Reverie

 “Only by focusing on the income brackets, instead of the actual people moving between those brackets, have the intelligentsia been able to verbally create a “problem” for which a “solution” is necessary. They have created a powerful vision of “classes” with “disparities” and “inequities” in income, caused by “barriers” created by “society.” But the routine rise of millions of people out of the lowest quintile over time makes a mockery of the “barriers” assumed by many, if not most, of the intelligentsia.” --Sowell

This is Frum, a old republican speechwriter, in The Atlantic. It seems to be a shift in the anti-Trump position, a more successful one, to me: 

". . . The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.....And it’s a fact that has to be seen in the larger context of his actions in office: denouncing the European Union as a “foe,” threatening to break up nato, wrecking the U.S.-led world trading system, intervening in both U.K. and German politics in support of extremist and pro-Russian forces, and continually refusing to act to protect the integrity of U.S. voting systems—it all adds up to a political indictment, whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one. . . ."

People who obsess over differences in monetary incomes – people who leap from observing large differences in monetary incomes to the conclusion that something is thereby amiss and requires ‘correction’ (always by giving a relatively small handful of people an enormously unequal share of power over others) – typically operate with the mistaken presumption that the amount of material wealth in the world is fixed. The very same mistaken presumption is at the core of most arguments against free trade. Neither the redistributionist nor the protectionist understands economic processes or economic growth.--Bordeaux

"Jealousy" is the desire of what is others, "envy" is sadness over the success of others.

Today's word developed and broke down into several curious directions. Cynophobia: fear of dogs. From Greek kyon (dog) + -phobia (fear). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwon- (dog), which also gave us canine, chenille (from French chenille: caterpillar, literally, little dog!), kennel, canary, hound, dachshund, corgi, cynic, cynosure, and canaille. Earliest documented use: 1879.

The Canary bird was named for the Canary Island, the island named for dogs and not birds. And "Cynic" probably came from Kunosarges, the name of a gymnasium where Antisthenes taught, but popularly taken to mean ‘doglike, churlish,’ kuōn, kun- ‘dog’ becoming a nickname for a Cynic.

Authorities on the North Carolina coast say a woman has died, days after she was pulled from rough surf in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reports the town of Duck said the woman was among five people pulled from the ocean Friday at a beach access. Officials said the unidentified woman was unresponsive and taken to the hospital, where she died Sunday.

City officials said the other victims rescued refused treatment.

The woman is the sixth person to die on the Outer Banks in 2018 while swimming in the Atlantic and seventh person overall. A 4-year-old boy died in April while walking along a Kitty Hawk beach when a large wave knocked him down and pulled him into the surf.

Two years ago, nine people died while swimming on the Outer Banks.

This is a dangerous place and may be incompatible with leisure.

The US Preventive Services Task Force “is recommending that men ages 55 to 69 weigh the potential harms and benefits of prostate cancer screening and judge whether getting tested feels right to them.” 

"Feels right for them." Huh?

Who is...Antisthenes?

Apple announced Thursday it had shelved plans to build an 850-million-euro ($1.0-billion) data center in Ireland over a court battle with conservationists who were seeking to preserve a forest.

The Silicon Valley giant believed it had got the green light in October when a High Court judge dismissed appeals brought by three campaigners, who were concerned about the environmental impact of the project, which was to occupy nearly 166,000 square meters or roughly 40 Premier League football pitches, in County Galway, west Ireland.

But the campaigners won last week their Supreme Court bid for their appeal to be heard, delaying the process even further.

Ireland believes the project would have create around 300 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs.

And, as if to prove we have totally lost our collective minds, some news agencies are taking seriously that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks, says he has information to share with lawmakers about CIA head nominee Gina Haspel ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing.

McCutchen is rumored to be on the trading block.

                                        

"George Will really doesn’t like ‘oleaginous’ Mike Pence, but he loves big words"-- a headline

Will has been ferocious toward Trump of late.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2015/09/bog-bodies-art-and-reality.html

Bog Bodies, Art and Reality steeleydock.blogspot.com There are three hundred and sixty-nine human "bog bodies" that have been excavated from bogs around the world. They are hundreds and somet...

In 1934, a massive storm sent millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States as far east as New York, Boston and Atlanta.

At the time the Great Plains were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass, which held moisture in the earth and kept most of the soil from blowing away even during dry spells. By the early 20th century, however, farmers had plowed under much of the grass to create fields. 

That year, a severe drought spread across the region. As crops died, wind began to carry dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed lands.

According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, in 1938  11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Today, it's respectively 75 percent and 30 percent.

The EB-5 visa program currently allocates 10,000 employment-based green cards annually for foreigners who invest and create jobs in the United States. It has brought in over $20 billion in foreign investment over the past decade and led to an estimated 174,000 American jobs. But the Obama administration, one week before it left office, created new regulations which increase the costs of entering the program and, essentially, makes it harder to qualify and to implement. Why would they do that?

N.D. oil production. Look where it started. This is all fracking.:

Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle  are reportedly dating. She is leaving the network and has plans to join America First, a super PAC supporting President Donald Trump, according to a report from HuffPost.

I know you were curious.

According to Williams, there is virtually no material poverty in the U.S.. Eighty percent of households the Census Bureau labels as poor have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have at least one computer. Forty-two percent own their homes.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a rule that effectively banned car dealers from giving auto loan discounts to customers on the claim that they might lead to racial discrimination.

Dodd-Frank, the legislation that created the CFPB, prohibited it from regulating auto dealers—so the CFPB quietly put out a "guidance" document to circumvent due process and congressional oversight.

So the bureaucracy fought back against its creator to promote its agenda.

Who needs rebellious AI?

Aristotle said tht everything was politics. In our social world, politics is essential.

But is it sufficient?

Sufficient.

Is there a spiritual element in us that demands our attention, regardless of the social and political norms?

"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce."--Smith

That's Adam Smith, defining a few hundred years ago what some leaders still do not get.

The Steelers signed Ken Griffey's son as a free agent.

Antisthenes was a student of Socrates and a founder of the Cynic school of philosophy.

Will on the Iran nuclear agreement: "It is condign punishment for Obama that his signature foreign policy achievement, the deal with Iran, could be so casually jettisoned. It should have been a treaty. If it were, it would have enjoyed more public support and could not have been erased by what created it — presidential unilateralism. Obama's successor might learn from this when — if — he produces an alternative plan for a slightly more distant and less dangerous future."

It is curious that such a casual disregard for the basis of the country's laws would have, inherently, a catch-22 that would weaken it.

“We no longer have business cycles, we have credit  cycles.” --Boockvar

This is a very serious line, if true.

AAAaaaaannnnnddddd.....another graph: