SatStats

On this day:

1279 BC
Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
526
A devastating earthquake strikes Antioch, Turkey, killing 250,000.
1678
The Godiva procession through Coventry begins.
1889
Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1935
A 7.7 Mw earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
1970
The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.

***

During the Biden administration, the Bureau of Land Management on June 28 quietly shut down the last hope of the proposed Ambler Road project in northwest Alaska. Simultaneously, the bureau also recommended that no mining, oil, or gas development be allowed across 28 million acres of Alaska’s federal land under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The decisions limit economic opportunities for Alaskans, but East Coast denizens should care, too. Denying the construction of the Ambler Road blocks access to a wealth of minerals needed for the Biden administration’s clean-energy agenda. The government’s right hand would be wise to consult what its left is doing.--Montalbano

***

Engineers have discovered 'kill switches' embedded in Chinese-manufactured parts on American solar farms, raising fears Beijing could manipulate supplies or 'physically destroy' grids across the US, UK, and Europe.

***

SatStats

In 2023, McDonald's bought 2 billion eggs from agribusiness giant Cargill.

*

Compliance officer is one of the fastest-growing professions in the US, along with manicurist and HR manager.

*

Data center developers in Northern Virginia are asking utility Dominion Energy Inc. for as much power as several nuclear reactors can generate, in the latest sign of how artificial intelligence is helping drive up electricity demand.

Dominion regularly fields requests from developers whose planned data center campuses need as much as “several gigawatts” of electricity, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue said Thursday during the company’s first-quarter earnings call. A gigawatt is roughly the output of a nuclear reactor and can power 750,000 homes.

Electric utilities are facing the biggest demand jump in a generation. Along with data centers to run AI computing, America’s grid is being strained by new factories and the electrification of everything from cars to home heating.

*

Addiction kills more Americans than cancer or heart disease, but only 4% of people with substance use disorders currently receive medication.

*

The rising value is not just of players but of teams. Last year, the Phoenix Suns sold for $4 billion (with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury). To put that number in perspective, the Brooklyn Nets sold for $3.3 billion in 2019, the Houston Rockets sold for $2.2 billion in 2017, and the Atlanta Hawks sold for a mere $850 million in 2015.

*

In the UK online is now on par with TV in terms of how people consume news.

*

The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.

*

it’s not just how much an economy invests in capital equipment, but also how long that equipment can reasonably be expected to last. The data shows that the typical US capital investment, with its greater emphasis on rapidly evolving information technology, is depreciating faster than it used to.--Taylor

*

29% of all workers in agriculture and 25% in construction are immigrants.

*

Rural regions rule the doctor rankings: Alaska, Wyoming and Nebraska join the Dakotas in the top five states for physician pay, confounding the intuition hammered into our souls by more than a decade of covering economics. None of those are high-earning states overall, with the evergreen exception of Alaska. They’re also not high-cost: North and South Dakota rank 41st and 45th, respectively, in cost of living among the states and D.C.; only Alaska costs more than average, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

*

The S&P 500 index is meant to represent 500 companies. It has become so concentrated due to the rise of Mag 7 stocks that its effective diversification is less than 60 stocks.

*

“A 2024 IQVIA report shows that the share of clinical trials launched by Chinese-headquartered biopharmaceutical companies rose from 3 percent in 2013 to 28 percent in 2023, suggesting a growing involvement of Chinese companies in early-phase drug development.“

*

Only 7% of people made it through Nobel Prize economist Daniel Khaneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”.

*

SpaceX, which accounted for 38% of all mutual fund assets invested in private companies, is responsible for mutual funds’ net gain on their private-company investments. Absent SpaceX, mutual funds have collectively lost about 1.3% on their private positions.

 

PKK

 

On this day:

70
Siege of Jerusalem: Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. The Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all trees within fifteen kilometers.
1431
Hundred Years’ War: in Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an English-dominated tribunal. Because of this, the Catholic Church remembers this day as the celebration of Saint Joan of Arc.
1635
Thirty Years’ War: the Peace of Prague (1635) is signed.
1806
Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson had accused Jackson’s wife of bigamy.

***

Birds have been shown to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan for the future, crows count and use tools, cockatoos open and pillage booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.

***

PKK

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been locked in bloody conflict with Turkey for more than four decades, decided to disband and end its armed struggle, group members and Turkish leaders said on Monday.

Since the PKK launched its insurgency in 1984 - originally intending to create an independent Kurdish state - the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, exerted a huge economic burden, and fuelled social tensions.

Was there an insight? A breakthrough? Some resolution answering all the animosities--geographic, ethnic, historic?
Were the oil issues resolved? The crimes adjudicated? The outrages forgiven? Compromises of both sides joined?

Or have generations of violence, the 40,000 dead, the countless others injured, the rage of ruined families, all this horror simply faded, evaporating molecule by molecule beneath the glare of history, leaving a distillate of graves and scars?

Just another vicious social experiment, masquerading as idealism--after sacrificing mounds of lives, hopes, and dreams--turned blind evolutionary alley?

Just another burned waystation on humanity's forced march?

Another View of Biden

On this day:
1453
Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.
1660
English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1780
American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s Continentals, allegedly after the Continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1914
The ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives.
1919
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1931
Born October 19, 1899, in Sardinia, Michele “Mike” Schirru, Anarchist against Fascism, U.S. Citizen, is executed by an Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. The U.S. Government did nothing to help Schirru.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.

***

If you do not take the money from someone who has earned it and do not give it to someone else who hasn't, is that a "transfer of wealth?"

***

Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration, who was accused of data fraud.
In 2018 and 2019, she was the fifth-highest paid employee at the prestigious school, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year, The Harvard Crimson reported.

***

 

Another View of Biden 

I think this Biden episode is a threat to the stability of the nation, vastly worse than Nixon. And it creates an undercurrent of faithlessness in the voting public. It was aristocratic, manipulative, arrogant, and mendacious. It destroyed the executive specifically, politicians in general, and the Press. It should destroy the Democrat Party. It should be a constant topic of discussion. 

I think it's treason.

This is from The Contrarian, written by Jennifer Rubin. She resigned from her position at the WashPo to join Substack. It is her take on Biden. She thinks he is a noble statesman; I think he is an undistinguished, evolved racist hack. She believes the major problem with his presidency was the mismanagement of its last months that allowed Trump to sneak into the White House. Generally, she thinks all of the problems I see in the Biden presidency are present only in Trump's. There is a wistful longing for those European hierarchies we thought we buried long ago.

This is a woman of accomplishments, and her thinking is hard for me to understand. It seems very much like a deep and virulent religious zealotry from a mysterious foreign culture. Nor, from what I read and see, is she alone.

She sees " racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here" where I see a deliberate attempt to subvert the basic constitutional structure, perhaps before the 2020 election but definitely after--when Trump was defeated and gone. The Regency had nothing to do with Trump for years. It just got more prominent when the election came around again. The enmity she feels toward Trump and his supporters is based on I know not what.

We face staggering problems, none as great as that of defining ourselves. The importance of the individual citizen and how he chooses leadership is the essence of the nation. Undermining that is revolutionary--and criminal, in my mind. Creating a sham government is criminal. Then come the other problems: immigration (20 million illegals, including 40,000 young Chinese men--or, if you prefer, 40 divisions,), our defensive capabilities, our ability--or willingness--to educate our young, among many.

And the great circling plane, our astonishing debt of $36 trillion--with us fussing about how much money we do not have to give away. That plane, at some time, will land.

I do not know if Trump can solve any of these problems. We have promised too much to others. We must, however, keep those promises we made to ourselves. The Biden coup has shown the Democrats can not. 

But I should give some hearing to other views, and here is Ms Rubin's.

 

Joe Biden

The confluence of former President Joe Biden’s terrible cancer diagnosis and a highly promoted book on his supposed mental and physical decline has resulted in a great deal of breathless, heartless, dumb commentary. People need to get a grip and exercise some basic humanity grounded in basic truths.

First, a dedicated public servant (whose contributions to America will need to be recognized by later generations, given the utter lack of seriousness in the current political-media climate), a father, a husband, and a grandfather has received news all of us would dread. That he and his family must endure this ordeal during a time of pearl-clutching and angry accusations underscores the meanness that now courses through our politics. Instead of “Who knew what, when?” the appropriate question is “What will we lose when he passes from the scene?” (The answer: A statesman who defended the post-WWII world order and a clear-eyed, center-left champion of the middle class.)

Second, the notion that Biden was a feeble, inert, and nonfunctional figurehead during his presidency is utter nonsense. He made decisions, delivered some marvelous speeches, crafted far-sighted foreign policy alliances, and presided over a flurry of productive, bipartisan domestic bills. On his worst day as president, he was more insightful, knowledgeable, productive, and effective than not only Donald Trump (as would be any sentient being) but many other presidents.

Third, none of this excuses those around him and, yes, Biden himself, for failing to recognize sooner that he lacked the verbal acuity and forceful presentation skills needed to run a successful campaign. He should not have decided to run. It was his worst decision, enabled by advisers who could not bring themselves to level with him. As a result, we are undergoing untold horrors in Trump 2.0. Depending on the success of pro-democracy forces in defending our fragile system, Biden and his inner circle will have played a role in the human, economic, and constitutional damage his successor will leave behind.

Fourth, for all the media caterwauling, when the heck are they going to level with voters about the current president’s mental and emotional descent into utter incoherence? Trump crafts his lies and then reflexively imbibes his own disinformation, conspiracies, and lies. By continuing to treat him (during his presidency) as if he is all there and by absolving Republicans of playing along, the media repeats—at the worst possible time—the profoundly irresponsible, lazy treatment of Biden they now bemoan. They are picking over the remains of a presidency allowed to persist too long (as did Woodrow Wilson’s, for example) while ignoring the five-alarm fire of insanity currently consuming the White House.

The utter refusal to systematically reveal, analyze, and hold him accountable for his divorce from reality constitutes the worst media malpractice imaginable. At some level, voters know corporate and billionaire media refuse to level with them, which is why so many news consumers have fled to The Contrarian and to other independent media outlets.

Finally, expecting every Democrat to have perceived what the media did not (Biden’s accelerated decline) and expose what the media failed to do is rich, even for a corporate media already corrupted by desperation for access and self-interest. Aside from those in the inner circle, most saw what the press did—an aging but still effective president.

It’s quite something for the media to demand Democrats take responsibility even as the corporate media ignore their own obtuseness while refusing to engage Republicans on the latter’s astounding deceit and lack of constitutional loyalty in enabling Trump to trash our economy, democracy, and national character.

Where does that leave us? Essentially, where we have been since the November election. The fate of our endangered democracy is the seminal challenge of our time. Recriminations about the past and idle speculation about 2028 distract us from the task of solidifying a broad coalition to defeat the racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here. It has.

Only if we focus on ripping out the MAGA menace root and branch will we spare ourselves of the horrors that Europeans have experienced over millennia. Perhaps that is why EU countries have consistently chosen center-left leaders in the Trump era. They know exactly what is at stake.

Hypernormalization

On this day:

585 BC
A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.
1830
President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which relocates Native Americans.
1942
World War II: in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people. 

***

Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) has successfully launched its commercial self-driving trucking service in Texas.

***

White House officials have in recent weeks brainstormed strategies for enshrining into law the government cuts implemented by billionaire Elon Musk’s team, aiming to turn the U.S. DOGE Service’s moves into lasting policy shifts.
So far, however, administration officials are running into resistance not just from Democrats, but also from congressional Republicans, who have in private conversations made clear that it would be difficult to codify even a small fraction of the measures that Musk’s team unilaterally implemented, according to lawmakers and several other people familiar with the discussions.

***

People do not lose their freedom; they trade it.

***

Hypernormalization

Comedian Ashley Bez posted an Instagram video of herself trying to describe a heavy mood in the political air. “How come everything feels all …?” she says, trailing off and grimacing exaggeratedly into the camera.

“Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” digital anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.”

Digital anthropoligist. Hypernormalization.

The Guardian attributes "hypernormalization" to "scholar" Alexei Yurchak, "who described the civilian experience in Soviet Russia in 2005. Hypernormalization describes life in a society where governing systems and institutions are broken and, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and being unable to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial, and dissociation."

One might stumble here. How does an autocratic, paranoid police state define itself, in the greater scheme of things, y' know? And, just for clarity's sake, how do you know when such a murderous, torturing, jack-boot "system" that, for the last five generations, has been in a state-induced coma, is "broken?" Do its aims have any correlation with the poor citizens' aims?

Nonetheless, the esteemed digital anthropologist sails on. “What you are feeling is the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren’t working … and yet the institutions and the people in power just are, like, ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has,” Ms. Harfoush says in her video.

At this point, it is apparent, like, where this article and the digital anthropologist are, like, going. The Biden election and administration have been an earthquake that threatens the very foundation of the American political system, a system that has been the cynosure of world political, economic, and social life for 250 years. The concepts of Locke and Montesquieu, Madison, Jefferson, and Lincoln have been suicide- bombed by the likes of Schumer, Schiff, Pelosi, and Obama. (assuming that Biden was just a bystander.)

But, no. That's not the point at all. The Guardian and the digital anthropologist have another target in mind. The Guardian quotes one Marielle Greguski, a New York City-based retail worker and "content creator," who posted about everyday life feeling “inconsequential” in the face of political crisis. The outcome of the 2024 election reminded her that she lives in a “bubble” of progressive values, and that “there’s the other half of people that are not feeling the same energy and frustration and fear”. To Greguski, the US’s failings are not only partisan but moral, like the racism and bigotry that Trump’s second term has brought out of the shadows and into policy.

She, the Guardian, and the esteemed digital anthropologist look at the most consequential, bald-faced, highjacking, treasonous conspiracy of the most important democratic system in the history of the world, the model for all democracies, and see...Trump, who was elected in reaction to the treason!

Coffeehouse platitudes follow. "Hypernormalization captures this juxtaposition of the dysfunctional and mundane." “People don’t shut down because they don’t feel anything; they shut down because they feel too much.” And of course, damning undocumentable but specific speculations: "cuts to USAID funding, which has resulted in an estimated 103 deaths per hour across the globe."

Damn the destruction of the world's first and foremost democacy; American inaction has unleashed a global tornado of death.

USAID is a pretty small agency. Lord knows how many other, larger tornadoes we are responsible for. One might question how the Trump-voting Uber driver from Reading is responsible for taking care of these dying people. Or where the money comes from when you are $36 trillion in debt. Or when his sacrifices might be deemed enough.

But, no matter.

If these people are allowed to ignore the undermining of our most basic concepts, there will soon be precious little wealth and freedom to be spread around by sanctimonious bureaucrats and their flunkies.

They might well be the only ones left.

Bad Sociology

On this day:

1935
New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).
1940
World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops. Two survive.
1941
World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.
1980
The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.

***

Juan Soto's hitting problems are profound, yet reassuring. It seems, according to knowledgeable people, to be a failure of "preparation," which means that such changes may be temporary and coachable. (See Suwinski, Davis, and many other Pirates. But not, I guess, Alvarez.)

***

Is cannabis as safe as the COVID-19 vaccine?

***



Bad Sociology

"Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.” --Lionel Shriver

                                                *

When Lionel Shriver delivered the Brisbane Writers Festival opening address, the American author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, and The Mandibles created quite a stir. The topic of the speech was the freedom of the writer, and "cultural appropriation" was the engine. It did not go well.

First, a definition: The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University (who is white), defines cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

Shriver listed many such crimes: Tiny sombrero party-favors at a tequila-theme party at Bowdoin College, Katy Perry dressing like a geisha at the American Music Awards, Iggy Azalea committing “cultural crimes” by imitating African rap (Daily Beast), students at Oberlin College in Ohio who have protested “culturally appropriated food” like sushi in their dining hall whose inauthenticity is “insensitive” to the Japanese.

"... who," Shriver asks, "is the appropriator par excellence, really? Who assumes other people’s voices, accents, patois, and distinctive idioms? Who literally puts words into the mouths of people different from themselves? Who dares to get inside the very heads of strangers, who has the chutzpah to project thoughts and feelings into the minds of others, who steals their very souls? Who is a professional kidnapper? Who swipes every sight, smell, sensation, or overheard conversation like a kid in a candy store, and sometimes takes notes, the better to purloin whole worlds? Who is the premier pickpocket of the arts? The fiction writer, that’s who."

And who "... regards other peoples' attempts to participate in their lives and traditions, either actively or imaginatively, as a form of theft?... Those who embrace a vast range of 'identities' – ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories, classes of economic under-privilege, and disability."

Shriver's main concern is art, and there is reason to worry. The reviewer of The Mandibles in the WashPo wrote: “The Mandibles are white. Luella, the single African American in the family, arrives in Brooklyn incontinent and demented. She needs to be physically restrained. As their fortunes become ever more dire and the family assembles for a perilous trek through the streets of lawless New York, she’s held at the end of a leash. If The Mandibles is ever made into a film, my suggestion is that this image not be employed for the movie poster.”

Sudanese-born Australian social activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who was attending the Brisbane Writers Festival event, walked out in a huff and then quickly penned a comment piece which argued that Shriver’s speech was “a celebration of the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.”

"Exploitation of the experiences of others?"

A NYT editorialist wrote of Shriver's speech: "Failure is less the work of political correctness and more the evidence of a morally inadequate imagination from those who already have the stage."

"Morally inadequate imagination?"

Nonetheless, Shriver has a point. Must the mystery writer kill before writing the mystery? Must Melville go to sea? (He and Conrad both did.) What experience are writers writing about anyway? Is science fiction--clearly entirely made up--valid as an art form? And what to do about Stuart Little?

While there are certainly subsets in humanity and certainly writers who exploit them, the entire idea of art is broadening and unifying. Homer was writing about Greeks but also about us; that is why it is good. Our modern view--where art is personal and consequently beyond judgment--is new and probably untenable. But this personal validity argument cuts both ways, and authenticity is an awkward tool. Is Starling Marte Black? A man? A Hispanic man? A Hispanic, Dominican man? A Hispanic, Dominican, black outfielder man--who is heterosexual--who throws right handed---who bats right handed--who has a golden glove--who is an immigrant--a legal immigrant--a Catholic--a father--a son--several siblings' sibling....Does all this just depend upon what the definition of "is," is?

It all sounds like the old question about the blind men trying to define the elephant but, in this instance, a blind elephant is trying to define itself.

And this is the broader point: How should a person define himself? Or should he just let himself be defined? We, each of us, are amalgams of genes and peoples, races and tribes, nations and families, occupations and diversions, religions and beliefs, passions and tendencies, hardware and software--and Lord knows what epigenetics means. We are a collection of incidentals. To cover ourselves in the cloak of one or two characteristics swallows us, making us soulless. 

Rather than defining us, it covers our essence in the Cloak of Invisibility. It is the weapon of the racist, the slaver, the fascist, the sniper. It trades humanity's wonder, beauty, and potential for a handle.

Narrowing us, micro-defining us, making us excluding rather than exclusive--diminishes each in the shadow of some smaller whole. It makes us subject to a tiny part, one of our many elements, an accident of our lives that we allow to limit us. It is the tool of the huckster and the politician who are looking for an edge to exploit; it demeans us when we accept. It is a world shrinker, a fence builder, a mind closer, a life limiting and isolating personal and world view where every encounter jangles with some potential conflict or reward, and where every individual demands some advantage or deference not for what they are but for what circumstance says they are.

We are confusing the spice in our lives for our lives.

Lionel Shriver is a case in point. Contrary to expectation, Lionel Shriver is a woman, too. That is, she is misnamed.

Memorial Day

On this day:
1865
American Civil War: Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.
1868
The impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson ends with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote
1940
World War II: Battle of Dunkirk – In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France.

***

“I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

***

Scientists do not ridicule or hound those who disagree. That is a particularly political and/or religious quality. Anyone with a scientific mind would recognize such intolerance as specifically unscientific.

***

For those of you who are low on your anxieties, by 2030, according to a recent report, half the population of India — 700 million people — will lack adequate drinking water.
“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” warns Ismail Serageldin, a former executive for the World Bank.

***

Memorial Day

War is man's most evil pursuit. Every single human motive morphs into something horrible and destructive; the most noble of man's qualities become misapplied. Somehow, the diffident grasshopper becomes the predatory locust. 

Yet within the world of men, some things must be done. Individuals must live and act within the admitted abomination that is war. 

In the Second War, the Germans and the Japanese were asked to fulfill their destiny and complete history. This involved destroying or subjugating everyone who was not them. The Allies' children were asked to fight for their lives. Their behavior in this gargantuan struggle should always stand as a testament to man's higher elements in the midst of man's lowest. Yet questions are always raised by some.

When Obama was in Japan and visiting Hiroshima, new discussion of the WWII atomic bombing began. An article in the LA Times asserted the bombing was cruel, gratuitous, and not a factor in the ending of the war. "Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today," the article states. 

More, the cause of the Japanese surrender was actually the Russian invasion of Manchuria. 

The article explains: "It was not the atomic evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Pacific war. Instead, it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese colonies that began at midnight on Aug. 8, 1945 — between the two bombings." 

That is to say, after the Americans dropped the bomb, the Russians moved in; probably a coincidence. Indeed, the sentiment at least seems to be in line with current thinking; the majority of Americans in polls think the bombs should not have been dropped.

Of course, people will differ in their assessment of history. Some assessments will be more accurate--sometimes more honest--than others. And many military men did not want to use the weapons. But of all the wars in history, World War Two is the least ambiguous to analyze.

The History website has this summary:
Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. (Italics added)

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided, over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower, and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists, to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. (italics added)

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

So the Emperor cites the bomb as a factor. And the alternative was an island-by-island attack on Japan that the experts accepted would cost one million--MILLION--American lives.

The LA Times article suggests the U.S. ignored a Japanese peace approach to the U.S., requesting only that the Emperor survive. But that is not entirely true. Their proposal was to keep the Emperor and the current governing militaristic system intact, something the Allies thought nonnegotiable. Another element overlooked in the LA Times article is the continuity of events. Over 200,000 people were killed in the atomic attacks. Isolated, that is horrific. One wonders how the essayist saw those deaths in the context of the war itself. Or do they spare themselves the difficulty? China suffered between 15 and 17 million--MILLION--deaths directly related to combat--many described as "crimes against humanity." The Russians lost 25 to 27 million. MILLION. And there was Nanjing, an episode so savage that it drove its main historian, Iris Chang, crazy. And Unit 731.  

Certainly, we need kinder, gentler wars.

Nonetheless, the LA Times article was quite critical of American behavior and motives in one of the world's most easily evaluated conflicts, the American democracy vs. Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Applying morality to war is tricky and can be practiced only by our best and brightest. Fortunately, a look at the byline has the reassuring information that the LA Times article was authored by none other than Oliver Stone, the esteemed and awarded movie director. He is certainly qualified. As a member of the exclusive self-absorbed entertainment cult and the reliable creator of the movie JFK, one of the cult's more astonishing productions of incoherent historical analysis, we can certainly rely upon his opinion.

And I'm sure he would have been willing to talk to the widows, the orphans, and the parents of those million Americans, explaining that those soldiers had to die assaulting the Japanese islands because we were true to our inner nature and did not drop the cruel bombs that could have ended the war. That was not who we are.

Sunday/Paraclete

On this day:

1738
A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with the settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.
1895
Playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison.
1925
Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
1999
The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.

***

“We can no longer stand old people, we don’t even want to know that they exist, and that’s why we park them in specialised places away from the eyes of other human beings.”--Houellebecq

***

A German-based technology company was able to export restricted tech to Russia even after the European Union imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime over his invasion of Ukraine.

An investigation by POLITICO has found that Kontron — which has operations across the EU, Britain and America — used its Slovenian subsidiary to export over €3.5 million in sensitive telecommunications tech to its Russian arm in late 2023.

***

Sunday/Paraclete

Jesus replied: Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him.

Anyone who does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not my own: it is the word of the Father who sent me.

I have said these things to you while still with you;

but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.

Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

While this is John, who is a unique writer, this tone is very different from Christ. And compact. Something of a notecard for the apostles, in case they missed things. He is part of the Godhead. What he offers is not temporal; his peace is spiritual. He is returning.
And there's the Paraclete.

Paraclete is a word that has not been translated. "Paraclete" appears in Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible even before the time of Jesus and in Aramaic translations of the text from the first century. In the New Testament, it appears only in John. 

It's a rarely used Greek word composed of two terms: para, meaning “alongside,” “next to,” and Kletos which derives from the verb kalein, “to call.” A parakletos is someone called to “stand next to.” It has a legal application as "advocate," but in John includes the sense of "comfortor."

During his period as a hermit in the mid-12th century, Peter Abelard dedicated his chapel to the Paraclete because "I had come there as a fugitive and, in the depths of my despair, was granted some comfort by the grace of God.

Christ, again in John, refers to himself as the Paraclete and talks about the coming of "another Paraclete."

All of this in Christian theology implies a revolutionary, intimate immersion of humanity in God.

Interestingly, Muslim writers have argued that "another Paraclete" (John 14:16)—the first being Jesus—refers to Muhammad. This claim is based on Quran 61:6, with a little change in spelling.

"And [mention] when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, "O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of God to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad." But when he came to them with clear evidences, they said, "This is obvious magic."
— Sahih International

A few Muslim commentators, such as David Benjamin Keldani (1928), have argued the theory that the original Koine Greek used was periklytos, meaning 'famed, illustrious, or praiseworthy', rendered in Arabic as Aḥmad (another name of Muhammad), and that this was substituted by Christians with parakletos. There are currently no known Greek manuscripts with this reading (all extant Greek manuscripts read παράκλητος parakletos), although the earliest manuscript evidence available is from the 3rd century.

A Jewish scholar, Dr. Faydra Shapiro, writes a lovely commentary:
"Looking at the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, of course, the word does not exist, because, well, it’s written in Hebrew. However, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew text from well before Jesus’ time, the word does indeed appear. And we also see it in the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew text from the first century. So the followers of Jesus would not have been like “Para-whaaat?” but would have already been familiar with the term and its connotations.
...

So when the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus heard the word “Paraclete” they would not have thought “it’s all Greek to me” but rather immediately would have heard all of these biblical associations together in a kind of symphony: of profound comfort during a time of perceived abandonment, of an intermediary who stands between you and another helping to increase understanding, of someone standing alongside and advocating on your behalf."

A kind of symphony.

SatStats

 

Teaching is a labor-intensive service industry for which it is difficult to increase productivity. Thus, the price of education rises over time, the Baumol effect.

Could online teaching reverse this?

***

Instead, plans focused on protecting the most vulnerable but trying to keep society as a whole up and running. What set Sweden apart was that it stuck to that plan, and from a Swedish perspective, it looked like it was the rest of the world that was engaging in a risky, unprecedented experiment.--Johan Norberg, “Sweden during the Pandemic: Pariah or Paragon?,” Cato Policy Analysis, No. 959, August 29, 2023.

***

Page 195 of the 1962 Gateway edition of University of Georgia economist David McCord Wright’s 1951 book, Capitalism:

The attitude toward capitalism taken in this book is simply that, as long as most people accept its basic requirements, it is on balance the most workable method of getting continued growth, change, opportunity, and democracy in a relatively peaceful manner. We are not trying to maintain that the system is perfect….

***


SatStats

Like many other species, humans contain the proteins (cryptochromes) to detect magnetic fields, but our brains don’t have a way to decode the information.

There's a sci-fi story there.

***

Response rates of major economic surveys are falling, making economic data hard to trust.

***

China’s total fertility rate declined very little following the implementation of the One Child Policy (OCP) in 1979/1980, but then fell sharply, by more than one-third, during the early 1990s. In this paper, we propose that strengthening bureaucratic incentives under the “One Vote Veto” (OVV) policy, which strictly prohibited career promotion for adherence failure, was necessary for more “effective” implementation of the OCP—and for its delayed impact on fertility. We use provincial variation in OVV implementation to estimate event study regression inputs needed to build actual and counterfactual sequential multi-decrement fertility life tables, finding that the policy explains 46% of China’s total fertility rate decline during the 1990s, driving it below replacement level. Use of intrauterine devices (IUDs, the most prevalent form of modern contraception in China) that was “recommended” by party officials increased by 133% under the policy, a relative increase more than four times as large as the increase in “voluntary” use. Overall, our paper suggests that population policy made a larger contribution to low fertility in China than suggested by past research. More generally, our paper highlights the central role of aligning bureaucratic incentives with public policy objectives, even in a centrally-planned economy like China’s.--a paper

***

The common ancestor of vertebrates had four cones in their eyes, but when all mammals went nocturnal, they lost two of the cones. Then some primates, including the ancestor of all humans, re-evolved a third cone. And evolution is still occurring: some women have four cones in their eyes and can see thousands of colors nobody else can.

***

The concept of moral decline—people today are less moral than years past and future generations will be less moral than the present one—is a belief that became widespread in 1949 and is now dominant in nearly every country.

***

Shipping goods with a value less than $800 in the US (150 EUR in Europe) is import duty-free – something Chinese firms like Temu and Shein have been taking advantage of, accounting for an estimated 30% of such “de-minimis” shipments last year.

***

Birds are evolving smaller eyes to adapt to the brightness of cities at night. For two species, the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, the eyes of birds in San Antonio are 5% smaller than their rural counterparts.

***

The threshold for identifying as African American is 28% of African DNA

***

USCIS data show that the number of O-1A visas awarded in the first year of the revised guidance jumped by almost 30% The number of STEM EB-2 visas after a ‘national interest’ waiver shot up by 55%.

***

There’s a strong geographic correlation between several human and animal behaviors, including distances traveled, population density, male parental involvement, age of first reproduction, food hoarding, and even divorce.

A sociologist is shocked. Shocked!

***

When women talk to each other, they face each other. But when men talk to each other, they stand at an average angle of 120 degrees. When men face each other while talking, it’s because they’re about to fight.

***

The AEA leadership is overwhelmingly drawn from a small group of elite, private research universities—in the sense that its leaders were educated at these universities and, to a lesser degree, employed by them. What is less well-known is that for much of the past 70 years, the AEA leadership has been drawn predominantly from just three universities—Harvard, MIT, and Chicago.

***

The presence of women’s tears reduces aggression in men by 43.7%. One does wonder how that study was done.

***

87% of companies with revenues above $100m are private.

***

Human fingers can detect objects as small as 13 nanometers. If your finger was as large as the Earth, you could sense the size difference between a house and a car.

Counterrevolutionaries of the Regency

On this day:
1430
Siege of Compiègne: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne.
1498
Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy, on the orders of Pope Alexander VI.
1533
The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.
1934
American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.
1934
The Auto-Lite Strike culminates in the “Battle of Toledo”, a five-day melée between 1,300 troops of the Ohio National Guard and 6,000 picketers.
1939
The U.S. Navy submarine USS Squalus sinks off the coast of New Hampshire during a test dive, causing the death of 24 sailors and two civilian technicians. The remaining 32 sailors and one civilian naval architect are rescued the following day.
1945
World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, commits suicide while in Allied custody.
1948
Thomas C. Wasson, US Consul-General assassinated in Jerusalem.

***

A 27-year-old woman was shot by security guards after she drove erratically onto the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters complex in Langley, Va., early Thursday and ignored their attempts to stop her, according to people briefed on the episode.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. described it only as a “security incident.” The woman, whose name has not been released, was believed to have been under the influence when she drove onto C.I.A. property around 4 a.m. She was shot when police fired at her vehicle to try to stop her, according to the people briefed on the matter, who added that her injuries were not life-threatening.--from NYT. Other reports say she was not shot and did not get onto the grounds.

***

Did the Pirates really give up Ortiz and two other pitchers for a platoon player?

***

OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd is in talks to sell the porn-driven company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

***

A quote from a Biden cabinet secretary in “Original Sin”: “I’ve never seen a situation like this before, with so few people having so much power. They would make huge economic decisions without calling [Treasury] Secretary [ Janet] Yellen.”

***

America has created a free, equal, and productive multiracial/ethnic nation. Are there others?

***

Counterrevolutionaries of the Regency

The chaotic Democratic Party is looking for a landing strip. One of the dumbest is that Jill Biden is Lady Macbiden, eager to continue the incompetent Biden presidency so she could go to parties. This is like arguing somebody should have diagnosed Biden's prostate cancer. That might be true, but it is not what is wrong.

What is wrong is that a group of political opportunists saw an empty shell of a man whom they could prop up like a ventriloquist dummy, sidestep the voters' wishes, and advance their personal political views, antithetical to the nation's very creation and nature. That is not provocative, or unusual, or abusive, or a health care question.

That is a coup. A coup.

Interestingly, we do not know who these rebels are. But we have certainly identified the ineffectual guys who raised hell on January 6th, guys who never dreamed of subverting the nation as these fifth columnists did with ease.

And without guilt. Why? Because they think they know better than the electorate. Like the European aristocracy, they feel ordained with insight and a true vision. And, coincidentally, that vision says they should run everything. Save the people from their inherent failures. The enemies of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson. The idols of the court sycophants. Pre-Revolutionaries. Lawbreakers. Fifth columnists.

Traitors.

The Potemkin Presidency

On this day:

334 BC
The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.
1377
Pope Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English theologian John Wycliffe.
1455
Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.
1826
HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage.
1856
Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas (“Bleeding Kansas”).
1968
The nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
2011
An EF5 Tornado strikes the US city of Joplin, Missouri, killing up to 161 people. It is the single deadliest US tornado since modern record-keeping began in 1950.

***

Two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC have died following a shooting near the Capital Jewish Museum after an event discussing how to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The embassy has named Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram as the victims. The pair planned to get married.

***

Juan Soto, the 26-year-old New York Mets star, was greeted by his old fans of the crosstown New York Yankees with their backs to him. He was then accused of not running out ground balls before rumors swirled that he was antagonizing the locker room by taking a private jet with his family instead of traveling with the team.
Against the Red Sox on Wednesday, Soto seemingly refused to swing the bat through his first three at-bats. He struck out each time, rare for a player lauded for his plate discipline.

***

"Unlike many others at Harvard, I have no dramatic cancellation, or intellectual persecution, or struggle session to report. I stopped teaching at Harvard last year primarily because of its anti-truth-seeking culture, radical left-wing bias, racial and gender discrimination, and prevailing anti-intellectualism, which made continued participation a poor use of time. There are exceptions, but on the whole, Harvard has strayed from its foundational mission of unbiased truth-seeking and has become ideologically driven, too often resembling a secular church or a partisan think tank. The university’s culture and practices prioritize ideological conformity over open inquiry and debate, suppressing dissenting viewpoints and compromising academic freedom. This shift undermines the core values of a secular university and poses a threat to the integrity of academia and broader society."--Omar Sultan Haque in City Journal

***

The Potemkin Presidency

"Regency" refers to a period when a nation is governed by a substitute, in place of its rightful ruler. This occurs when an heir to the throne is too young to assume the role or an existing ruler is too impaired.

In Europe, it refers specifically to the United Kingdom from 1811 to 1820, when the Prince of Wales (later George IV) acted as regent because of his father's mental illness, and to France, from 1715 to 1723, when Philip, Duke of Orleans, ruled France because Louis XV was too young to rule. ("The minority of Louis XV.")

America had a regency during the Biden presidency, but it can't be named because we, the American citizens, do not know who was substituting for the man who was elected.

America, the nation of Washington and Jefferson and Madison, Lincoln and Whitman, Concord and Gettysburg, America has a Regency!

"everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

...

Surely some revelation is at hand;"

The question is not what has happened to America's government; the question is what has happened to America's citizens?

Treason

On this day:
1856
Lawrence, Kansas, is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
1863
American Civil War: The Union Army succeeds in closing off the last escape route from Port Hudson, Louisiana, in preparation for the coming siege.
1871
French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting. By the close of “Bloody Week” some 20,000 communards have been killed and 38,000 arrested.
1924
University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a “thrill killing”.
1927
Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

***

Early-life sugar rationing reduced diabetes and hypertension risk by about 35% and 20%, respectively, and delayed disease onset by 4 and 2 years. Protection was evident with in-utero exposure and increased with postnatal sugar restriction, especially after six months, when solid foods likely began. In-utero sugar rationing alone accounted for about one-third of the risk reduction.

***

amphibian(n.)

"one of the class of animals between fishes and reptiles, having gills and living in water in the early stage of life, later living on land," 1835; from amphibian (adj.). Amphibia was used in this sense from c. 1600.
1640s, "combining two qualities; having two modes of life," especially "living both on land and in water," from Latinized form of Greek amphibios "having a double life; living on land and in water"  
before a vowel amph-, word-forming element meaning "on both sides, of both kinds; on all sides, all around," from Greek amphi (prep., adv.) "round about, on both sides of, all around; about, regarding," which is cognate with Latin ambi-, both from PIE root *ambhi- "around."

Its background is similar to amphitheater and ambiguous.

***

Treason

How will the Biden government be remembered? How will it sit in the pantheon of American administrations? 

Management of political image is not new. Governments routinely create a false image of themselves to influence their citizens. Roosevelt's paralysis was never shown. Kennedy's pathological sexual behaviors were both known to the press and unrevealed.

That is to say, the public is constantly manipulated. This is usually cosmetic, to improve our opinion of these people we have voted for. They want to remain in power and advance their causes.

The Wilson episode is different. Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in office and was non compos mentis, of unsound mind. This is a defense in the case of a criminal act; it is not a reasonable state for the leader of the free world. And the geniuses who wrote the foundational work for the country anticipated this very thing. 

The Wilson government hid Wilson's mental failures. Essentially, they took the government over--despite there being a constitutionally mandated option for them--and ran the government themselves.

A coup.

This Biden episode is far worse. The Wilson crime was reactive. This Biden event may have been planned. This may have been a conspiratorial effort to divert the power of government from a vacant candidate into unelected hands in order to redirect the nation.

This threat to the integrity of the government, the very foundation of the government, was not seen as a crisis; it was seen as an opportunity, a breach in the constitutional dam restraining man's tyrannical tendencies to exploit.

That is a coup. Treason.

The questions here are the most important since the Civil War. Already, they are being muddled and diluted by partisan complaints and distracting peripheral factors involved in Biden's incompetence.

The Press cannot be relied upon. If the people accept this theft of power complacently, the nature of this nation will be forever changed.

Democracy's DNA

On this day:

325
The First Council of Nicea – the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church is held.
526
An earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.
1217
The Second Battle of Lincoln is fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.
1956
In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean
1983
First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

***

Moody's stripped the U.S. of its last triple-A credit rating late Friday. “Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” the firm said in its report.


***

The corruption trial of retired Adm. Robert Burke concluded Monday with him being found guilty of four criminal counts, including bribery charges, by a jury in Washington, D.C., his attorney and others in the courtroom confirmed to Military.com.
Burke, once the second-highest ranking leader in the Navy, was charged by federal prosecutors last year on allegations that he directed a lucrative Navy contract to an executive training company, Next Jump, in 2021 while serving as a four-star admiral. The company later hired him in 2022 for a starting salary of $500,000 per year.

***

Democracy's DNA

The discussions over the silliness and corruption in the American government should be put aside.

In July 2022, then-President Joe Biden spoke at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts. The topic was new steps to combat climate change, which he called “an emergency,” and similar hyperbole we Americans have grown to love and ignore. In the middle of it, talking about growing up in Delaware, apparently a cancer belt, he said this:

“And guess what? The first frost, you knew what was happening. You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window, That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up (with) have cancer and why can — for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

The White House explained that Biden was referring to his skin cancer, but the recent prostate cancer diagnosis raises more questions. This is a longstanding disease, and Biden certainly has had it for several years. Particularly, during his presidency. So, if anyone had any hesitancy about seeing Biden's serious disability while president, this offers more clarification.

The specifics of the disease are distractions.

To be clear, prostate cancer makes you weak; it does not make you stupid. BUT...prostate cancer therapy interferes with both mobility and cognition, the two most obvious Biden impairments, and this might stimulate debate over whether or not prostate cancer therapy was started while Biden was president.

But how Biden became incompetent is beside the point.

A mentally impaired president. So profoundly impaired, he was unable to perform his duties or meet his heavy responsibilities. He could barely walk. With an additional serious illness. These circumstances were denied and concealed by the press and the president's party for the advancement of their political organization and at the expense of the nation.

Watergate was an abuse of presidential power. A man twisted his office for his own selfish personal advantage. But it was a personal failure, a cipher compared to this Biden crisis.  

This Biden crime is a gigantic failure of the system, of the very representative process we all regard. The Biden cronies created the same arrogant, self-absorbed, self-appointed, dismissive class that inspired the original revolution--and all the subsequent failed imitations.

Does the nature of man's leaders simply not allow for the realization of all men's aspirations?

A situation of risk to the country, a situation the constitution anticipated and prepared for, was disguised and diverted by those responsible for its solution. They will be rightly cursed by history. But how will we resolve the present? Is this failure evidence that this system can not work, that it asks more national integrity of its leaders than they are willing to cede? Will leaders and the press, even in high-minded democracies, fail the nation and its ideals to advance their own tiny, personal gains or comforts?  

Is this the best a democracy can do?

This is a crisis. It might be a disaster.

Diagnosis vs Illness

On this day:

1536
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.
1568
Queen Elizabeth I of England orders the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots.
1649
An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years.
1780
New England’s Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.
1848
Mexican-American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.
1961
Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

***


A report published two years ago by American think tank RAND Corporation, with close ties to the Pentagon, said China's defense industry had exported malfunctioning and defective military equipment in recent years — leaving countries short of what's needed for their security while also draining military budgets

***

The big data planned economy is a paradox. Big data is the result of countless spontaneous actions by people in the market economy. If the planned economy is implemented so that every person follows government decrees, then big data itself will disappear!--Zhang

***

Diagnosis vs Illness

The most important man in the West occupying the most important position in the West had, during his tenure, a common and easily diagnosed cancer which, by all modern scientific assumptions, was chronic and undiscovered.

There are many observations one could make here--most quite ugly--but this is a harder question than it appears.

Prostate cancer is common, and its incidence rises with age. It is biologically present in 30% of 50-65 year olds and 40% of men in their 70s. Its percentage in 80-year-olds is probably higher. The problem with prostate cancer is that it does not behave like a cancer; it just looks like one. And when it behaves like a cancer, it usually does so in slow motion.

The number of men who will benefit from active intervention for the disease is close to the number who will suffer serious consequences from the search for the disease. Most tread carefully in this area and usually do not search for the disease in men over 70.

It would be tempting to say that Biden's keepers were ignoring the man and polishing the shell. They probably were, but likely not in this instance.