Reverie

It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence. --Williamson

Thunderbird Country Club traces its origin to the early 1950s and among its earliest members were a number of entertainment types including Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Hoagy Carmichael, and Bob Hope.  However, it  would not allow Jews to join.  
So the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, George Burns, Danny Kaye and other Hollywood Jews decided to build their own country club — Tamarisk.  Another founding member?  Frank Sinatra.  He also wed one of his fellow Tamarisk members, Barbara, who had been married to Zeppo Marx.  And the primary contributor to the Palm Springs reformed Synagogue?  Frank Sinatra.


Who is...St. Pantaleone?

Aurora Australis was the first book printed in Antarctica and was overseen by Shackleton on his expedition between 1908 and 1909. “He brought a printing press to entertain his crew in the dark winter months when they were stuck waiting for the sun to raise again,” Ian Ehling, director of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams, says. “He encouraged participants in the expedition to write accounts, which he printed and had illustrated, and it became the first book ever published there.”
Though it is unclear how many copies were actually printed, Shackleton had planned to produce 100 copies. In addition to its rarity, the binding also adds interest to this item. When producing the books, Shackleton used the boards from the crates of supplies he took to Antarctica for the binding. This copy included stenciled lettering spelling out “Oatmeal” inside the front cover.

In 1860, Lincoln won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. In that election, he again faced his debate opponent, Stephen Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln defeated his opponents with only 40 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency.




A range of data after the recession and the housing bust supported the idea that only a tiny elite of U.S. society, generally seen as the top 1%, had rebounded and was doing well. But a growing body of evidence suggests the economic expansion since the 2007-09 financial crisis has enriched a much larger swath of the upper middle class, and that a deeper income divide is developing between that top quarter or so of the population and everyone else. The latest piece of evidence comes from economist Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute, who finds in new research that the upper middle class in the U.S. is larger and richer than it’s ever been. He finds the upper middle class has expanded from about 12% of the population in 1979 to a new record of nearly 30% as of 2014.

St. Pantaleone/Pantalone was a popular saint in Venice. As a result, it was also a common name among the Venetians. As a result, a comic character in the Italian commedia dell’arte was named Pantalone. The leggings this character wore became known as pantalone (plural pantaloni). And that became pantaloons in English. And very tight mens' pants of the 19th Century were called "inexpressibles."

Perry argues--like many--that the problem with socialism is that it ignores the importance of human incentives. He says the strength of market-based capitalism can be attributed to an incentive structure based upon the three Ps: (1) Prices determined by market forces, (2) a Profit-and-Loss system of accounting, and (3) Private Property Rights. The failure of socialism in countries like Venezuela can be traced directly to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing features.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2016/12/protecting-us-from-merchant-of-venice.html

Protecting Us from "The Merchant of Venice" steeleydock.blogspot.com I saw a Merchant of Venice recently, staged in the 1930s. A lot of anxiety about the Shylock, about the anti-Jewish language. I have always...

 

This is from Kevin Williamson’s article in National Review “The Compulsory Society.” (Phillips is the Colorado baker who ended up in the Supreme Court over his refusing to serve everybody.)

"Liberalism has always struggled to balance the protection of minority rights against majoritarian institutions and — less often appreciated — the protection of individual rights. The American Left has liberated itself from such considerations by abandoning liberalism for identity politics and a might-makes-right ethic. Why compel Jack Phillips to knuckle under? Because you can, and because you hate him. Hate is an inescapable part of tribalism, and hate is now the single most important organizing principle of the American Left."

Pimp Dennis Hof, the owner of half a dozen legal brothels in Nevada and star of the HBO adult reality series "Cathouse," won a Republican primary for the state Legislature on Tuesday, ousting a three-term lawmaker.

Perfect.

So the Miss America contest is getting away from judging on good looks. That's a bit of a leap for a beauty pageant. But things change; the Boy Scouts aren't. I can't wait to see what happens to the Spelling Bee.

Part of the Obama promise to the U.S. Congress was that if they approved the Iran deal, the Obama administration would freeze out Iran's access to dollars. The AP reported it as this:

"If you don't block this nuclear deal, we will bar Iran's access to our financial system."
But a recent Senate report alleges Obama officials pushed the U.S. Treasury to let Iran convert the equivalent of $5.7 billion of funds held in Oman's Bank of Muscat from rials into dollars and subsequently into euros.
It required a special license by the U.S. Treasury, which was granted in February of 2016. But it was never disclosed, either to Congress or the American people.
Oh, well...

Will: The “art of the deal,” according to the supposed Rembrandt of this art (a six-time bankrupt), seems to be this: Ask for the universe, settle for one of Jupiter’s minor moons, claim that the moon is actually the center of the universe and was the real goal all along, and that only he — not Metternich, not Kissinger — could have plucked this flower, safety, from the nettle, danger.
However, the common denominator in most mishaps of governing — in both domestic (Prohibition, 1930s protectionism, the Great Society, 1970s wage and price controls, etc.) and foreign policies (Woodrow ­Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, etc.) — is the belief that the world is more malleable than it is, that inertia is less powerful than it is, that social variables can be made to vary as we wish them to. But, then, such mishaps were in the era B.R. — Before Rembrandt.

China is establishing a nationwide program to track cars using an electronic identification system, according to records and people briefed on the matter, adding to a growing array of its surveillance tools used to monitor its citizens.

Newly released data from Puerto Rico’s government bolsters a conclusion reached by several studies that the death toll from last September’s Hurricane Maria vastly exceeds the official figure of 64.

Trump’s tactic is even more confusing if you consider that when European governments impose import taxes on American goods sold in Europe, the main victims are European consumers. It means that when President Trump imposes tariffs on a large number of American consumers of foreign goods in the name of forcing European governments to lower their tariffs on a handful of U.S. producers, he is really hurting us for the benefit of foreign consumers. It does raise the question of where President Trump’s allegiance lies.--deRugy

Yemeni forces backed by a Saudi-led military coalition have begun an assault on Hodeidah, the country’s most important port, in what could be a turning point in Yemen’s more than three-year-old war. Aid groups warn it could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. (wsj)

A man in his 70s has been arrested as part of a probe under the Official Secrets Act, police said on Thursday, amid reports he was a former Rolls-Royce engineer suspected of divulging secrets about Britain's new stealth fighter to China.

Samantha Bee responding to critics of a slur she made: "Look, if you are worried about the death of civility, don't sweat it. I'm a comedian." It's good to know there are those above civility. 

According to a new study, scientists have identified 63 new genetic variants associated with increased risk of prostate. 

The Chinese are considering building solar panels in the U.S.. Trump is said to be pleased. But if Americans could buy cheaper foreign solar panels in the US, we would be able to deploy that labor and capital in other industries. Instead, all that land, labor, and capital is tied up in inefficient solar panel manufacturing. And a lot of US solar jobs are installation. They’re not in manufacturing. As solar panels get more expensive, people buy fewer of them. This means fewer jobs installing solar panels and lower standards of living for those who would otherwise install solar panels.

AAAAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.......a graph:

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