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.

***

"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."

***

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.

***

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.

*** 

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.

***

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

***

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.

***

“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

***

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.

***

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).

***

"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.

***

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.

***

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

***

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

***

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.

***

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.

*** 

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