Insincerity Olympics #1

On this day:
1429
Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.
1775
American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.
1776
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
1967
Venera program: Venera 4 is launched (it will become the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data).
1994
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

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It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry--Thomas Paine

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The American politician meets the rug merchant. In the Middle East, the West has met a culture as cynical and mendacious as its own.

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A new contest: Draw your own cartoon to fit the caption!
"Hmm. Well, I''ll see your MMA Markwayne, and raise you a Nazi."

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The fighting in Ukraine has ground on for longer than the First World War.

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Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France's local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections ‌in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, France's disinformation detection service, Viginum, said on Thursday.

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Insincerity Olympics #1

The dichotomy between what the world's elite demand of us and what they do continues at breakneck speed. But in our world, where the only guy who is not a Nazi is the guy who says he is one, and has a tattoo to prove it, nothing is real or meaningful.

You can bet your bitcoin on it.

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

But the development of AI is incompatible with those pronouncements, too. And AI  promises wealth and power. acrifices will have to be made.

JPMorgan Chase is again the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, after pushing $58bn to the sector last year – up 13% from 2024.

In 2015, countries agreed in the Paris climate deal to strive to avoid breaching 1.5 °C of global heating above preindustrial levels, beyond which the world is said to suffer ever more ruinous heatwaves, floods, droughts, and other climate-fueled disasters.

Avoiding such a threshold would require the near elimination of planet-heating emissions from fossil fuel production. Since the Paris agreement, however, the world’s largest banks have funnelled $8.7tn to the fossil fuel industry to dig and drill for more coal, oil, and gas.

Scientists now predict that the 1.5C limit will be breached imminently, with a recent string of record-hot years set to be surpassed this decade.

Last year, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-backed scheme that aimed to align banks’ lending with a net-zero-emissions scenario by 2050, was disbanded after several high-profile departures from its membership.

“We’ve seen a lot of banks turn their back either quietly or more loudly amid a context of political pressure, particularly in the US,” said Lusiani.

He added: “The era of voluntary commitments has not worked at the scale that we need and so this points to a much more active role for financial regulators, legislators and policymakers, especially in those big six financial centers.”

The guys who can't run a charity want to run the world. But of the myriad of motives available, our betterment is not one of them.

Assault on the Liberty

 

On this day:

793
Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1794
Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large, organized festivals all across France.
1967
Six-Day War: The USS Liberty "incident" occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171
1972
Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

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Agroterrorism is a subdivision of bioweapons. Aside from its anti-human savagery, it is a metaphor for the power of the individual, like drones, a dark side of the Enlightenment's legacy, which emphasizes the tension between freedom and virtue.

The thoughtful well-poisoner expresses himself.

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Improvements in aggregate tax competitiveness are positively and significantly associated with real GDP per capita growth, and this association is robust to a wide range of controls. (From a paper with a deep dive into the obvious.)

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If a nation is unable to define itself, what is it?

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More than 20,000 people are currently working on AGI — artificial general intelligence — while fewer than 200 are focused specifically on AI safety.

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Ceasefire episodes broke out in the Middle East.

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How did Platner get picked for this job? Who did that? Does he really represent the Dems? Even if his deficits are ignored, can anyone be enthusiastic about him? Or has American politics become some weird parallel universe dominated by a black hole of power distribution benefiting a sliver of avaricious iconoclasts?

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Assault on the Liberty

Every so often, the political animal shows its stripes. And national ambition will always trump friendship. Something like this story always gives a little context, although this is more than an insight into America's friendships, it is an insight into its leadership.

Most of this is from St. Clair's summary of "Assault on the Liberty," a first-hand account by James Ennes Jr. whose book of the event is a hair-raising story of betrayal by America's presumed friends and its own leadership. On this day in history, June 8, 1967.

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six-Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived, it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over three hours. The Liberty flew a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

An easily identified, lightly armed American surveillance ship in international waters.

Soon, more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later, a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which pelted the ship with gunfire and napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire, and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship’s top officers.

The Liberty’s radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called “a buzzsaw sound.” Finally, an open channel was found, and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet’s large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty’s aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. “Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately,” he barked. The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.

After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gunfire. 

Strafed the life rafts.

Nobody was going to get out alive that way. 

After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: “Do you need any help?”
The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: “Fuck you.”
The Israeli boat turned and left.

A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered his aid, but the Liberty’s conning officer refused.

The Russians offered help first.

Finally, 16 hours after the attack, two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 were injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk about their ordeal with the press.

The following morning, Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control of the Golan Heights.

Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. “These errors do occur,” McNamara concluded.

The Children of Israel are never alone. But sometimes it's hard to see why.

It Is Known, Khaleese

 

Crypto is only good for two things: gambling—is the price going to go up or down?—and crime. The amount of crime that crypto facilitates is staggering. There’s a crypto company, Chainanalysis, that estimated $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via crypto last year alone. --McKENZIE 

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What is this $1.6 billion slush fund for? Is it to compensate people who were unjustly targeted by the Biden Regency and had to spend a fortune to defend themselves from the people who created the Trump Russian conspiracy and the 'Hunter Biden computer is Russian disinformation?' What exactly is the penalty for a government agency attacking in court people they simply don't like?

