Reverie

 A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. -Grace Hopper, computer scientist and US Navy Rear Admiral (1906-1992)

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The original Bill of Rights were a clarification of the rules of the Constitution. They limited government in a time of anxiety over a powerful central government. This was a battle then, (Adams and Hamilton against Jefferson) and is the origin of the States Rights movement as well as the Slavery debate and, more recently, sanctuary cities.
Roosevelt proposed a "Second Bill of Rights," arguing that "people in need are not free." Those "Rights," which never passed, expanded the role of government.

Aluminum makes up 0.1% of the U.S. GDP, autos 4%.

A little known consequence of the new tax law is that refinancing of municipal debt will, in many cases, not be allowed. This will increase community costs, decrease inventory and shrink the premiums brokers are able to add on to costs.

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The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the republic – against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming – these astounding Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of mobocracy.  In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates.--Mencken

Who is....Umair Haque?

J&J lost a patent suit over Zytiga, its monster prostate cancer drug. The patent is due to expire in 2027. Argentum and other generic drug makers have been blocked from launching their own versions of the cancer drug until its expiration date.
Zytiga generated nearly $2.3 billion in sales for Johnson & Johnson in 2016.


A recent U.N. report on "Poverty in America" has some detractors. Worstall notes it measures cash payments, a concept that was eliminated by Reagan in favor of more indirect payments:

Just to emphasize this when they talk about child poverty (para 25) we’re told that 18 percent of children live in poverty, 13.3 million. Then in paragraph 29, we’re told that food stamps (SNAP) lift 5 million out of poverty, the EITC another 5 million.

So, the number of children “living in poverty” is not 13.3 million, is it — it’s 3.3 million. That comes out to just 4.5 percent of children “living in poverty,” after the effects of just two of the things we do to reduce poverty.

In their own report, the U.N. is detailing how their claims of the number in poverty in the U.S. are entirely wrong – codswallop in fact.

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Can you imagine those sound-truck democracies writing about the U.S. economy.

  

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Seventy-three seconds later the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions watched the tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.  One of the victims was Christa McAuliffe, on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. 

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Drinks and foods marketed to help us maintain weight may have been helping us to gain it, says WSJ Health Expert Harlan Krumholz. (wsj)

Misis: “…the root of the opposition to liberalism cannot be reached by resort to the method of reason. This opposition does not stem from the reason, but from a pathological mental attitude—from resentment....Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g., socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it.”

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Geologists matching rocks from opposite sides of the globe have found that part of Australia was once attached to North America 1.7 billion years ago. We want it back.

In 1968 the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans. I think this shocked both sides and raised the question of what a power was willing to risk in the nuclear age. Suddenly technology became a disadvantage and so emerged the era of the Little Bully.

If Melania moves out, Trump will lose his best asset.

The country that claims great concern for its children has sentenced the Olympic child abuser after decades of abuse and ignoring complaints.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/11/conspiratorial-times.html

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Conspiratorial Times steeleydock.blogspot.com Brad Meltzer, is a prolific fiction writer with a new book called "History Decoded," a book on famous mysteries, each section with a goofy ...

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Many had sympathy with the Umair Haque article. Some thinks America is just too hard. Life is indeed hard and, temporarily at least, I think she is right; it is harder in the U.S.. But there is a tension that exists, regardless of the system. The division coarsely can be seen in the two great revolutions of the West (vs. those of Russia and China), the American and the French. Both were uprisings against an oppressive status quo with the vision of an ideal end-point. In the Americans' the end-point was liberty, in the French equality. Both have created relatively successful cultures but, in truth, it is early. No culture can survive if it is non-human. It may be that liberty is not a natural state for man but I think equality is less likely a basis.

The traditional “Out of Africa” model holds that humans first traveled from the continent between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, towards the Middle East.

A newly-discovered fossil in the Middle East is estimated to be between 170,000 and 190,000 years old. Before now, the earliest remains found in Israel were dated between 90,000 and 120,000 years old. This means humans reached the region at least 50,000 years earlier than expected.

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The disdain the world has for America is a bit hard for me to explain but I think it is true. One factor is the astonishing hatred the entertainment industry has for Trump--as if his election were some weird accident and not the result of domestic unhappiness. The Grammys and the Oscars were a nonstop belittling of Trump that is broadcast all over the world.
One element of Trump's election was this very problem: I think the U.S. does not feel it is getting the respect it deserves for its input into the world. There are huge philosophical enemies of the West, political and religious, and none of the Western nations has much of an investment in resisting other than the U.S.. I can not say we have done a great job--Iraq, the esteemed Arab Spring, or our infectious economic disasters for examples--but I for one would be happy to see one of the other Western nations offer advice, currency and manpower to shoulder some of the burden in a better way. I think the Obama administration, after some significant disasters, decided to do this unilaterally but I did not see anyone else step up. (One common suggestion is that there is no global threat to the West, that the Americans are sort of paranoid.)


Watched the Grammys and the Oscars. It's no wonder the youth is upset. The only enjoyable characteristic was rhythm and a few winning smiles. A lot of unintelligible lyrics and some tremendous, implied angst. Even the ads implied oppression. I have no idea what the general response will be--I am certainly not the target audience--but it looked like a cultural Dark Age to me.
(The way some of these people reached success--especially through YouTube--was very interesting, though.)


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North Korea’s armed forces have scaled back their annual winter military exercises this year, U.S. officials said, a development they believe reflects pressure from international sanctions on the North’s economy and its military preparedness. (wsj)

AAAAaaaaaaaannnnnndddddddd......a graph: