Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

On this day:

763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1215
King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.
1389
Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752
Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775
American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1785
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1896
The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.
1919
John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1985
Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1996
The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England.
2002
Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75000 mi, about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

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What used to be envy has been chewed upon by unoccupied academic minds and has become a philosophy

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A new study published in the journal Current Biology recently found that octopuses can learn how to use mirrors to locate food hidden from view in an impressive feat of spatial thinking never before observed in invertebrates.

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Carolina Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, becoming the oldest player to win it at age 37.

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A "Memorandum of Understanding." A "Framework." Huh?

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Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

It is difficult to get any informative news from the US that is not ludicrously laden with righteous bias. Here are some opinions from the BBC, which may have no more value than US news. But the beliefs are surprising and, if untrue, just more international nonsense highlighting the universal mendacity of the makers of war and opinion. But if true...

1. Israel does not want the Middle East fighting to stop, and its attacks on Lebanon are intentionally provocative and disruptive.

2. The U.S. is the country that is constantly changing the rules and discussion, not Iran.  

3. The objective of the current discussions is to open the Straits and create a nonbelligerent environment for further discussions regarding the nuclear ambitions of Iran. If agreed to, the Straits will open, and the negotiating conditions will return to the way they were before the US attacked. Nothing more. So the objective of the talks is to create the pre-attack conditions.

These ideas are certainly contrary to what is being said in the US.

The BBC and Mrs. Lincoln

On this day:

1215
The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ. .
1620
The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod

1675
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
1778
Cherry Valley Massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.
1831
In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
1864
American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.
1887
Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.

1918
World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour in the eleventh month on the eleventh day) and this is annually honoured with a two-minute silence. The war officially ends on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28th June, 1919.
1930
Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
1940
World War II: Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
1942
World War II: Nazi Germany completes its occupation of France.
1942
World War II: The British win the Second Battle of El Alamein in El Alamein, Egypt.
1961
Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force are massacred by a mob in the course of the Kindu atrocity.
1967
Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to “new left” anti-war activist Tom Hayden.

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My sister-in-law was transferred to a rehabilitation facility after a prolonged hospitalization. She was met by an employee at the door who said to her, "Welcome to Hell, that's what this place is."

Some things are difficult to legislate.
 
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The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the country.” But the righteous constantly purifies itself. The NYT has a fascinating article on the Sierra Club's circular firing squad. The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

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Researchers in the field of swarm robotics are training machines to behave like ants, bees and even slime molds—simple creatures that achieve remarkable feats through collective intelligence.

This is fascinating stuff. A great fictional take is in Crichton's 'Prey', where nanobots undergo epigenetic change.

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Near the Red Fort metro station in India's capital Delhi, an explosion in a car killed at least eight people and injured more than 20. It was so powerful that several vehicles nearby almost melted, and people could hear the blast from kilometres away.

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Pittsburgh went 2-of-11 on third downs against the Chargers while committing three turnovers and zero takeaways.

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The BBC and Mrs. Lincoln

BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, resigned several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by Mr. Trump in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The BBC had made Trump's benign cheerleading malignant.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah says: “This is a sad day for the BBC. Tim has been an outstanding Director-General for the last five years. He has propelled the BBC forward with determination, single-mindedness and foresight.

“He has had the full support of me and the Board throughout. However, I understand the continued pressure on him, personally and professionally, which has led him to take this decision today. The whole Board respects the decision and the reasons for it.

“Tim has given 20 years of his life to the BBC. He is a devoted and inspirational leader and an absolute believer in the BBC and public service broadcasting. He has achieved a great deal. Foremost, under his tenure, the transformation of the BBC to meet the challenges in a world of unprecedented change and competition is well underway.

“Personally, I will miss his stamina, good humour and resilience and I will miss working with him. I wish him and his family the very best for the future.

“This is an important time for the Corporation and the Board and I will continue to work with Tim in the interim while we conduct the process to appoint his successor.”

Here are some of the key points from Tim Davie’s all-staff call with BBC colleagues

Davie did not address the billion-dollar lawsuit threatened by US President Trump or the BBC’s potential response, and whether it would pay compensation to stave off the litigation.

On the offending video edit of Trump’s speech, Davie said: “We did make a mistake and there was an editorial breach and I think some responsibility had to be taken”. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen to resign, he said, along with the “relentlessness” of the role and the opportunity to clear the runway for a new director general in the lead-up to 2027 charter renewal.

"Some responsibility"?

He mentioned “transition” a few times, but did not disclose details or any timeline for his departure and replacement. Shah, who joined in the call halfway, said the board was in “succession mode”.

Davie acknowledged that senior news editors were unhappy that their journalism had not been more vigorously defended, and said that while it was important to be “out there making our case”, when it came to responding to attacks, “we have to make sure we’re getting it right when we go out” and a sense of proportionality was also communicated – the few mistakes for several hundred hours of content. “It’s important that we calmly communicate to people the wood from the trees.”

Of note, the BBC is government-funded.

This is like the old "Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" Here, everyone within earshot is rushing to the nearest microphone to defend the sensibilities of arrogant journalists who have distorted the truth for their own petty political biases and have violated the public trust.

"Wood for the trees" indeed.

 

Prescience:

Allan Lichtman: Harris will beat Trump on Tuesday, said Allan Lichtman

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Nate Silver: The latest Silver Bulletin forecast shows Trump projected to win the election, 53.8 percent to Harris' 48.8 percent. FiveThirtyEight's forecast model puts Trump as 51 percent likely to win the election, compared to Harris' 48 percent.

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Prescience

And...a special paranoia edition that bypasses predictions:

An ABC station ignited a flurry of conspiracy theories after it aired what appeared to be official election results for Pennsylvania showing Kamala Harris easily winning the key swing state — more than a week before Election Day.

The shocking result popped up at the bottom of the screen during Sunday’s broadcast of the Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix by ABC local affiliate WNEP-TV, which serves the northern part of the Keystone State.

It showed the vice president capturing 52% of the votes, compared to 47% for Republican challenger Donald Trump, with 100% of the precincts reporting.

4

 

WNEP-TV said the results came up on the screen in “error” and that they had been “randomly generated” as part of a test ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Zito

Transgender Day of Remembrance is officially on Nov. 20 though many universities are holding events on different days, and the day is one of 30 holidays and four months intended to celebrate LGBTQ individuals, according to Seattle Pride.

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Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said the U.S. would offer “millions” to a de facto international climate reparations fund, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

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The increase in the world’s population between 1900 and 1990 was four times as great as the increase during the whole previous history of humankind.

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Zito

Selena Zito is the Erma Bombeck of political writers. She coined "The Press takes Trump literally but not seriously, his voters take him seriously but not literally."

Some recent notes from Selena Zito:


The Democratic Kentucky governor won reelection easily, while the GOP governor in Mississippi just squeaked by. Democrats now control both houses in Virginia. In Ohio, an abortion amendment passed easily.

But there were other races that were worth watching, according to Zito, that may have flown under the radar. She recently reported on a district attorney race in Allegheny County, Pa., where the Democrat is on the far left and was given millions by George Soros–backed groups. There, the Republican pulled out a victory. “These local elections impact the larger elections next year, and they tell us where the Democratic Party is,” (the Hill)

“the Democratic strategy is to marry ‘MAGA extremists’ with abortion, and run on that.” But she cautions the term “extremists” has a new definition since the October 7 terror attack in Israel. “‘Extremist’ has all of a sudden changed based on what we’ve seen in the streets,” she said. “People aren’t dumb. They’re going to say, ‘so what really is an extremist? Is it someone that supports Republicans, or someone out in the streets wanting Jews to die?’”Republicans have their own whole set of crazy problems, but this one could stick with Democrats for a generation.

With Trump, it’s comportment. With Biden, it’s his age. RFK can take voters from both sides.

“I would not be shocked if neither man is the nominee.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Iowa and New Hampshire listening to voters. I can see a scenario, based on anecdotal reporting, where DeSantis wins Iowa, Haley wins New Hampshire, and then all bets are off going into South Carolina,” she said.

“There is a nuance to Trump supporters,” she continued. “They like what he did, thought his policies were great, but they’re also really exhausted. His behavior is reflected on them because they supported him. So they’re shopping in their head, looking for someone who is willing to go to the mattresses. DeSantis and Haley have proven they have that ability, but also have governing experience, and the ability to be pragmatic. That’s where voters are.”

Bankruptcy of the Fourth Estate

The prime minister is head of government but not head of state. The separation of those functions inoculates Britain from the infantilism peculiar to the American republic. Here the cult of the presidency invests absurd glory and expectations in that office’s occupants, who generally are mediocrities because politicians, like lawyers and plumbers and columnists, etc., produce a bell-shaped curve.--will


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Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars to promote GOP candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election and embraced kooky conspiracy theories. Now, would they do that with America's best interest in mind?