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According to the Post, one of the San Diego shooters wrote in their 'manifesto,' that he " lamented being short, which he said caused him great pain and humiliation."

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New York City’s $125 billion budget is larger than the $115 billion the entire state of Florida is expected to spend this year. New York City has 8.5 million people; the state of Florida has 23.6 million.

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It Is Known, Khaleese

Critics this weekend point to investment patterns suggesting Trump is misusing his power to benefit from his own decisions. When he came to office, he said he would not take a salary, he built the ballroom with private money, and set aside his investment money in a private trust with management he could not influence. Is this a change? Is he now in control of his finances and betting on his own executive acts? Or is this charge just untrue?

It's reasonable to be cynical about government but, as Lily Tomlin said, it's hard to keep up. These people will take advantage of anything for influence or profit.
Regulators are seeking information from prediction-market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket over wagers tied to political events and military operations. Such bets pose a challenge for authorities because insider-trading laws weren’t designed for people who wager on the outcome of legislation, political races, and even U.S. military action.

Remember, these people have inside information, i.e. they are the insiders making these decisions.

Enter the innuendo. Is it possible that the administration has had the time to be as evil as is said? Trump is still said to be a Russian agent. There has been no reason to believe that, aside from the suggestion of a paid political opponent. Pedophile? That seems to be a specific charge with real definitions, but, again, no charges. 

Fascism. Fascism has a definition; does Trump qualify? Are these people confusing Fascism with authoritarianism? Trump is certainly that, but is he worse than, say, FDR? Lincoln suspended habeas corpus; was he a fascist?

All this has become political dogma, like the spiritual claims of religions, global warming, or aliens. The democracy functions on individual citizens' input. If its input is this flawed, democracy has little chance.

 

1-877-KARS4KROOKS

Israel also wants 'from the river ot the seas.'

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Pennsylvania liquor control enforcement agents say they've stopped an illegal gambling operation in Washington County at a social club where they were playing Queen of Hearts. Officials said the club did not have a county-issued small games of chance license.

"The 52 cards are set out on a table," Officer Wright explained. "You buy chances to get the card. Obviously, getting the queen of hearts means you win and get the jackpot."

According to law enforcement, these games can actually last for a while.

"They can go on for various lengths of time," said Wright. "This specific game went on for 10 months approximately."

Stalking the state for 10 months. I know I feel safer.

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Is Kash Patel taking blinking lessons?

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Verizon seems to believe that politeness can substitute for insincerity and stupidity.

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1-877-KARS4KROOKS

While the 1-877-KARS4KIDS song has been called one of the most memorable jingles in history, a court has ruled it is misleading.

Misleading

A California man took the group behind it to court, saying he donated an old car to Kars4Kids, thinking its value would be used to help underprivileged children. He didn't know the money generated was used to support Oorah, a Jewish organization that helps fund young adult trips to Israel.

Oorah actually runs a matchmaking program for Jewish youth and funds gap year trips to Israel for 17- and 18-year-olds. It does other things, too. The company used donations to purchase a $16.5-million building in Israel.

"The evidence also shows that children, especially needy or underprivileged children, are not the recipients of the proceeds of the donations," the ruling states. These 'donations' fund vague enterprises and infrastructure, including gap year vacations to Israel.

A recent Fox segment read the entire episode as antisemitic. One commentator talked about the maddening jingle. One laughed about its amateurish appearance. No one talked about what it was, a deceptive ad meant to bilk well-intentioned people out of money, then launder it. Nor did anyone suggest that it was representative of most of these charities: ways of making your personal plans and daily expenses tax-deductible with the help of unwitting accomplices.

Like the Westboro Church, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the  "National Council of Churches" (NCC), 1-877-KARS4KIDS is a deception for someone's betterment, but probably not yours. And mendacity, in this case, money laundering, often disguises more than one thing.

At the very least, it is not funny.

Gerrymander Redux

On this day:

1529
The Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas.
1836
Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
1889
At high noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Run of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.
1898
Spanish-American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship.
1915
The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
2000
In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida.

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“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”--Elbridge Gerry

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John Mearsheimer is a political scientist at the University of Chicago. He has a body of work encompassing international affairs, particularly Israel's relationship with its neighbors and America. One book, Why Leaders Lie (Oxford University Press, 2011), analyzes lying in international politics. His two main findings are that leaders actually do not lie very much to other countries and that democratic leaders are actually more likely than autocrats to lie to their own people.

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Elián González was rescued from America by the American government.

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The Blue Origin explosion last weekend was significant for the Artemis program. The New Glenn rocket was designed to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, one of two options the space agency is tapping to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface as part of its Artemis program. The other company NASA is contracting is SpaceX, whose Starship rocket also has yet to successfully deliver functional payloads into space and has repeatedly exploded during launch attempts.

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China has built a massive $1.2 trillion trade surplus and dominates key future-facing industries such as electric vehicles, solar panels, shipbuilding, and robotics. Yet its share of the global economy has slipped, from a peak of about 18.5% in 2021 to roughly 16.5% by the end of 2025, according to data from the International Monetary Fund, said a WSJ report.

***

Government works on its own script, works around the law, and, when caught, forgives itself.

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Gerrymander Redux

Gerrymandering restructures voting districts for partisan purposes. The new gerrymandering of Virginia will take a state that voted for Trump in the last election and has a breakdown in the House of Representatives of 6 to 5 in favor of Democrats and change it to 10 to 1, Democrats. This will essentially disenfranchise rural voters.

In democracies, voters choose political leaders; in gerrymandering the leaders choose the voters.

           Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

Voting is but a part of democracy. The Russians have a national vote, too.

The good Mr. Gerry, for whom this disgraceful process is named, was no hack. Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and played an active role in organizing the resistance during the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but refused to sign the Constitution because it initially did not include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification, he was elected to the first United States Congress, where he actively participated in drafting and passing the Bill of Rights, advocating for individual and state liberties. Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties(wiki). He was the Governor of Massachusetts and was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812. He died in office.

Nor was this practice new. Manipulating voting districts to secure political power existed even before the nation. In 18th-century England, political operatives created “rotten boroughs” with only a few eligible voters, making it easy for politicians to buy votes and win seats. 

After English colonists founded the United States, gerrymandering “began almost immediately,” says Thomas Hunter, a political science professor at the University of West Georgia.

Gerrymandering is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise certain voters and distort elections. Its intent is to benefit the political class and to spite the voter. Amazingly, it is illegal to do this based on race, but only on race. What honest citizen would want this? And why?

It can only be that the disenfranchised voter is thought to deserve to be.

Voting is a contest of beliefs. One votes to express a belief, with the many beliefs available, you will vote for the superior one. But inherent to the democracy is the belief that you will accept the result of the vote, that the majority may not see your way as the best.

The Americans have a structural advantage; they have a Constitution that limits the power of the state, carefully considered guidelines that channel votes within a confining framework. The American vote is a nuance within that structure.

With gerrymandering, like voting fraud, a thief attempts to distort the system for his own benefit. He always disguises the motive as a need to defeat an evil opponent or philosophy--the 'no effort is too much' argument--but the objective is to benefit the politician and his organization. The voting box is no longer a contest, it is a command.

So, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and court manipulation are all means to subvert the letter and the spirit of America's founding documents for the betterment of a political few. Any abuse is allowed to advance the kingdom of the righteous. And the righteous thief.

And in modern America, it is brandished proudly.

Ritualized Mendacity

On this day:

1826
Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1865
American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks – In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1873
The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547.
1924
Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
1939
Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1944
Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.
1949
The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years.
1957
The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama.

***

“If you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd, you'll get very rich. You won't have to be very bright. It doesn't take brains. It takes temperament.”--Buffett

***

Newly released photos appeared to show the husband of former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem cross-dressing in private messages to several women.


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“It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating.” That quote is one of the clearest summaries of why the study matters: genome sequencing showed that cloned mice were not preserving a perfect copy of the donor. Instead, the defects kept being passed forward, with no genetic reshuffling to help remove them.--project head, Wakayama

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"We're not a rich country. We're a debtor nation," then-candidate Trump told The Washington Post in an interview on March 31, 2016 (a full transcript was published two days later). "We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt."

How long would it take to do that, asked the Post's Bob Woodward.

"Fairly quickly," Trump replied. When pressed for a more specific answer, Trump provided a shocking timeline. "Well, I would say over a period of eight years."

***

Ritualized Mendacity

April Fool's Day, once an opportunity for annoying dim-wits, has become a national Holy Day of Obligation. The silliest frauds are presented as accurate with the straightest of faces. Social lies are routine.

Just like daily life.

In our modern culture of unchallenged opportunism and mendacity, April Fool's Day has become more of a cautionary tale.

The lead singer of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is on record calling the white race “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief in the modern world.” Despite this, the 1619 educational curriculum—much of which conveys basically the same point of view—is one of the more popular educational supplements in American schools. Major magazines and journals, at the level of Salon, quite regularly run articles with titles like “White Men Must Be Stopped–the Future of Mankind Depends on It.” Maybe we have become so tolerant, so non-judgmental, we will tolerate anything. 

As Sec. Mayorkas said, "The border is closed."

April Fools' Day has become a welcome day of benign jokes and foolishness amidst our days of serious lies, manipulation, and propaganda. There have been some real efforts made at its comic relief. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
There is probably little to learn about humans through this. Most of us, simply by observing politics, know that some people will believe anything.

The origin of April Fools' Day is uncertain. The best explanation is the confusion caused by the change of the New Year from April First to January First.
Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st). In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1.
It is said that some refused to accept the new calendar and became the object of ridicule at that time of year.

In a great story, Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University, explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times, fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."
This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. Wonderfully, Boskin had made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.

So, enjoy your spaghetti or your left-handed whopper. You need the break. 

Lies and Policy

On this day:

624
Battle of Badr: a key battle between Muhammad’s army, the new followers of Islam, and the Quraish of Mecca. The Muslims won this battle, known as the turning point of Islam, which took place in the Hejaz region of western Arabia.
1781
William Herschel discovers Uranus.
1865
American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops.
1881
Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.)
1921
Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.
1938
Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich.
1954
Battle of Điện Biên Phủ: Viet Minh forces attack the French.
1964
American Kitty Genovese is murdered, reportedly in view of neighbors who did nothing to help her, prompting research into the bystander effect.
1969
Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

***

“Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”--Ursula von der Leyen

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Not developing our own shale gas reserves has a huge opportunity cost.
It got a lot huger this week--Ridley

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The Bank of England has confirmed Sir Winston Churchill will be scrapped from banknotes and replaced with images of wildlife.

