights, which majority vote intentionally tries to supersede. Otherwise, we would glorify lynching and gang rape. Doing something by vote is neither right nor good any more than voting to sack Canada is. 

Majority vote is only as meaningful as the guidelines restraining it.

Socialism is a silly idea, but it is not made any less silly--or given any more dignity--by voting for it.

Health Care Justice

On this day:
180
Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
1762
Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.
1791
Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
1794
The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
1918
On the orders of the Bolshevik Party carried out by Cheka, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
1918
The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SMU U-55; 5 lives are lost.
1936
Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.
1938
Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becomes known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
1989
First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
1996
TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
1998
A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. 

***

The creation of the ICC (above), lauded by many for its supposed good intentions, is a genuine, Old World artifact.

In this particularly non-American event, self-appointed people appointed unelected bureaucrats to exert power over others, like colonizers.

***

Is Mamdani really a national story? Should national figures really meet with him?

***

At what point do presidential executive orders become abusive?

***

Can you give up Intifada, like chocolates for Lent?

***

Can the President of the United States delegate executive and pardoning power?

***

The White House aides are taking the Fifth. The White House aides are taking the Fifth!

***

"For CIA veterans, what truly shocked their conscience was Trump‘s cold betrayal of Ukraine and his open embrace of Russia.

For a decade, American spies, politicians, citizens, and journalists had wondered aloud about the president’s affinity for Putin. Was Trump really his useful idiot? Could the Russians have something on him? Was it conceivable that he had been recruited? Or had he recruited himself? Was it simply that he liked Putin because he wanted to be like Putin – an autocrat with absolute power? It had been a mystery.

But now the answer was apparent, as clear as a bolt of lightning. Trump wasn’t Putin’s agent. He was his ally. The president of the United States had gone over to the other side."--from Weiner's "The Mission"

***

Health Care Justice

From a Megan McArdle article in the WashPo:

In more than 20 years of covering policy, I have witnessed some crazy stuff. But one episode towers above the rest in sheer lunacy: the November 2020 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Sounds boring? Usually, maybe.

But that meeting was when the committee’s eminent experts, having considered a range of vaccine rollout strategies, selected the plan that was projected to kill the most people and had the least public support.

In a survey conducted in August 2020, most Americans said that as soon as health-care workers were inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine, we should have started vaccinating the highest-risk groups in order of their vulnerability: seniors first, then immunocompromised people, then other essential workers. Instead of adopting this sensible plan, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee decided to inoculate essential workers ahead of seniors, even though its own modeling suggested this would increase deaths by up to 7 percent.

…Why did they do this? Social justice. The word “equity” came up over and over in the discussion — essential workers, you see, were more likely than seniors to come from “marginalized communities.” Only after a backlash did sanity prevail.

…That 2020 committee meeting was one of many widely publicized mistakes that turned conservatives against public health authorities. It wasn’t the worst such mistake — that honor belongs to the time public health experts issued a special lockdown exemption for George Floyd protesters. And of course, President Donald Trump deserves a “worst supporting actor” award for turning on his own public health experts. But if you were a conservative convinced that “public health” was a conspiracy of elites who cared more about progressive ideology than saving lives — well, there was our crack team of vaccine experts, proudly proclaiming that they cared more about progressive ideology than saving lives.

This is one of the reasons we now have a health and human services secretary who has devoted much of his life to pushing quack anti-vaccine theories.

The Mainau Declaration

On this Day:
622
The beginning of the Islamic calendar.
1054
Three Roman legates break relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as the start of the East-West Schism.
1779
American Revolutionary War: light infantry of the Continental Army seize a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack at the Battle of Stony Point.
1861
American Civil War: at the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25 mile march into Virginia for what will become The First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the war
1941
Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as a MLB record.
1942
Holocaust: Vel‘ d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel’d'Hiv): the government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz
1945
Manhattan Project: the Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
1945
World War II: the leaders of the three Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.
1948
The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.
1950
Chaplain-Medic massacre: American POWs were massacred by North Korean Army.
1969
Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
2007
2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake: an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing 8 people, injuring at least 800, and damaging a nuclear power plant.

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Big P-G review of Palm Palm.

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The budget debate raises many diverting questions that detract from the underlying reality that we can not afford these things any longer. We should be in a period of triage where we start deciding what to get rid of first. Instead, we are acting like we did in the 1950s when we were trying to stabilize Europe in the face of homicidal, expansive nationalistic power. 

One curiosity is that every problem should have a national solution. Your local Planned Parenthood should, for some reason, be part of a national discussion resulting in a national policy.

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Why is it that totalitarian central planning is doomed to fail while free nations can guide economies successfully?

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Israel attacks Damascus.

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The Mainau Declaration

The Mainau Declaration refers to any one of three socio-political appeals by Nobel laureates who participated in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, the annual gathering with young scientists at the German town of Lindau. These declarations were presented on Mainau Island in Lake Constance, the traditional venue of the last day of the one-week meeting.
The first Mainau Declaration was an appeal against the use of nuclear weapons. Initiated and drafted by German nuclear scientists Otto Hahn and Max Born, it was signed in 1955 by eighteen Nobel laureates and later co-signed by thirty-four others.

                               Mainau Declaration 1955 

We, the undersigned, are scientists of different countries, different creeds, different political persuasions. Outwardly, we are bound together only by the Nobel Prize, which we have been favored to receive. With pleasure we have devoted our lives to the service of science. It is, we believe, a path to a happier life for people. We see with horror that this very science is giving mankind the means to destroy itself. By total military use of weapons feasible today, the earth can be contaminated with radioactivity to such an extent that whole peoples can be annihilated. Neutrals may die thus as well as belligerents. 

If war broke out among the great powers, who could guarantee that it would not develop into a deadly conflict? A nation that engages in a total war thus signals its own destruction and imperils the whole world. 

We do not deny that perhaps peace is being preserved precisely by the fear of these weapons. Nevertheless, we think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of these weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly, it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger, no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce. 

All nations must come to the decision to renounce force as a final resort. If they are not prepared to do this, they will cease to exist. 

                  

                           --Mainau/Lake Constance/Germany, 3 July 2015

    Two other such declarations have been made since then, one in 2015 that attempts to revive the anxiety over climate by feeding, vampire-like, on the importance of the initial declaration, and another, in 2024, that restates the original declaration from 1955, as if we had forgotten.

And so the elite discoverers of nuclear energy campaign for its non-use, as if it, and not the evil ambitions of man, were the problem. Like gun control and banning sodas imply, we poor men are but victims of tyrannical things.