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...at a time when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, it’s telling that McAvoy and Sorkin aim their sights at conservatives seeking power — not moderates and liberals wielding it.
--WashPo. Yep, that WashPo

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Bankruptcy of the Fourth Estate

The Press has capitulated. They will say anything but would prefer to discuss the state of the country through the lens of people who are not in office and not responsible for the current state of things.

One wonders about the capacity of the people to tolerate mendacity. Does the mind fill up like a glass and excess lies just spill out, unretained? Are the lies incorporated into normal thought like a virus takes over the DNA of its host? Since lies are a distortion of truth, do we start confusing them? If you hear the cry "Wolf" often enough, do you develop a callous?

One also wonders about the frantic persistence to tar Trump. He does not offer an oppositional philosophy; in fact, he does not offer a philosophy at all. Why does he generate such opposition? Some of it is political opportunism...but the rest? Is it that politicians recognize the unvarnished reflection of what they are, like Dorian Grey? Or is it nothing more than a magician's diversion?

Mendacity and the focus on people not in the government. A sure formula for improving the country.

Reversal

Reversal

There are some changes in the popular political media.

A very Left website has turned against masking, especially the masking of children. They picked out this information:

Fourteen of 16 trials performed before the pandemic found the recommendation to wear a mask did not significantly reduce infection rates compared to unmasked controls. Two trials on community masking have been performed during the pandemic. A trial in Denmark called DANMASK showed the recommendation to wear surgical masks did not reduce infections. A trial in Bangladesh showed reusable cloth masks did not reduce infections.

Many conservative pundits have turned against the American involvement in Ukraine, targeting Zelinsky. FOX has been particularly critical and has jumped on the Ukraine First Lady showing up on the cover of Vogue.

A headline from CBS:

Long COVID may now be less common than previously thought

And, just for fun. In 2008, Brian Deese – who’s currently President Joe Biden’s Chief Economic Advisor but at the time worked for Obama – said, “Of course economists have a technical definition of a recession which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.” But last week, he said the complete opposite. “Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession. It’s not the definition that economists have traditionally relied on.”

The Scourge of Male Economists

The Scourge of Male Economists

Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a profile of economist Stephanie Kelton, known for her work on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.

Larry Summers tweeted this in response:
“I am sorry to see the @nytimes taking MMT seriously as an intellectual movement. It is the equivalent of publicizing fad diets, quack cancer cures or creationist theories.”

This is the beginning of an article in Axios, commenting on the exchange:
"A handful of prominent male economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, are freaking out — mostly on Twitter — about a weekend New York Times profile of economist Stephanie Kelton, known for her work on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT....
And the gender dynamics — male economists piling on against a female economist and a female journalist, Times' reporter Jeanna Smialek, in ways distinctive from typical academic arguments — look terrible here."

Before people start to criticize the press for their opinions, they will need a period of decompression where they can relearn to take the press seriously.

Dying in Darkness

Dying in Darkness

Sometimes, in clandestine conflict, true colors fly.

The Russians are said to be setting up their own troops in Ukraine disguised as Ukrainian troops to initiate outbreaks of violence against local Russians. This will allow the Russian troops on the border to enter and attack Ukraine to 'save the day.' This raising of an incident by your own agents, so you can respond to it, is called a 'false flag' operation, a time-honored surreptitious and dishonest way to justify violence against a people.

The Department of Education asked for--solicited--a letter from a local school board stating that parents' behavior at a meeting frightened them and asking for help. The Board of Education received the letter and forwarded it to the Department of Justice for further, aggressive response.

Are these two episodes similar? Does the Department of Education look like the Russians? Does the group of parents look like Ukraine? Does the Department of Justice look like the Red Army?

If any of these comparisons are fair, are you scared to death?

The Self-sacrifice of the Press

 

                           The Self-sacrifice of the Press

A number of years ago during the hunt for bin Ladin, the American press learned the American military was tracking terrorist leaders through their cell phones. The government asked that the information be suppressed so they could continue to track them surreptitiously but the press, particularly the NYT, said they would reveal it. Nothing like the Truth.

So the press revealed the Americans had the locations of all the terrorists, the terrorists threw away their phones, and the Americans lost a terrific advantage in their conflict with murderous anarchy. But the press, somehow feeling they were immune to murderous anarchy, swelled with pride.

The saintly press is repeating their mistake with the Chinese. They are presenting the Americans as anti-Asian bigots, to the delight of Chinese propagandists who are using this in their efforts to influence the Asia they don't control. Once again, the press acts as if they will not suffer when the rest of us will suffer. 

I don't know if they are stupid, but they are certainly unwise.

Pittsburgh Pirates Jarrod Dyson Picked Off at Second

On the eighteenth of August, in Pittsburgh in the time of the Plague, with the score 3-3 and nobody out in the bottom of the ninth, the Pirate's centerfielder, Jarrod Dyson, the winning run, was picked off second base by the catcher. This amazing event was reported nationally as follows:

"Pittsburgh Pirates Jarrod Dyson Picked Off at Second



Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Guillermo Heredia (5) reacts after being picked off at second base in the ninth inning.
The Pirates had a chance to win it in the ninth when they put runners and first and second with no outs. But speedy Jarrod Dyson was picked off second base by catcher Roberto Perez and the inning eventually ended when Nick Wittgren (1-0) struck out Josh Bell with two on."

While such an event might astonish the average fan, the reporting is more important. The article identifies the player picked off at second as two different guys, first Dyson and then Heredia. Accuracy in the Press is not a high priority but this error is more understandable than most. The Pirates actually do not have a set lineup. In fact in two games I have seen, two separate players who have never played in the outfield before have played center field. 28 pitchers have pitched for them so far in this short season. The Yankees do not have names on their jerseys because everyone knows who they are, the Pirates have names because no one knows who they are and even then can't tell.

I have no problem with the Nuttings making a buck with a small market team. I wish only that they were better at it. The problem here is that every team must have a few capable players to be a real team rather than a group of imposters. Center field is one of those positions. You are morally obligated to have a centerfielder, a catcher and a shortstop. 

Perhaps a social action group should show up at Nutting's house and demand a center fielder.

Rushmore, or Less

There is a great difference between a diagnosis and an illness. So the numbers of Virus diagnoses is not meaningful without the balancing illness numbers. The Press knows this, right?


                                      Rushmore, or Less

From Jenkins on the Rushmore speech:

Every American, regardless of how he or she feels about Donald Trump, should read his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore and then the Washington Post account of the speech by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker. The Post account begins: “President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore . . .”

Except that Mr. Trump made no reference to the Confederacy or any of its symbols. His only reference to the Civil War was to Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery as a fulfillment of the American Revolution.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, as many commentators on the right noted, also lied when she said Mr. Trump “spent all his time talking about dead traitors.” He mentioned not a single leader or champion of the Confederacy.

In its own account, though hardly friendly to Mr. Trump, the New York Times went out of its way to counter these rampant distortions, reporting that Mr. Trump “avoided references . . . to the symbols of the Confederacy that have been a target of many protests.”

So we are turning to the NYT for accuracy about Trump.

The Press

Black Lives Matter has been copyrighted. By whom? It has a website. Is it a charity? Deductible? Where do donations go? Who determines that?




                                     The Press

From journalist and Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi’s article “The American Press Is Destroying Itself“:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism.

Trouble on the Right

Any practitioner of politic's black arts knows that drama, envy, and animosity are the very lifeblood of success. The only further degradation is the insulting claim that these people make that this behavior will "bring us together."


                         Trouble on the Right

Bill O'Reilly's show, "No Spin News," which currently airs on his website and across YouTube, will be broadcast twice daily on The First, a conservative digital television network that runs on several platforms, including ViacomCBS-owned Pluto TV. This announcement has been reported as a significant event in the propagation of the Right/Conservative movement. It looks to be just the opposite.

For the last years the Right/Center-Right position has been remarkably available. But the thoughtful position is shrinking. Coulter is too abrasive, Will too abstract. The successes on the Right have been the very accessible talk and television personalities. While O'Reilly has been one of these, he is not ideologically Right and now has been marginalized. (He once had 5 million viewers.) Levin has recently extended his contract and has some reach. But Thomas Sowell is over 85, Walter Williams is 83. Hannity is loud and liked but offers more screed than creed.

The real crisis on the Right is Limbaugh. He is estimated as having 50 million listeners. He is unmistakenly Right, has the simple, focused approach of Reagan, a midwest voice, and seems to have a good heart. But his recent diagnosis is grim and he is likely dying. Metastatic lung cancer has a terrible prognosis and it is hard to imagine his living the year. If true, that will have consequences.