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Is trade across the borders of Ohio and Pennsylvania economically distinct from trade between Ohio and Alaska? France?

***

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has issued a sharp rebuke to the US government over its decision to temporarily lift sanctions on the sale of Russian oil in the wake of sharply rising energy prices, saying the decision was wrong.

***


Lies and Policy

Chris Coyne recently reviewed The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations. One snippet:

"Since Kissinger did not intend his transcripts to be public, the collection is a window both into him as a person and into the operations of the U.S. national security state. Four themes stand out.

The first is the sheer prevalence of systematic deception. For Kissinger, lies weren’t a strategic tool limited to selective uses in international statecraft. They appear to have been part of his personal makeup. Wells notes that he was “a habitual and easy liar.” Throughout the transcripts, he deceives his foreign counterparts, his colleagues, and the media."

The border is secure, the President is sharp as a tack, 1619, Anna Anderson is Princess Anastasia, “Russians Hungry But not Starving,” there would be no war if the Sudeten lands were turned over to Germany, the Chernobyl evacuation was precautionary and temporary,“ Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction,” American boys will not be asked to fight an Asian war...

We poor Americans are inundated by the free speech avalanche of self-serving mendacity

Lies are Procrustes' solution to stubborn truths. As with Kissinger, they have become part of our marrow.

Ghost students.

Essentially, it's a transfer payment. I basically believe that anything that would take Social Security payments below their present guaranteed level is a mistake. I think that in this country -- extraordinarily rich country -- that the people in their productive years can take care of those outside in both areas, even though the ratio of productive to non-productive has changed and is changing. But we take care of our young. And a rich country takes care of its young, and it takes care of its old.--Buffett on Social Security

He favors raising the cap. He doesn't explain how the demographics play into this opinion.

***

Abundance is about the specific puzzle of Gavin Newsom beginning his governorship by saying he wanted to build 3.5 million new homes in California and falling far, far, far short. Abundance is about why we never got high-speed rail, even though Californians voted to fund it and the federal government kicked in billions under Barack Obama. Abundance is about the reality that we cannot build enough clean energy infrastructure to meet the climate goals that virtually everyone on the Left believes we should meet under the laws we currently have.
Abundance is about the category of goods for which the government has lost the ability to deliver, even when the people who want to deliver in that way win power. --Klein, Abundance's author. 

So maybe incompetence is just a force of nature?

***

By as late as 1940, the federal and state governments’ investment in research amounted to only 23 percent of U.S. R&D and 10 percent of U.S. basic science, and the nature of that investment could have had little or no impact on rates of American economic or health growth: Defense R&D has almost no economic benefit, while the agricultural R&D was surplus to requirement.--Kealey


***

When people say Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, they are not making a metaphysical claim. They are pointing out that there is no external source from which its value is derived. Gold retains value because it has physical and industrial uses regardless of price. Equities derive value from businesses. Debt derives value from repayment. Fiat currency derives durability from taxation, legal-tender laws, and institutional enforcement. Bitcoin derives value only from the expectation that someone else will want it later. That expectation can sustain a price for long periods, but it is not a reference. There is nothing for valuation to converge toward.--Lincoln Square

And...Research cited by CryptoNews found that more than 60 percent of Trump-themed meme coins have effectively failed, losing most of their value and trading activity. CoinDesk has reported that at least one high-profile Trump coin is down more than 80 percent from its launch price.

***

Ghost students.

Community colleges cannot decline high school graduates under most circumstances. Imagine what can happen.

Over the past five years, the federal government has investigated more than $350 million in fraud perpetrated by "ghost student" schemes

The scammers will use stolen or fake identities to enroll in classes online and sign up for Pell grants and loans, then disappear once they get the money -- robbing the federal government of hundreds of millions of dollars and leaving an untold number of victims of the stolen identity. 

In California alone, nearly a third of all community college applicants in 2024 were identified as fraudulent, according to the California Community Colleges, the state's administrative body for the community college system.
Dr. Beatriz Chaidez, the chancellor of the San Jose Evergreen Community College District, told KGO-TV in San Francisco that at one point, a 50-person online class was booked in minutes and had 100 individuals on its waitlist. The school later learned that just six of those "students" were real people trying to get an education.

More than 200 investigations have opened nationwide, with some schemes suspected of racking up more than a billion dollars.
3 women, using prison inmates' IDs, made $1 million in one year.
Before their arrests in 2018 and 2019, a father and son in Arizona made off with more than $7 million from ghost student scams, and both served 12-month prison sentences after pleading guilty. And a Maryland man who used the identities of 60 people to take in more than $6.7 million in fraudulent financial aid was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison.

California has been particularly vulnerable.
California does not require ID.
Pierce College's student body shrank 36% when ghost students were purged.

$9 billion stolen from day care centers by people who don't speak English.

Does anybody have a job anymore?

 

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."

 

 

November 22, 1963

On this day:

498
After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus is elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius is elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.
1718
Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as “Blackbeard”) is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
1942
World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army is surrounded.
1963
In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of both the President and police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
1974The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.
1990
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdraws from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership.

***

“President Trump is the biggest con job in American history,” said Nancy Pelosi, the US speaker emerita, to reporters on Thursday while criticizing his anti-climate agenda. 

Actually, the Biden Regency is the biggest con job in American history by far, and its dishonesty allowed for the rise of Trump.

***

The Sagas of Icelanders, backed by hard archaeological evidence at L’Anse aux Meadows, tell that Vikings journeyed from Scandinavia to Newfoundland via Greenland as early as 999 AD.

***

"...the fact is that European leaders are corroding the right to free expression, and show every sign of sliding further down a slippery slope into illiberalism.

Europe and the United States have always had different free-speech cultures. In the postwar era, both confronted the question of how tolerant societies should treat intolerant factions. Much of Europe concluded that, although free speech is important, views that threaten democracy itself are different and can be criminalized; see laws in various European states against Nazi propaganda. In contrast, the American system protected expression as vile as neo-Nazis marching through a town of Holocaust survivors because, by First Amendment logic, fascist speech poses less of a danger than enabling the state itself to engage in viewpoint discrimination. Despite these differences, both Europe and America mostly expanded speech protections in the 20th century and pulled back from censorship, seeming to converge on liberal values by the time the Iron Curtain fell and the internet spread."--The Atlantic, believe it or not.

***

November 22, 1963

The past and present merge:

The Thanksgiving holiday, one of the best holidays and certainly the best secular one, has been spoiled for everyone who was awake and thinking in the mid 60's by the assassination of Jack Kennedy. That promising shift from the generation of Eisenhower to its sons, to youth and its potential, to the charismatic and the virile, was just stopped cold by Oswald in Dallas. We defaulted back to the older, ponderous Lyndon Johnson, a true guardian of the Old Guard. That loss--of youth, of hope, of promise, of beauty--has never been overcome and we are reminded of it every Thanksgiving. One only wonders how much of the unrest in the '60s and '70s was a result.

An aspect of the assassination that has dogged its shadow has been the shameless exploitation of the atrocity by writers, politicians and artists. This exploitation, which has become almost a cult, believes--or says it believes--that the assassination was a conspiracy of a number of men, groups, or organizations. Every aspect of the event has been picked over, every inconsistency of life magnified, every possibility made a probability. The result is that the event, right before many of our eyes, has been completely recreated and, like an alternative universe, continues without interference with its own laws, experts, and history. It is very like those academic musings run wild. "If, instead, you assume that history and archeology was 300 years wrong--or falsified--and Moses was actually alive in the court of Akhenaton...." "If, instead, you assume there is an unexplained and unexplainable driving force in history..." "If, instead, you assume that everyone is possessed at birth by sexual urges towards their immediate family...." It is another victory of the Art of the Plausible.

This is nowhere more revolting than is seen in the movie "JFK" where a seemingly respectable director rewrites the assassination story according to a man whose grasp on the event is dangerously close to psychosis. Oliver Stone writes the story through the eyes and the belief set of James Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, who had arrested, charged, indicted, and tried a local community figure, Clay Shaw, for involvement in the Kennedy murder. Shaw's arrest was virtually random. There was no evidence against him other than the word of a psychiatric patient who failed a lie detector test and refused to testify. How an American citizen could come under such unreasonable, whimsical charges has never been explained. But Garrison persisted and then Stone followed up after the laughable trial (where the jury took longer to find their seats than to find "not guilty") with a movie inexplicably presenting the Garrison thesis as within the same time zone as reason. Of course, all the facts of the assassination were changed to implicate the innocent, the shooting presented was almost a complete fiction, and this all was delivered by Kevin Costner, a credible actor, with certainty and outrage. Anyone who knew anything about the assassination walked from the theater with their collective heads spinning. But many with less of a good grasp left alarmed and resentful. This constant barrage of misinformation has done a lot to undermine this country's credibility and value in the minds of its people, who, after all, own and run it.

There are two bad lessons here. The first is that there are people and industries in the world who, even in those cultures with the highest of ideals, will do anything, say anything, publish anything to make a buck. If possible, they will take the Plausible-made-Art and create an industry of it with historians, academics, and franchises. The second is that they often hide their entrepreneurship in the guise of Art. How many of our greatest artists have questioned the reliability of memory, the interaction of history and art--even to the point of their blending? So Stone calls Julian Barnes and Cormac McCarthy as witnesses for his defense.

Stone is more Goebbels than John Huston here. He is everything that is wrong with businessmen gone rogue. His product is harmful to society, toxic to the young, and delivered without an ounce of social conscience. The real story about Garrison is how it is possible that Clay Shaw could be treated like a Kafka character in the United States. Another would be a clarifying and cleansing explanation of all the facts and evidence that have been gathered over the years about the murder. This might set the country at ease. But there's probably not much money, or return on arrogance, in this. Instead, why not take advantage of the distressed and confused citizens, contribute to their malaise, and cash in.

In 1976 the U.S. House of Representatives created a commission, The House Select Commission on Assassinations, to investigate all the evidence of the murder again. This time they applied all the newer technologies available as well. Aside from the single and erroneous "fourth bullet thesis" not a single new conclusion was reached. Instead, this august deliberative body concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy--but they believed one existed anyway.

Sunday/Obligation

On this day:

1582
Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
1789
French Revolution: Women of Paris march to Versailles in the March on Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread, and have the King and his court moved to Paris.
1793
French Revolution: Christianity is disestablished in France.
1864
The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die.
1948
The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000.
1966
Near Detroit, Michigan, there is a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor.
1968
Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland – considered to mark the beginning of The Troubles.
1982
Chicago Tylenol murders: Johnson & Johnson initiates a nationwide product recall in the United States for all products in its Tylenol brand after several bottles in Chicago are found to have been laced with cyanide, resulting in seven deaths.
1986
Israeli secret nuclear weapons are revealed. The British newspaper The Sunday Times runs Mordechai Vanunu’s story on its front page under the headline: “Revealed — the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal”.
2001
Robert Stevens becomes the first victim in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

***

"If the United States is to compete effectively, its policymakers must spend less time worrying about how to weaken their rival and more time figuring out how to make their country the best and most vigorous version of itself."--Foreign Affairs, in an article on China

***

Turkey’s International Doner Federation (Udofed) recently tried registering döner for the EU’s ‘Traditional Speciality Guaranteed’ status, which would’ve imposed strict spice and meat rules on any EU eatery wanting to sell the stuff.

***

The deadly downing of a Colombian National Police (CNP) UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter by a drone on Thursday is the latest sign of the growing vulnerability of rotary-wing aircraft to these attacks. While apparently the first such incident in the Western Hemisphere, the tactic was developed by Ukraine to strike Russian helicopters and has reportedly spread to Asia as well. The downing comes as militaries are rethinking the utility of helicopters due to myriad threats, including drones.

***

Sunday/Obligation

"Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, ‘We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.'”

Tough stuff where Christ gives a parable that gives no reward for doing what you should. But 'what you should' is becoming harder.

A recent baseball video clip showed a San Diego player, angry over a strike call during the Wild Card game with Chicago, punching the umpire and knocking him unconscious. Did the crowd erupt? Was the player thrown out of the game? The league?

No. I saw the game, saw the strike call, and saw the player stalk to the dugout. He never struck the umpire. The video was created.

There is more video content created than can ever be watched. The distinguishing character is how pointed, disturbing, personalized, and controversial the content is. (A quick review of Sora will give you an idea of its impact. And this is very early in the curve of development.)

Life is difficult enough when we are plagued by preconceptions, distortions, and error. But how are we poor men to live, how are we to make decisions, when the information we have to base our decisions upon is purposefully false?

Analyzing the Unanalyzable

On this day:
1521
The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade.
1862
American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas.
1955
Black teenager Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech
1968
Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.
1979
An IRA bomb explodes on the Grand Place in Brussels.
1991
Collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1991
Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
1996
Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorce.

***

Denmark publicly apologized on Wednesday to Greenlandic women who were victims of a decades-long involuntary birth control campaign. The birth control campaign came to light in 2022 when records showed that thousands of women and girls as young as 13 had been fitted with intrauterine devices without their knowledge or consent between 1966 and 1991, the year Greenland was given authority over its healthcare system.

***

The Salvadoran man--or the Maryland man--Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is seeking to remain in the United States by renewing his bid for asylum. He wants protection from a rival gang back home.

We are a sanctuary for criminals.
Who will protect us from him?

***

China is the world’s largest booze market. For millennia, liquor has lubricated social gatherings and business deals. Wedding banquets are referred to as “happy alcohol”, while the celebration to mark a child’s first month of life is “full-month alcohol”.
But alcohol sales are down, and a growing number of young Chinese say they’re “disgusted” by their country’s drinking culture. China’s leaders have banned alcohol from official events.

***

Analyzing the Unanalyzable

There has been another group shooting, this time in Minneapolis, in a Catholic church where the parish school children were attending mass. Two children were killed and seventeen injured.

The political and journalistic classes reflexively responded. "Thoughts and prayers." The shooter was a "coward." Were the parents responsible? Guns should be better regulated.

There will be a search for reasons, motives behind a murderous, armed attack on children. All of these reactions imply the killer was just a normal guy distorted by the rigors of life, an average citizen gone wrong. We are supposed to search for a diary, comb through his social media history, and find mitigating circumstances, forks in his developmental path that resulted in this behavior.

But this, like all the others, was not a cruel or senseless act. This was simply madness. This was completely separate from the reflective, thoughtful bonding qualities that separate our species from the other great predators. Even the rogue wolf or elephant is recognized as crazy by his fellows.

But we are free. We revere the bell curve and embrace the outlier. And the outlier bites.

There have been 118 mass shootings in the last 20 years. Gun legislation will do as much as drug legislation because they are not the essential problem. The problem is mental health--in a population of 300,000,000.

But we are cautious with rules, accept the eccentric, and are suspicious of the State. Everyone knows that Simpson killed that poor girl, but an American jury could not convict him. Nor will we start mimicking the Minority Report. and insinuate ourselves into people's lives to intercept the outlier.

Worse, we are basically disinterested. We accept a few dead and injured in our lives to be left alone to do our jobs and live our lives. We have our own standards but, like the post-modern world around us, are unsure we can apply standards to others. We ignore even the basics of education, refuse to demand any criteria of social virtue. Live and let kill.

So, we will continue with the occasional candlelight ceremony and step over the bodies on the sidewalks, with the unspoken understanding that the current attitude and quasi-management is simply a placebo for the practitioners.

Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

On this day:
1689
The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland.
1770
James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales
1808
Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.
1831
Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.
1863
Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill’s Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.
1879
The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appears at Knock Shrine in Knock, County Mayo, Ireland.
1918
World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.
1942
World War II: a Nazi flag is installed atop the Mount Elbrus.
1942
World War II: the Guadalcanal campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru
1945
Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1961
Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes.
1963
Xa Loi Pagoda raids: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalises Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
1968
Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring; on the same day, Nicolae Ceauşescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet maneuver, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.
1991
Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

***

A bullet broke the glass in Andy Reid's practice facility office while the Chiefs' coach was working alone in it last year, The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday night. In all, three gunshots struck the three-story facility that night, sources told the Star.

***

De Blasio packed New York’s rent guidelines board and instructed it to freeze all regulated rents on three occasions, in 2015, 2016, and 2020. Did that help New York's apartment 'affordability crisis?' Is Mamdani just more of the same?

***

Two-time major champion and current world No. 3, Coco Gauff, has fired her coach Matthew Daly, just days before the start of the 2025 US Open.

***

When someone is said to be "giving back to his community," what exactly is he returning?

***

So, during the 'peace talks,' Russia fired over 600 missiles and drones at Ukraine overnight. 

Could we just give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize so some reality can descend on the conditions of this invasion?

***

Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

Voting is but a part of democracy. The Russians have a national vote, too.

The good Mr. Gerry, for whom this disgraceful process is named, was no hack. Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and played an active role in organizing the resistance during the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but refused to sign the Constitution because it initially did not include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification, he was elected to the first United States Congress, where he actively participated in drafting and passing the Bill of Rights, advocating for individual and state liberties. Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties(wiki). He was the Governor of Massachusetts and was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812. He died in office.

Nor was this practice new. Manipulating voting districts to secure political power existed even before the nation. In 18th-century England, political operatives created “rotten boroughs” with only a few eligible voters, making it easy for politicians to buy votes and win seats. 

After English colonists founded the United States, gerrymandering “began almost immediately,” says Thomas Hunter, a political science professor at the University of West Georgia.

Gerrymandering is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise certain voters and distort elections. Its intent is to benefit the political class and to spite the voter. Amazingly, it is illegal to do this based on race, but only on race. What honest citizen would want this? And why?

It can only be that the disenfranchised voter is thought to deserve to be.

Voting is a contest of beliefs. One votes to express a belief, with the many beliefs available, you will vote for the superior one. But inherent to the democracy is the belief that you will accept the result of the vote, that the majority may not see your way as the best.

The Americans have a structural advantage; they have a Constitution that limits the power of the state, carefully considered guidelines that channel votes within a confining framework. The American vote is a nuance within that structure.

With gerrymandering, like voting fraud, a thief attempts to distort the system for his own benefit. He always disguises the motive as a need to defeat an evil opponent or philosophy--the 'no effort is too much' argument--but the objective is to benefit the politician and his organization. The voting box is no longer a contest, it is a command.

So, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and court manipulation are all means to subvert the letter and the spirit of America's founding documents for the betterment of a political few. Any abuse is allowed to advance the kingdom of the righteous. And the righteous thief.

And in modern America, it is brandished proudly.

 

 

Lost in A World of Entertainment and High Cheekbones

On this day:
1565
The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1567
James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.
1588
Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.
1848
Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt – in Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police.
1921
Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
1967
Vietnam War: off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.
1981
A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

***

U.S. ETFs are growing at a record pace this year with 464 new ones coming to market through June. They include the first public-private credit ETF and many new buffer, covered-call, active and crypto ETFs.

***

The Colbert kerfluffle continues. They believe great and unseen pressures are at the root cause of Colbert's decline.
Why is it that these people, who believe that economics is the root of every problem, don't believe it here?

***

Is the Constitution compatible with the power and conformity requirements of socialism and Islamism?

***

Lost in A World of Entertainment and High Cheekbones

When news and entertainment couple, the resulting product is usually illegitimate.

As a sideline reporter for NFL games, Charissa Thompson wouldn’t always be able to talk to coaches. When that happened, Thompson would just fabricate having done so. She would simply make up an interview. He said this, he said that. Innocuous pablum but nonetheless untrue.

Last year, Thompson admitted to this professional fraud on a podcast without apparent remorse.

Thompson, who works primarily for Fox Sports, got no blowback from her employers for this and was at her post the following Thursday night, hosting Amazon’s broadcast of the game between Baltimore and Cincinnati.

There have been changes at FOX this year, but not with Thompson.

Fox Sports host Thompson said she’s looking forward to a “new beginning” after Peter Schrager and Michael Vick left the network, leaving two vacant seats on the Fox “NFL Kickoff” show.

Thompson, who reportedly landed a lucrative contract extension with Fox, hosts the show on Sunday mornings throughout the NFL season with a desk of analysts, including retired Patriots wideout Julian Edelman and Pro Football Hall of Famer Charles Woodson.

During a fan Q&A on Tuesday’s installment of the “Calm Down” podcast, Thompson explained that she is excited and curious about how the “shakeup” will affect the future of the show.

However that resolves, it is unlikely Truth will be involved. Or that anyone will care in the busy, bustling kingdom where Truth is just one of many variables in the mix.

One might be curious and suspicious about the development of a culture that accepts misrepresentation and mendacity as staples in its daily life. What is chilling is the casual way these people view their deceits, suggesting they, themselves, don't take themselves seriously. 

That is true nihilism.

Calumny as News and Education

Norway’s entrepreneurs are disappearing. In the past two years alone, 100 of Norway’s top 400 taxpayers, representing about 50 percent of that group’s wealth, have fled the country to protect their businesses.

***

Community water fluoridation has been named one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century for its role in improving dental health. Fluoride has large negative effects at high doses, clear benefits at low levels, and an unclear optimal dosage level. I leverage county-level variation in the timing of fluoride adoption, combined with restricted U.S. Census data that link over 29 million individuals to their county of birth, to estimate the causal effects of childhood fluoride exposure. Children exposed to community water fluoridation from age zero to five are worse off as adults on indices of economic self-sufficiency (−1.9% of a SD) and physical ability and health (−1.2% of a SD). They are also significantly less likely to graduate high school (−1.5 percentage points) or serve in the military (−1.0 percentage points). These findings challenge existing conclusions about safe levels of fluoride exposure.--Roberts, from Journal of Health Economic

***

Calumny as News and Education

April Fool's Day, once an opportunity for annoying dim-wits, has become a national holy day of obligation. The silliest frauds are presented as accurate with the straightest of faces. Social lies are routine.

The lead singer behind the New York Times’ lauded 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is on record calling the white race “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief in the modern world.” Despite this, the 1619 educational curriculum—much of which conveys basically the same point of view—is one of the more popular educational supplements in American schools. Major magazines and journals, at the level of Salon, quite regularly run articles with titles like “White Men Must Be Stopped–the Future of Mankind Depends on It.”

It may be that the victims of this kind of calumny are simply too afflicted with a Victorian politeness to object but it appears that, eventually, they have had their revenge. The outrageous waterfall of hyperbolic accusations did not fall on deaf ears, only dumb mouths. They had their day on election day. And the NYT has had a revision--like shooting the editorial staff is a revision.

So there seem to be parallel cultures in the U.S., one that is shouted from the rooftop, and one that is lived.

 

Lie Detectors

The son of the Yankee player, Miller Gardner, 14, apparently died by asphyxia "after a possible intoxication after apparently ingesting some food," an official with Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Agency told NBC News. No child is safe.

***

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek words “episteme” and “logos”. “Episteme” can be translated as “knowledge” or “understanding” or “acquaintance”, while “logos” can be translated as “account” or “argument” or “reason”. Just as each of these different translations captures some facet of the meaning of these Greek terms, so too does each translation capture a different facet of epistemology itself. 

Although the term “epistemology” is no more than a couple of centuries old, the field of epistemology is at least as old as any in philosophy. In different parts of its extensive history, different facets of epistemology have attracted attention. Plato’s epistemology was an attempt to understand what it was to know, and how knowledge (unlike mere true opinion) is good for the knower. Locke’s epistemology tried to understand the operations of human understanding, Kant’s epistemology was an effort to understand the conditions of the possibility of human understanding, and Russell’s epistemology was an attempt to understand how modern science could be justified by appeal to sensory experience. Much recent work in formal epistemology attempts to understand how our degrees of confidence are rationally constrained by our evidence.

***

This self-inflicted security breach proves the risks inherent in well-armed nation-states. It is present even in the most publicly cautious of political entities.

***

Lie Detectors

 

"Epistemic vigilance" argues that we possess tools to identify and call out lies. In a seminal paper, Sperber et al. argued that “humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance, targeted at the risk of being misinformed by others.” We have a built-in lie detector.

The problem is that humans have been shown, time and again, to be especially bad at telling truth from falsehood. As Shieber puts it, “Despite many decades of research, the findings are remarkably consistent in demonstrating that humans are quite poor at deception detection.”

One could argue that we humans have developed in the circumstance of an open mind, and that disputes are, by our nature, inconclusive. Debate and speculation simmer to conclusions, and crucial questions are solved by habit, reflex, and prejudice. Reflective gunslingers.

We also aren’t very good at telling whether someone is competent. Two studies — from 1996 and 2005 — showed how people use non-epistemic factors to determine whether someone is good at their job. Looks and posture are relied upon, but deceptive. An entire baseball scouting bias is built into a baseball face, an athletic 'look,' that was overthrown in 'Moneyball.'

Shieber coined the expression “The Nietzsche Thesis,” arguing that “our goal in conversation is not primarily to acquire truthful information… [but] self-presentation.” In other words, we accept or reject statements based on utilitarian goals, not on their truthfulness. In Nietzsche’s words, we will accept and look for truth only when it has “pleasant, life-preserving consequences.” Conversely, we are hostile “to potentially harmful and destructive truths.” We do not have epistemic vigilance, but a Machiavellian one.

Dyson, a renowned genius, once casually suggested truth among homo sapiens, in terms of evolution, had a context. Abstract truth on the savannah was simply impractical, whereas the meaning of a rustling in the bushes might mean life or death. Consequently, the immediate threat had significant truth importance, the cause of storms might be less practical and more likely seen in terms of myth.

And, as Aristotle showed,  we do love a well-constructed story.