Reverie

"I’ve never understood how anyone can observe politics for more than five minutes and then conclude that mixing politics with arts and literature will improve arts and literature.  Such a belief is akin to the supposition that mixing a few ounces of sewerage with Chateau Pétrus will produce an even finer wine."--from a web site.

In 1942 the German occupiers in Paris set up what became known as the Furniture Operation. The plunder and “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses had begun soon after the invasion in the summer of 1940, but it was not until the winter of 1941 that the Germans turned their attention to private houses ostensibly “abandoned” by Jewish families. And, as more and more Jews were rounded up, so the plunder began in earnest. As Shannon L. Fogg writes in Stealing Home, houses were emptied down to their light switches and door handles, often then to be occupied by predatory neighbours. The contents were taken to vast depositories in empty warehouses, barracks and museums around the capital, to be sorted out – often by Jewish prisoners married to Aryans – and then loaded onto trains bound for Germany. By the time France was liberated in 1944, 38,000 Parisian apartments had been emptied and 674 trainloads, with 27,000 wagons, of loot had been dispatched. Some 9,680 Jewish businesses had been sold, and 7,340 more liquidated. It would later be said that had the war lasted another year, the entire French economy would have been completely “Aryanized”.

 
There was a special election in Georgia that the anti-Trump press seems to hope is of great symbolic import. Jon Ossoff, 30, a former congressional staffer and political novice who catapulted to national notice, raised more than $8 million and drew heavy support from prominent Democrats and liberal organizers. They saw his campaign, as well as a special House election last week in Kansas where a Democrat narrowly lost, as symbolic battlegrounds for their recovering party. The election has been covered closely. He needed to get 50% of the vote to stay out of a final runoff, which he would likely lose. He did not get the 50% and the news has not paid much attention to it.

A new book called Narco-nomics analyses the drug trade as if it were a legitimate business pursuit. One curious fact is the emergence of "corporate social responsibility," which Wainwright (the author) says is deeply ingrained in cartel leaders. Even the outcomes of cartel-style corporate social responsibility might look much the same as in the legitimate business sector. Cartels must count on a "reasonable level of support" from their local community, says Wainwright. Cartel leaders may invest in such things as sports facilities, public housing, and pensions. Of course, they may also use threats of (and sometimes actual) violence. And there are other more "blunt" ways cartels try to curry favor with the locals and the local journalists, which often involve trying to defame rival cartels. Charities as advertising, as image building. It puts sports charities in the correct light.

More than 45 million couples were estimated to be infertile globally in 2010, about 15% of all couples worldwide. Men are estimated to be solely responsible for up to 30% and to contribute to up to 50% of cases overall, according to one study.

There is a simple solution if there indeed is a serious crisis of dangerous immigrants on the border: Land mines. But that is not a serious option because either the problem is not serious or the country is not.

Who is....Peter Navarro?

Elton John finally speaks out on a topic close to my heart: “There comes a point where you have to admit that you’re not gonna get played on the radio in America because it’s ageist,” John claims in the new book Captain Fantastic by Tom Doyle, a biography of the singer, which is due out later this month.  “There’s a whole stream of different music come along now. And you have to face up to it.”

At last a good reason why my music is not being played. Ageism is stalking this great land.

 

Campaign-finance records show attorney general Sessions used campaign account for expenses to Cleveland, where he met Russia’s ambassador at an event. With this incredible research abilities, you would think we would elect better people.

 

Edwin Godkin, the founder of The Nation, has an article from the turn of the century (1900) that is getting some current review as it points to a change in how Liberalism saw itself then, at a true crossroads.
The article, "The Eclipse of Liberalism", was published in 1900 and deals with the turning of the tide, at the close of the 19th century, in the world of ideas. To many, (classical) liberalism then entered a crisis that perhaps it never recovered from. The ideas of limited government lost their grip on society, with nationalism on the one hand, and socialism on the other, raising to dominate the political scene.

So the nature of man again became subservient to his circumstances.

Trump's spokesmen are complaining about the World Trade Organization. A solution? A policy of unilateral free trade. There would be no motives in play except the desires of the freed consumer.

 

Peter Navarro, director of the newly-established White House National Trade Council, gave a speech last week to the National Association for Business Economics, which he condensed into an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. The analytical errors and the fallacies portrayed as facts in that op-ed are so numerous that it is bewildering how a person with a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University—and a potentially devastating amount of influence within the White House—could so fundamentally misunderstand basic tenets of introductory economics.--Daniel J. Ikenson

So it seems it will be difficult to replace ObamaCare. It seems that taking over 18% of the economy is difficult to do, no matter who does it.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2016/01/platos-socrates-on-speeches.html

 

If prosperity could come only from the united efforts of upright and noble-minded people, all of mankind would still be sunk in poverty.--Sowell

86% of Republicans view the first lady favorably, while just 22% of Democrats feel the same. That margin is a lot wider for Melania Trump than it was for Michelle Obama, who in April 2009 had a favorable rating of 93% among Democrats and 50% among Republicans. Hard to believe someone could transfer his political feelings to a benign spouse.
The righteous throw a wide net.

 

A theory — any theory, whether it be about economics, biology or astrophysics — is nothing more than a story told to make better sense of reality.

 

Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta, the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for lobbying its interests in the United States and proactively seeking the removal of various Obama-era sanctions, the press service of the Russian institution told Tass.

 

Esoterica: n: 1. things understood by or meant for a select few; recondite matters or items. 2. curiosa. Esoterica is a noun derived from the Greek adjective esōterikós “belonging to the initiate, inner, esoteric.” Esōterikós has a distinguished history in ancient Greek philosophical systems (Pythagorean, Aristotelian, Stoic). Esoterica, if not coined by Ogden Nash (1902–71), was popularized by him in a poem of his published in The New Yorker in 1930. The poem contains the line “The postal authorities of the United States of America Frown on Curiosa, Erotica and Esoterica, And I guess / That's a break for the American Railway Express,” referring to the notorious obscenity trials over James Joyce’s Ulysses that had been going on since 1922 and were finally settled in 1933.

 

Protectionism is driven by ‘the clamorous importunity of partial interests’ who capture government and prevent it from having ‘an extensive view of the general good’.  Free trade, in contrast, tilts the balance away from rent-seeking producer interests and towards the mass of consumers. --Sally, quoting Adam Smith

 

Good news. The latest issue of ISIS' Rumiyah magazine, which in the past has included how-to articles on terror tactics and calls to attack Western sites, has a long article on marital advice.

 

A new book by  Ursula Heise,  Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species, argues extinction is inevitable. Some species will thrive at the expense of others. What is needed, Heise argues, is a path toward widely acceptable determinations of value. Instead, we need a new model of “multispecies justice” that balances interests across different cultures and species.
I will allow you some time to ponder "multispecies justice."

India’s first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, has been found orbiting the moon eight years after it lost radio contact. 

The spacecraft was found 200 kilometers above the lunar surface by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. 

Chandrayaan was India’s first mission to the moon and was launched in 2008. 

 

AAAaaaaannnndddd.....a joke: