The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Alysa Liu survived hard work and no drama to win Olympic figure skating gold, the first U.S. woman to do so in over two decades.

***

Pro-Trump ads are flooding the TV, sponsored by Homeland Security. The government is advertising for the government.

***

Nearly one in four adults in that generation currently identify as something other than heterosexual. This is in contrast to older Americans, among whom LGBTQ+ identification remains relatively uncommon.

Pick the sci-fi plot you like best.

***

Government debt is projected under the CBO’s baseline scenario to balloon from nearly $31 trillion today to $56 trillion over the next decade.

If that is true, why is it not a topic of conversation, an interview subject, or an election issue?

What are the options to deal with it?

***

The U.S. trade deficit hit a near-historic high of $901 billion last year.

***

The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Every so often, the popular world teaches a lesson. Science is harder than people say. Dogs that 'never bite' sometimes do. Bread usually falls jelly-side down.

The recent American display at the Munich Security Conference was such a teaching experience. The Pretty Girl Representative (PGR) showed up for no good reason and behaved like a moron. When asked, she did not know the basic geography of her continent, did not know the dramatic origin of the modern American horse, and was unable to say anything beyond "Uhh....." to a simple — and expected — political question. Watching this stirred a feeling of recognition. What was this?

It was a replay of something many teenagers experienced: a friend who showed up at an uncle's business for a token interview before getting a summer job. It was an audition where the required qualities were assumed.

For the nephew, the required qualities were being a blood relative and not drooling. For the PGR, the qualities were...not drooling. The PGR was auditioning for the international stage. She has been a successful American politician, and she was the PGR. She just needed a nod of approval, and she would move on.

Her failure is beside the point. The real question is what she was doing there in the first place? How did the PGR advance to be considered at this level? It makes you think she was picked somehow in advance, sometime earlier, that let her onto the scene. If that sounds a little too conspiratorial, remember that after she exploded on the audition stage, she rushed in tears to call her uncle NYT.

 

So AOC thinks Venezuela is south of the equator. Probably thinks all South Americans are alike.

***

What's with Netanyahu's low-profile visit to the U, S. recently? Avoiding the long arm of the UN court? A great idea from Kathy A.: They're planning heavy-duty Iran action, but they don't trust their domestic electronic security.

***

What would happen to a farmer who polluted a waterway a fraction of the degree the government has polluted the Potomac?

***

The president of a Florida insurance brokerage firm and the CEO of a marketing company were sentenced Wednesday to 20 years each in prison for leading a sprawling, $233 million Affordable Care Act fraud scheme

***

Outrage. Surrender. Despair.

Overwhelming national and personal debt. Governments that can't prevent fires or rebuild after the damage. People who immigrate here because the filthy streets and rivers look just like home.

Growing evidence that what people do is ineffective and that government is a foolish backup plan.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote of the lassitude that could arise in a nation. He described “an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.” That multitude would be governed by an “immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.” The people, in such a condition, would be reduced to enervation: “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

A people that has lost hope, and has retreated from fractious, risky individualism to the comfort of centralized power; a people that has surrendered its autonomy in the mistaken belief that its autonomy was always an illusion. Once they begin to believe that their choices aren’t their own, that broad and powerful systems are to blame for their individual problems—then they are ripe for something far worse. They are ripe for tyranny.

Enervation eventually gives way to frustration, and then to rage, as soft despotism fails to achieve utopia. Then the people are left with a stark choice: a reversion to freedom, or the embrace of autocracy. As de Tocqueville concluded, “The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.”

Little Chicks Up Front

“Everything must change for everything to remain the same.”--The Leopard

*

Norway has won the last two winter Olympics and is leading this one. They have 5 million people.

*

A Swedish Olympic ski jumper is afraid of heights and is getting therapy.

*

President Trump’s private company has filed for trademarks for airports not yet named after himself—setting up the possibility he could profit from what has historically been an honor in name only.

*

Johnson, the American speed skater, started skating in in-line tournaments. She's a materials engineer.

*

So, the representative government passes a law about illegal immigration. Many people think this is artificial and should not be enforced because the land was previously occupied by another group of people who invaded it earlier. Why their invasion is more meaningful than the European one is not explained.

*

There are 100,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America in the world. The world.

*


Little Chicks Up Front

There is a law passed by America's representative government that places certain requirements on people who wish to immigrate to America. People who ignore or subvert these laws are sought out and arrested by immigration police and deported back to their home country. This behavior is typical of most organized national cultures.

Recently, things have changed. A small number of people have decided to oppose the actions of these immigration police. Keep in mind, these are American citizens sworn by the immigration officials to enforce American laws passed by America's elected representatives. The self-appointed judges block, obstruct, attack, and, if possible, prevent the enforcement of the law. Sometimes they attack the police physically or with weapons. One can imagine the danger of injecting oneself into that dangerous interface between police and criminal. Many people have been injured and several killed in these meddled confrontations.

Sort of reverse vigilanteism.

Astonishingly, this behavior has been supported by many local and state officials. Local politicians are encouraging lawbreaking. One can only wonder which of their laws deserve violent opposition, which don't, and what they would do should the approval of lawbreaking culturally spread.

Cries for general strikes have been raised, and students from elementary and high schools are being urged to participate in The Resistance. Children are being asked to skip school to join the protests. And their teachers are encouraging them to do so. Politicians, political leaders, and educators are encouraging children--children--to place themselves between law enforcement and its objective.

Who said the Americans are uninterested in caring for their children?

 

Arrogance, Stupidity, and the Limits of Ambition

American-born Olympic freestyle skier Eileen Gu has made headlines for her talent and for her decision to compete under the Chinese flag — a choice National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said is, though “not in the legal sense, of course . . . adjacent to treason.”

***

Right now, there are about 70 million white-collar workers in the United States.

***

Arrogance, Stupidity, and the Limits of Ambition

Who invites whom to Munich's Security Conference? And why? Can anyone just show up? Could I go and talk about baseball? AOC looked like a moron. Newsome looked like a social climber. Fortunately, Rubio was consoling for poor Europe.

In any sensible world, AOC in Munich would be her Dan Quale "potato moment." She could not have looked dumber. She, our Latina heroine, did not know where Venezuela was. Then, when asked a routine question about Taiwan, she blubbered for 10 seconds before denying the question's validity.

Most unsettling, she knew, presumably, that she was at a world conference on security. While it may just be a tax-funded good time, she certainly could have anticipated discussion about several of the world's top four or five concerns. But she didn't. She did not bother to study, even superficially, the problems she was auditioning to solve. Because she is: 1. entitled to the position, 2. pretty, 3. a popular minority, and 4. favored by the Press.

It will be interesting to see the response of her handlers/champions. Even in America, high cheekbones and a good jawline should only get you so far. (Melania aside.) Ambition should have some quality ceiling. We'll see if the culture--and the Press--have any discriminating scruples.

The Constitutional Flaw

On this day:

1503
Disfida di Barletta – famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
1542
Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1692
Massacre of Glencoe: About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
1935
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
1945
World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.
2000
The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

***

Buffett: On Focus. The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

***

The Pirates' All-Star reliever Elroy Face has passed away at 97.

***

The parody continues. Nevada is the only state where people can legally purchase sex, and now 'sex workers' at one of the state’s oldest brothels are fighting to become the nation’s first to be unionized.

***

The Constitutional Flaw

For the last year, the winds of lies, innuendo, and manipulative conspiracies directed against Trump have reaped their poetic whirlwind.
A man, and a political group, who have been maligned and ridiculed by a small elite for as long as they can remember, have the upper hand for the first time since Reagan.

Jacoby summarizes it. "In just the past few weeks, the American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US senator — a retired Navy captain and combat veteran — for reminding service members they must not obey illegal orders. He posted a grotesquely cruel message on social media jeering the deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. He sent his press secretary to warn CBS News that unless it broadcast a presidential interview complete and unedited, we’ll sue your ass off.” He deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, then announced that the United States was now “in charge” of that country, and “we’re going to be taking oil.” He summoned Justice Department attorneys to berate them for not moving fast enough to prosecute his critics and opponents. And when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, the White House instantly pronounced her a “domestic terrorist” and refused to open an investigation into the shooting."

Jacoby calls this vengeful thuggishness, and to some degree, he's right. But how much Federal rummaging through your wife's underwear can a guy take? How much journalistic-approved lying vitriol are you supposed to tolerate?

In El Salvador, not much; in America, a lot.

This country is not an accident of geography, not a religious or ethnic redoubt. It is a philosophical creation, an embodiment of ideas and principles long debated. It is complicated because its citizens do not recognize each other in the street by their color, their physiogonomy, or their religious apparel. They are united by belief, a belief that, until recently, any man in history could only dream of. But there is a change in the country, a change that Trump does not epitomize but only represents. It is an essential defect in the Constitution.

The Constitution makes an assumption, an assumption of a precondition in its citizens and its leaders. Virtue. And the preference for the betterment of the nation over the whims of the few. 

These last years have revealed a loss of virtue. People do not take the Constitution's morality seriously.

Many of our problems--particularly foreign ones--are missteps. Bad judgment. With good intent, they will self-correct. But the real problems that threaten the nation are simple moral laxity and malice. A disregard of-- or overt animosity to--the guiding principles of the country--and how they impact the very health and well-being of the nation.

How could the national debt not be a front-page discussion topic? The topic? How could the Biden Regency — the complete takeover of the executive branch by a small cabal — not be in the daily conversation? How could Obama amend environmental legislation without a word of objection? How could Trump's gratuitous insults and chest-thumping--however gratifying to those who have been ignored, belittled, and insulted for so long--not be rejected? 

How have the politics of El Salvador immigrated here?

When the president was asked in a recent interview whether he recognizes any checks on his powers, he was his direct self in response: “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

The fatal flaw of the U.S. Constitution is revealed. The law of the land must start with reverence for it. Its virtues. It's not a tool in a shed; it is a relic in a tabernacle. And it is worthless when it takes itself more seriously than do the people it is supposed to guide.

 

Señor Bunny

 

On this day:

1554
A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.
1593
Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
1689
The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1999
President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2001
NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

***

“We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.”-- Sharma, on AI

***

1976 Senate special committee charged with emergency powers reform was appalled that four national emergencies were in effect at that time, yet “today we live under 50 active national emergencies, several of which date back decades and all of which unlock broad executive powers—under IEEPA mainly but also several other US laws—that are typically reserved to Congress or delegated to the president in a much narrower fashion.” --Lincicome

***

Greenland's strategic importance—missile defense, Arctic access, and denial of Chinese or Russian influence—is real and longstanding.
Why must it be confrontational now?

***

Señor Bunny

The NFL made history with the Superbowl show in two ways. For the first time, it had a performer who sang in a language that about 85 percent of the U.S. population doesn’t speak, a victory for gratuitous inscrutability. (Were none of the stars who sing in English available?)

Also, for the first time ever, the NFL gave its stage to a performer who sought to put the country in its place. So often, inept builders resort to tearing down their surroundings, seeing the relative change as an enhancement of their position. So Mr. Bunny sought to undermine the US claim to be called “America.” That is, to make America generic. To make the world's first written democratic republic one of many faux democracies. And, in the New World, to make freedom geographical. As Obama said, American exceptionalism was a provincial thought. After all, aren't we all El Salvadore?

To think that, once upon a time, the likes of Prince and Katy Perry simply aimed to put on a good show.

In an echo of singer Billie Eilish inveighing at the Grammys against America stealing land, Mr. Bunny said of his language proficiency in a pre–Super Bowl press conference, “English is not my first language. But it’s okay; it’s not America’s first language either.” Like so many bumper stickers, this sounds clever until you give it a moment’s thought. Mr. Bunny’s first language, Spanish, was a colonial imposition in the Western Hemisphere beginning in 1492. If the rapper wanted to associate himself with languages before this wave of European settlement, he’d have to sing in, say, Nahuatl or Algonquian.

The Spanish language indeed got a head start over English in what’s now the United States, when Ponce de Leon showed up on the Florida peninsula in 1513. But so what? English speakers forged a permanent presence at Jamestown in 1607. They then populated the Eastern Seaboard, won their independence, stood up enduring institutions of representative government, and made English the most important and widely spoken language in the world.

That the country they founded goes by “America” is an affront to elements in Latin America and on the left. They consider it insulting to everyone else living in North America or South America. Aren’t they Americans, too?

Certainly not everyone feels this way. The Canadians have as little interest in being called “Americans” as they do in becoming the 51st state. It is people hypersensitive to any Yanqui imperialism, including “linguistic imperialism,” who complain about us hogging the name “America.”

Sad to say, they are late to the game. Americans began calling themselves Americans in the 1700s to set themselves apart from the British. An anonymous writer in the Virginia Gazette in March 1776 referred to “the united states of America,” and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence said it was a statement of “the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (subsequently changed to “the thirteen united States of America”).

Once we were the U.S.A., the question became how to refer to our people. As “United States men and women”? Various solutions were tried out before we settled on “American,” which now denotes not just our country but a set of clearly defined cultural traits. And political concepts.

It’s bizarre that the NFL had a half-time show that questioned this understanding, although in the league’s defense, surely, few people picked up on it — or understood anything else said.

And why do the Spanish-speaking countries want to be named after an Italian cartographer anyway? Maybe it's just an attempt to ride on the success of others.--much from NR

Sound, Fury, et al

 

On this day:

660 BC
Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.
55
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.
1531
Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.
1861
American Civil War: United States House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.
1978
Censorship: the People’s Republic of China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

***

There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. -James Thurber, writer, and cartoonist (8 Dec 1894-1961)


***

Until 2009, India was poorer than Pakistan on a per capita basis. India truly became richer than Pakistan after 2009 and since then it hasn’t looked back. If trends continue for a decade, India will be more than twice as rich as Pakistan soon…
So why has India pulled ahead in GDP per capita? The reason is simple. Pakistan’s high fertility has driven population growth faster than India’s. In 1952 Pakistan had about one-tenth of India’s population; by 2025 it had grown to nearly one-seventh.

***

The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury's mother was Churchill’s personal secretary, married a businessman, had an affair with Churchill’s other secretary, and Justin was the result (he didn’t learn this until he was 60!). He went to Cambridge, had a mystical experience that converted him to Christianity, worked for an oil company in Nigeria for 11 years, then quit to get ordained as a priest. He says he can speak in tongues – “It’s just a routine part of spiritual discipline – you choose to speak and you speak a language that you don’t know, it just comes” – and has written a book called “Can Companies Sin?”. He lost his archbishop position last month for the most stereotypical possible reason – failed to investigate sex abuse by a church leader who was a friend of his. (Wiki)

***

Sound, Fury, et al

10 days of speculation about the missing Guthrie woman. 10 days of preempted programs explaining what is not known. This is a metaphor of modern America, of politicians, political parties, Hall of Fame voting, and things like the Epstein Files.

Suspicion. Guesswork. Possibilities.

This has become the substitute for information in this country, what we do when we circle some worrisome thing...at a respectable distance. Until we start to sell the nooses.

Breaking News: El Paso airport is shut down for 10 days. One TV expert suspects a "Pearl Harbor-type event."

China/US Economies

On this day:
1258
Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
1306
In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn, his leading political rival, sparking revolution in the Scottish Wars of Independence
1567
An explosion destroys the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland. The second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley is found strangled, in what many believe to be an assassination.
1933
In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf, killing him.
1996
The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov for the first time.
2009
The communication satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collide in orbit, destroying both.

***

Common sense tells us that restraints on business are generally bad, that red tape strangles enterprise, that taxes on goods in transit will reduce the volume of transactions, that wage earners will suffer if the things they buy are made artificially dear, that legislation to increase the cost of living and production must be especially disastrous to a populous manufacturing and commercial country like ours.--Hirst

***

A newly released federal memo reveals Ohio’s richest man accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein stole or misappropriated several hundred million dollars from him over their decades-long financial relationship.

***

The U.S. attack on Iran was shocking and unprecedented. Why is there so little talk about it?

***

China/US Economies

Analysis of commercial and political patterns suggests China’s broader AI ecosystem operates according to a different logic than the “US-China AI race” framing implies.

First, development and deployment remain private-led, with state participation filling infrastructure and application gaps rather than competing directly for frontier capabilities.

Second, frontier developers are pursuing diverse technical and commercial strategies rather than converging on LLMs as the path to AGI. The data shows specialization in modalities, vertical domains, and applications. This reflects a market where companies are optimizing for deployability and commercial viability, not just pushing frontier capabilities.

Third, China’s AI ecosystem is actively shaped by local policy competition and fiscal incentives, rather than solely by market forces or central planning. This creates geographic inequality but also reveals how innovation actually gets governed in practice through decentralized competition for activity and talent. It also raises concerns of potential resource waste, especially given that many local governments are currently short of money.

This assessment (from somewhere) emphasizes local, private incentives and less central control (although they influence incentives), more free markets and less command economies. The strength of the West has always been its freedom to evolve, so China may be woodenly adapting here, allowing some risk. Compare this to Trump's recent demand that defense contractors freeze dividends and buybacks until their inventories rise.

We are back to the old arguments. A government, in the words of Zohran Mamdani, that can “replace the rigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism”; a government, in the words of Adrian Vermeule, that will “enjoy a capacious scope of public discretion to promote the common good.”

But there is no "warmth" in government, no "discretion."

The Constitution creates political structures and then limits them within those structures because self-restraint in politics does not exist.

Vaudvillain

On this day:

1555
Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake.
1775
American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.
1825
After no presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams President of the United States.
1861
American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.
1942
Year-round Daylight saving time is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.
1964
The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers.
1965
Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam.

1971
Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing

***

February 5 saw the release of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex.
What makes these new models so important is the fact that much of the programming work behind them was done by artificial intelligence rather than humans. Anthropic insiders are claiming, for instance, that effectively 100 percent of the code behind their products is written by Claude itself.

***

Jordon Hudson — Bill Belichick’s girlfriend — was photographed wearing an “Orchids of Asia Day Spa” shirt while standing next to the former Patriots head coach at the UNC-Duke basketball game on Saturday night.

***

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has shut off Russian pirated access on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The issue has fuelled anger in Moscow that, four years into the war, the Russian army remains heavily dependent on western technology.

***

Elon Musk says SpaceX is shifting focus from Mars to a moon city.

***


Vaudvillain


Epstein’s attorneys have formally demanded that the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) release all records related to any potential intelligence ties involving the disgraced financier.

There is anxiety in the air.

The Epstein Files don't show much. There are a lot of rich creeps, but we knew that. There are creeps, and a lot of money just makes them worse.

Epstein information must be incomplete. Crucial information must be withheld. Blood sacrifice may be involved. The information we get is curated for the benefit of a cabal. Epstein himself may be alive.

ICE agents are not over-responding to being obstructed and attacked while performing their rightful job; they are part of a larger, unadmitted Nazification program in the U.S. The rising debt in the U.S. is not stupid, weak, and self-indulgent; it is part of a plan by persons unknown to undermine the currency and to leave them wealthy. No election is valid. Scientific studies are manipulated to benefit Pharma. The COVID disaster was a trial run.

This kind of thinking stems from the same creative center in all of us, the source of caution, suspicion, and poetry. Our need for order, explanation, and creativity.

And our regard for omerta. The hard, defensive shell of the outsider.

What we're seeing is a staggering loss of trust. The reason is our leaders' disregard — not of the truth — of us. We have moved from the Biden Regency of total disregard of reality, truth, and adherence to our basic legal concepts to Trump's vaudevillian buffoonery. We, the citizens, have become outsiders.

Tolstoy thinks this element in us is funny. In War and Peace, Pierre Bezukhov fiddles with the math and “discovers” that, when rendered into French and assigned various numerical values, the letters of his own name add up to 666, the “number of the beast” from the book of Revelation. How, exactly, he was connected to the events foretold in the Bible, Pierre did not know, but “he did not doubt that connection for a moment” and reveled in the knowledge that he was somehow involved in affairs of world-historical importance.

But it ain't all funny. Official, outrageous lies and distancing of the public carry a social risk and deserve a name.

I propose "Vaudevillain."

 

 

Sunday/Flavor

On this day:

1587
Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.
1904
Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War.
1942
World War II: Japan invades Singapore.
1952
Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom.
1962
Charonne massacre. Nine trade unionists are killed by French police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police.
1963
Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
1983
The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia’s second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 m deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.

***

Can anyone explain the decision to put the vile Obama parody out from the White House?

***

American skier Lindsey Vonn crashed seconds into her downhill Olympic race on Sunday after she decided to compete despite rupturing her left ACL in a prior crash during a World Cup event in the Swiss Alps a week ago.

***

Honey bee colonies across the United States collapsed at the highest rate ever recorded between April 2024 and April 2025. More than half of all managed colonies were lost, with especially severe impacts during winter. The USDA confirmed the findings in a press release, stating that colony collapses had been driven by “virus-infected, miticide-resistant parasitic mites.”

***

Sunday/Flavor

In the gospel today, Christ calls his disciples "the salt of the earth." There is a lot to it. Salt has several connotations of value and meaning. The phrase itself raised an interesting concept: Did the spirituality Christ and his followers were offering add an element to mankind or was it revealing mankind's essence?

Christ is certainly saying that the salt is its own essence, its own common denominator. It cannot be flavored.

And the passage has some unfortunate elements too, especially as an "evolutionary" passage. The Catholic Church has tried to update the language, arguing that the bible is not primarily literature.

Compare the original King James with the more accessible version:

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." (Tough stuff.)

vs.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

How long do you think they debated over "savour" vs. "taste"? And whether to remove "of men?"

There are sacrifices egalitarianism demands.

SatStats

On this Day:

1497
The bonfire of the vanities occurs when supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.
1898
Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'Accuse.
1900
Second Boer War: British troops fail in their third attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.
1986
Twenty-eight years of one-family rule ends in Haiti when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation.
1990
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.

***

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see."--Arthur Schopenhauer


***

The Olympics promises respect we don't always see in popular competitive sports. Or competitive ideas.

***

Vonn is said to have a plateau fracture, the support of the femur. Unbelievable risk at skiing force of up to 6 Gs.

***

Benghazi's been avenged. Any plans for The Liberty?

***


SatStats

Over the past century, the length of Oscar speeches has ballooned, peaking in the 2010s at almost 300 words per speech.

*

Mammals and non-human primates follow a clear scaling of body mass to brain mass. Humanoids break that trend.

*

People know whether or not they want to buy a house in just 27 minutes, but it takes 88 minutes to decide on a couch

*

At Berkeley, as recently as 2015, white male hires accounted for 52.7 percent of new tenure-track faculty; in 2023, they accounted for 21.5 percent. UC Irvine has hired 64 tenure-track assistant professors in the humanities and social sciences since 2020. Just three (4.7 percent) are white men. Of the 59 Assistant Professors in Arts, Humanities and Social Science appointed at UC Santa Cruz between 2020-2024, only two were white men (3 percent).

*

National Debt

A recent report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that interest payments on America’s national debt will surpass $1.5 trillion in 2032 and reach $1.8 trillion by 2035.

According to the Treasury Department, U.S. national debt now stands at $38.56 trillion — and it continues to grow as federal spending outpaces revenue.

So far in fiscal year 2026, the government has already spent about $602 billion more than it has collected.

The interest payments on the national debt exceed the military budget, which is $1 trillion.

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100 South Koreans will have an estimated 15 grandchildren

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Overall, our findings challenge popular narratives and suggest that pet ownership may support, rather than displace, fertility.---a paper

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Planning assistance caused municipalities to build 20% fewer housing units per decade over the 50 years that followed.

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At the end of 2025. Berkshire Hathaway's marketable equity portfolio was valued at about $320 billion, and the business has about $354 billion of cash to deploy on top of that.

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This is the toughest market for PhD economists in recent memory. JOE listings are down 20% from last year. Worse: they are 19% below COVID levels.

Political Couture

On this day:1685
James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II.
1820
The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia.
1952
Elizabeth II becomes the first queen regnant of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms since Queen Victoria upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.
1959
At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
1959
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.
1976
In testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee, Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admits that the company had paid out approximately million in bribes to the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.

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And how much did the global lockdown reduce 2020’s global carbon emissions? By about 6 per cent. It is the largest reduction ever but nowhere close to what would be needed. If we were to meet the Paris Climate Agreement by 2030 just by doing and travelling less, we would need to suffer a pandemic like this every year for the next decade, without allowing us to have any recovery between the pandemics. Which, of course, would lead to an unprecedented social collapse.--norberg

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UFOs, Epstein, Omar's theft--we all know this, but when will the innuendo be separated from the chaff? Or is insincerity the arbiter, and truth will never escape it?

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How could a voter ID law not distinguish Republicans from Democrats to the Republicans' advantage?

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A Russian general serving as deputy head of Russian military intelligence was shot and seriously wounded in Moscow on Friday, officials said – the latest in a series of attacks on top military figures.

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Innuendo Alert:

“Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Senator Wyden wrote.

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The chairman of the new prospective owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins says his company is reportedly in discussions to acquire the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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Political Couture

Among the many declarations of The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is this insight:

“Customary obligations are the same for all States and exist independently regardless of whether a State is a party to the climate change treaties" (para 315). 

That is, it applies to you whether you agree to it or not. Like gravity.

It's one of the ICJ's more than 200 references to 'customary international law' (CIL), which is essentially the unwritten rules that bind the world. They're the rules so basic, they don't need a treaty.

America's own judge on the ICJ, Sarah Cleveland, reiterates this point. And that's particularly intriguing when you recall the US has now twice withdrawn from the Paris Agreement that the world negotiated to try and slow rising temperatures.

So the court (including Cleveland) is basically saying you can withdraw from as many treaties as you like, but your climate obligations remain unchanged at this point. It’s CIL.

This should sound familiar. It's much like Trump's campaign slogan of "It's common sense." The unagreed-upon assumption. The battle cry in the field of opposing opinion.

It's obvious and definitive. 

"It's couture."

Statements and Displays

On this Day:

62
Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.
1576
Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.
1597
A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
1918
SS Tuscania (1914) is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
1918
Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
1937
President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.
1958
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1971
Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission.

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I'm not a perfect guy, but I've done a hellava lot of good for perfect people.--Trump, confessing his sin-eating.

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Today is the anniversary of the loss of The Tybee Bomb, a tribute to those confident in government.

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The Netherlands' Queen Maxima has joined her country's army as a reservist, voicing concern about national security.

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The timing of the Guthrie disappearance--after she was out of the house until late--is curious.

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Statements and Displays

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos garnered a lot of attention, but for the wrong reasons. He proclaimed the ability of “middle powers”—that is, Europe and countries like his own—to stand their ground against America and China, but he mentioned AI only in passing. He had no solution to an immediately pending world where Canada is quite dependent on advanced AI systems from American companies (often, incidentally, developed by Canadian researchers in the U.S.). That is likely to be the next major development in this North American relationship, and it will not increase the relative autonomy of Canada or of any other middle powers.

Carney has been praised for staking out such bold ground and standing up to Trump. The deeper reality is that Carney can “talk back” in the North American partnership because he knows America will defend Canada, including against Russia, no matter what. Most European countries cannot relax in the same manner, and thus, they are often more deferential. What the reactions from Carney and the Europeans show is not any kind of growing independence for the middle powers, but rather a reality where you are either quite tethered to a major power—as Canada is to America—or you live in fear of being abandoned, which is the current status of much of Europe. (from Cowen)

Posuuring need not be insincere. But it may be only wishful. The risk, of course, is that it is deceptive. Symbolic independence has shrinking importance in our world of increasing technical gravity. And sometimes global declarations, like those of Iran and Canada here, are only bluster. And sometimes they are a risk.

Reality is harsh, and unreality is increasingly hazardous. Hitler believed what he said, and many weak-minded followers have since. Russia's overreach in Ukraine was a dangerous underestimation of its victim. And how many stupid homicidal dogmas prowl just beyond the warmth of the sheltering common human campfire?

What will small producers do? What will oil-deficient countries do? AI deficient? Population deficient? They will drift toward survival and some acceptable integrity. The voracious autocracies will prove to be poor partners.

Politics?

On this Day:
960
The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China, which would last more than three centuries
1703
In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master’s death.
1789
George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
1797
The Riobamba earthquake strikes Ecuador, causing up to 40,000 casualties.
1801
John Marshall is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.
1846
The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Utah Territory.
1859
The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt.
1861
American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six break-away U.S. states meet and form the Confederate States of America.
1974
The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California.
2010
The Federal Court of Australia’s ruling in Roadshow Films v iiNet sets a precedent that Internet service providers (ISPs) are not responsible for what their users do with the services the ISPs provide them.

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Legendary investor Ray Dalio warned on Tuesday that the world is “on the brink” of a capital war, amid simmering geopolitical tensions and volatile capital markets.

Speaking to CNBC’s Dan Murphy on stage at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dalio said we are close to teetering into capital war territory — when money is weaponized using measures like trade embargoes, blocking access to capital markets, or using ownership of debt as leverage.

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A mother asked her 13-year-old son Austin to swim four hours through dangerous waters to get help after her family was swept out to sea.

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This note by Michael Brendan Dougherty in NR struck me. 

"I try not to overreact, but there is something about this that gets deep under my skin and unsettles me about my country.

 

Alex Pretti has no more or less dignity than any other human being, looking exactly as he looked. And yet, a photo editor took time — perhaps a decent bit of it — completely changing his skin tone, his beard, and jaw. We have history textbooks that condemn the Stalin regime by showing how the officials altered photos in order to alter the perception of history.
At least those officials could explain themselves — that they were acting under real compulsion, the real threat of execution, exile, or imprisonment by another apparatchik. What is the excuse of Americans in 2026? Why do people volunteer to create this kind of propaganda? Would you want to try to make a public reputation for virtue in a country whose sense-making institutions act like this?"

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Politics?

300,000 children were admitted into the country without an adult or other supervision during the Biden Regency.

Schools closed during COVID. The National Strike includes truancy so students can be in the street.

Elected representatives become wealthy after their election.

Cocaine in the White House.

$9 billion--BILLION--stolen from the taxes in one--ONE--state.

The son of the President, who can honestly be described as a degenerate.

An organized, coordinated effort to keep the President in office by fraud and deception despite his inability to even speak.

A political party with a political pillar encouraging purposeful defiance of the law and its representatives.

Now the former husband of the President's wife has been arrested for murder.

These aren't the Democrats; these are the de Medici. 

Maybe our worst fears are true. Maybe government is only a by-product of an organized crime syndicate.

Double Vision

On this Day:313
Edict of Milan: Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius met at a conference in Milan. They proclaimed a policy of religious freedom, ending the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
1377
More than 2,000 people of the Italian city of Cesena are slaughtered by Papal Troops (Cesena Bloodbath).
1488
Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal lands in Mossel Bay after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first known European to travel so far south.
1637
Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) as sellers could no longer find buyers for their bulb contracts.
1787
Shays’ Rebellion is crushed.
1913
The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.
1943
The USAT Dorchester is sunk by a German U-boat. Only 230 of 902 men aboard survived. The sinking of Dorchester was the worst single loss of American personnel of any American convoy during World War II. Many memorials were established to commemorate the Four Chaplains who famously gave up their life jackets to others
1959
A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa kills Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson and the incident becomes known as The Day the Music Died.
1961
The United States Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.
1966
The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
1971
New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption. Many believe the incident proves that NYPD officers tried to kill him.
1984
John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history’s first embryo transfer, from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth.

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"You talk, my good sir, of employing influence to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be found, or, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. Influence is not government. Let us have a government by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once."--Washington, in a letter to Henry Lee commenting upon the uprising called Shays' Rebellion, which contributed to the Federalist--anti-Federalist argument and led to the Constitutional Convention. It was this rebellion that caused Jefferson to write to James Madison on January 30, 1787, that occasional rebellion serves to preserve freedoms. In a letter to William Stephens Smith on November 13, 1787, Jefferson wrote in his famous, disturbingly detached letter, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

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Charismatic socialists keep trying to sell Americans on the European model.
The unsustainable welfare state means France cannot afford its ambitions to build a self-sufficient military or fully support Ukraine as it fends off Russia.
The bleak conclusion: Politicians in Paris have made promises they can’t keep to a people who are now dependent on government for their livelihoods. Nor can they help others.
Protecting themselves is another question.

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Trump has said the windfall from his tariffs will help cover nearly $6 trillion in costs. That’s over 22 times more than the administration’s own estimates for how much revenue his taxes on imports will generate this year.

All told, for Trump to keep his promises on what tariff revenue would be used for, he’d need them to raise almost $6 trillion this year. The U.S. imported $3.61 trillion in goods last year, so such a number isn’t even possible.

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The nation’s number of white births fell from 52.6 percent in 2016 to 49.6 percent in 2024


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Double Vision

Ours is not a time of great precision.

If you were a journalist at one time in the past, can you attack a church today?

If you have two murderers, one an illegal immigrant, one a native American citizen, will sanctuary cities give the citizen up to the police and protect the illegal immigrant?

Is there a concern about injustice with ICE? There are over 300,000 missing children who have crossed into the country without adults under the Biden Regency. Do they deserve justice? Or, at least, found?

The police are peace officers. The fact that the Democratic Party wants to defund them in one case, block them in another, implies they feel that the police are not peace officers, not agents of safety and order--or superfluous. Are there examples of successful removal of peace officers in cultures? If so, what does that say about the nature of man? Is that optimistic nature consistent with the behavior of men?

Is this just a nostalgic 'Give peace a chance' cult?

An interesting non sequitur emerged in the self-puffery at the Emmys: no one is illegal on stolen land. Do those stolen lands have borders? Do borders define lands and make them 'stealable'? So could American lands be invaded and stolen? Are all immigrants stealing the land they enter and settle? Under those circumstances, who is the victim? When does the statute of limitations apply? Did the Sioux steal the Comanche lands? Are squatters forgiven all their crimes? Their sins?

One would expect more diversity of opinion in a large group. Is the unanimity of ICE opposition at the Emmys a coincidence? Especially among artists. Is it caused by a certain food? Or lack of dress.

Is ICE a problem in itself or a symptom of government overreach? The Left has great confidence in the power of government. What is it that the Left finds so objectionable in ICE?

Both of the demonstrators who died in Minneapolis have family attorneys. Is that provocupreneur once removed?

Will "empathy" become the substitute slogan for "Ice Out?"

 

Interlude

On this Day:
1922
Ulysses by James Joyce is published.
1925
Serum run to Nome: Dog sleds reach Nome, Alaska with diphtheria serum, inspiring the Iditarod race.
1943
World War II: The Battle of Stalingrad comes to conclusion as Soviet troops accept the surrender of 91,000 remnants of the Axis forces.
2004
Swiss tennis player Roger Federer becomes the No. 1 ranked men’s singles player, a position he will hold for a record 237 weeks.

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"He is rich whose income exceeds his expenses."--La Bruyere

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Moltbook—a Reddit-style platform built exclusively for AI agents—has become the most discussed phenomenon in silicon circles since the debut of ChatGPT. The agents post, comment, argue, and joke across more than 100 communities. They debate the nature of governance in general and discuss "crayfish theories of debugging."
The growth curve is vertical (and debatable): tens of thousands of posts and nearly 200,000 comments appeared almost overnight, with over one million human visitors stopping by to observe.

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“I mean, it’s something I’ve been concerned with the whole time I’ve been here. What are the rights of individuals? Who can you kill? When can you kill them? What is war? What is not war? What is due process? When do you have Fourth Amendment protections? So all these things are incredibly important.”--Rand Paul

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The NR notes the increasing adoption of combat uniforms by law enforcement. This includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and their leaders, who in Minnesota and other regions go around dressed like Marines about to invade Fallujah.

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A report states Canada remains part of a list of countries experiencing “ultra-low fertility” as the country’s fertility rates hit a record low in 2024 with 1.25 children per woman.

Other countries in a similar situation based on this data include Switzerland (1.29), Luxembourg (1.25), Finland (1.25), Italy (1.18), Japan (1.15), Singapore (0.97) and South Korea (0.75).

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"Life-changing focaccia." Life-changing !!!


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Interlude

A break, sort of, from selective law enforcement. But one can never truly escape.

Watched the Grammys. They still think that music without plot is a performance art. Sometimes they don't even need the music.

There were some very dramatic ads, though.

There were a lot of thin-voiced thin girls with echo chambers. Better than the usual "This is a holdup" look.

Bad Bunny made a plea for love. Certainly Caesar, since we're living here, gets some, small say, though. 

He drove the crowd wild with an acceptance speech in a language noone understood.

A guy in a broad-brim hat gave an award for global influence to another guy without a hat.

Jeff Goldblum seemed mortified to be associated with a country music award. No one else showed such limits.

Justin Bieber didn't wear any clothes. He seemed like a guy who needs a friend.

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Credit card interest rates aren’t arbitrary. They reflect the risk of lending to borrowers with different credit profiles.

If credit card interest rates were capped, this would harm the very people such a policy aims to help. Not only would it fail to help borrowers, but it would paradoxically make things less affordable. Lenders would issue new credit cards only to people with stellar credit. Those with fair credit would likely see their credit limits fall. And those at the bottom of the credit ladder would be shut out completely or pushed toward payday loans or black-market lending.

Sunday/Mount

On this Day:
1327
Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
1709
Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1865
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1978
Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees the United States to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl.
1979
Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by President Jimmy Carter.
1979
The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.
Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

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The most useful work in the coming years will be about leveraging AI to help improve and reform liberal democracy, the rule of law, separation of powers, free speech, coordination, and constitutional safeguards.--Cowen

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Would a local politician meeting with other city government officials about how to resist immigration law be a RICO offense?

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Productivity is rising in UK.
The last time productivity increased meaningfully was during the pandemic. This was misleading. Average output per hour worked increased only because lower productivity workers in retail and hospitality were disproportionately losing their jobs.

New ONS figures suggest the same thing is happening, but happening slowly.

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The distinction seems to be this: if you are a criminal or suspected criminal, you cannot be pursued if you are also an illegal immigrant.

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Sunday/Mount

Today is the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.

Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

Here are two minority reports:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
--Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77 

Perhaps too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!                          
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

And Blake's summary of unresolved conflict:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole; 
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.                          
--William Blake

SatStats

On this day:
1606
Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England.
1865
American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, submitting it to the states for ratification.
1876
The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations.
1915
World War I: Germany uses poison gas against Russia
1942
World War II: Allied forces are defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Malaya and retreat to the island of Singapore.
1943
German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to the Soviets at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of World War II’s fiercest battles.
1945
US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.
1958
Explorer program: Explorer 1 – The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.
1958
James Van Allen discovers the Van Allen radiation belt.

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Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of “entitlement” programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the “entitlement” mentality and all the social problems that go with it.--Sowell

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And this is far from the end. With thousands of officers having risen through the ranks under Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, these individuals now recognize they are primary targets for a systemic purge. Mobile devices have been seized across ranks & all units are now on high alert--Wei

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David Brooks, who has occupied the prestigious (if mythical) “reasonable conservative” perch at the opinion section of the Paper of Record for nearly a quarter century, is now decamping for The Atlantic, another inert organ of elite consensus politics, to serve as a staff writer and host of a video podcast. For Brooks to be forsaking his role as the nation’s Times-branded civic scold while US democracy swoons further into the abyss amid Donald Trump’s second authoritarian term drives home how ineffectual-to-untenable he has been as a trollish Never Trumper. Still, his failure bears a closer look, if only to size up the vacuity of a particular strain of culture-calibrating punditry from the US right that has bent over backward to avoid acknowledging a clear and present mobilization of blood-and-soil reaction.--the intro in The Nation on Brooks by Lehmann

***

Virginia's Clean Economy Act was passed in 2020. The law requires the states’ utilities to be carbon-free within two decades. Dominion Power last year said that it would need to charge ratepayers $220 billion—about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state—to pay for the long-term costs of renewable energy “certificates” to meet the mandates.

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SatStats


The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units. But for many years, the mass market paperback was “the most popular reading format,” notes Stuart Applebaum, former Penguin Random House EVP of corporate communications.

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The greenback has lost about 14% of its value relative to the euro over the past year.

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California already relies on taxpayers making over half a million dollars a year (the highest income 2.5 percent) to pay 49 percent of income tax revenue.

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Europe


Nearly two-thirds of respondents said the “best years are behind us” (63 percent), while 77 percent believe life in their country “will be harder for the next generation, according to a poll by the strategic communications firm FGS Global shared exclusively with POLITICO, which surveyed more than 11,000 people across 23 European Union countries in November.

A majority of Europeans (76 percent) said democracy in their country is in decline.

Nordic countries, generally less gloomy, had the most positive numbers. Negative opinions were higher in Romania (91 percent), Greece (88 percent) and Bulgaria (86 percent).


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In all countries, more than 70 percent of respondents felt they were “entitled to expect more from government,” as opposed to expecting too much.

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Asked whether they agreed their countries “should be more assertive of [their] national interests even if this creates friction with other countries,” a large majority approved (71 percent).

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A Biden administration Treasury study found that the wealthiest 92 Americans faced total state, local, federal, and international income tax rates of 59 percent. Recent research by four prominent liberal economists concludes that US billionaires pay higher tax rates than their counterparts in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and France.

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Skenes

Skenes had just a 10-10 record in 32 starts with the Pirates, but a 1.97 ERA over 187.2 innings pitched, 216 strikeouts to 42 walks, a .199 opposing batting average and a 0.95 WHIP, along with a 10.36 K/9, a 2.01 BB/9 and a 5.14 K/BB.

*

He ranked amongst the best pitchers in baseball, with the lowest ERA, tied for the fourth-most strikeouts, the fourth-lowest WHIP, the sixth-lowest batting average and the 10th-most innings pitched, plus the fifth best K/BB, seventh best K/9 and ninth best BB/9.

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Skenes also ranked highly in the NL, with the lowest WHIP, the fourth-lowest batting average, tied for the second-most strikeouts and the fourth-most innings pitched, as well as the second-best K/BB and both the fifth-best K/9 and BB/9.

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His play made him the starting pitcher for the NL in the All-Star Game, becoming the first pitcher to start consecutive All-Star games in the first two seasons in the major leagues.

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He was the first NL pitcher with a sub-2.00 ERA and 200+ strikeouts since right-hander Jacob DeGrom did it with the New York Mets in 2018. He was a also the first MLB pitcher to finish with a sub-2.00 ERA in a season since right-hander Justin Verlander did so with the Houston Astros in 2022.

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Skenes became the first pitcher in MLB history to finish with 200+ strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA and still not have a winning record since ERA became a stat in 1913.

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He was the first qualified pitcher to post a sub-2.00 ERA in a season at 23 years or younger, since right-hander Dwight Gooden did so at age 20 with the Mets in 1985. Skenes also made Pirates history, with his 216 strikeouts the most for a right-handed pitcher in the live-ball era (since 1920). Only Ed Morris, who had 326 strikeouts in 1886 and 298 strikeouts in 1885, the most and second-most in a season in franchise history, has more than him.

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His 216 strikeouts rank seventh-most in a season in franchise history and fifth-most in the live-ball era.

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Skenes is just one of three Pirates pitchers who led the MLB in ERA, with right-hander John Candelaria last doing so in 1977 and right-hander Cy Blanton doing it first in 1935, according to OptaStats.