Ours is a culture that tries to think about things as superficially as possible. The decline of public Conservative positions will cede the field to the arrogant and grasping Left, strangely supported by its congenital opponent, the Press. In a leaderless, drifting, and silent culture, anything could be bumped into in the night.

Some Windows are Small

For the last several weeks, Iran and Isreal have been in a CyberWar. Most recently, unsecured websites in Israel have been hacked and threatening messages attached. Thursday’s attack comes after a series of tit-for-tat cyberattacks between the two countries, with Iranian hackers linked to an attempted cyberattack on the official Israeli water network in April and Israel blamed for a reciprocal attack on computers at Iran's Shahid Rajaee port that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. Not a shot has been fired.

Disruption, like bombing supply lines, bridges, and train tracks--without a shot--has become the disorder of the day. It is a field where a single man can have a lot of leverage.

It's not Stuxnet, but it is a new age of danger to humanity that attracts a new kind of homicidal mind.                                              

                                Some Windows are Small

This is an opinion piece on the NYT's take on one of the Democrat debates. I can't remember where it's from.

The Times’ editorial board shows that it is unconcerned with economic growth or paying for government programs. But it is obsessed with the markers of identity politics, like a candidate’s stance on reparations and the number of people of various ethnicities employed by campaigns. It is suspicious of anyone who has even briefly been associated with for-profit companies.

Economic growth is a great social good. It raises people out of poverty and is correlated with longer life and greater happiness. Even if you believe that the state should engage in progressive redistribution of income and provide important social services, growth remains important because that growth permits more distribution and better services.

Yet the board never asked any questions of any of the Democratic candidates about growth.

The board gave a hard time to only three of the candidates about their résumés—Steyer, Buttigieg, and Yang. In all three cases, its concerns only revolved around their work with for-profit companies. Their worries about Buttigieg were particularly telling. One might well be concerned that Buttigieg’s experience of being the mayor of a city of 100,000 residents does not qualify him to be the president of a nation of 300 million people. But instead the questions about his qualifications focused on his work with McKinsey as a junior consultant right out of college. The board was concerned, for instance, that McKinsey works on consulting reports which result in cost-cutting and layoffs (as if businesses can easily thrive if they are overstaffed and inefficient).

In contrast, the board never raised any questions about the lack of business or economic experience of those who spent most of their lives on the public payroll. For the Times, being a legislator or a professor brings with it the presumption of fitness for the Presidency, but participation in business carries a presumption of unfitness.

The board’s enthusiasm for identity politics often descended from the momentous to the relatively unimportant. They quizzed Buttigieg about how many African Americans were on his campaign staff and Bernie Sanders about how many women. They wanted to quiz Steyer on his asylum policy specifically for LGBTQ people, although Steyer could not even remember that he had one.

The focus on identity politics is the flip side of the board’s indifference to economic growth. Economic growth expands the pie. Identity politics in the form of reparations or employment preferences is a divisive, zero-sum game.

The board is also hostile to big tech. They even asked some candidates whether they were members of Amazon Prime, as if this were evidence of complicity in evil. But while the board focused on the possible benefits of breaking up big tech in general, Facebook was clearly the object of its greatest ire. In one interview, a Board member suggests that Facebook is a threat to democracy.

It’s much more obvious that it is a threat to institutions like the New York Times. Its influence comes from letting others offer their opinions through their posts and advertisements. This mechanism for decentralized messaging undermines the hegemony of the old media—especially the influence of their political endorsements.

All our Drugs Come from China

                              All our Drugs Come from China

"80 percent of America's pharmaceutical drug supply comes from China." This has been presented recently as part of a rather astonishing anxiety over America's dependence upon foreign manufacturers. We do this on purpose; it's cheaper. But the numbers are, in the words of the Secretary of Defense in "Independence Day," not entirely accurate.

What is underlying this problem is how the inaccuracy occurs. Are these people this dumb? Or are they insincere?

This is from Reason:

'Tracing this “80 percent of American drugs come from China” claim back to its source reveals a game of “whisper down the lane,” in which a rather innocuous piece of data about the global manufacturing base for pharmaceutical drugs has been inaccurately summarized and stripped of important context.

In December, when the U.S. and China signed the “phase one” trade deal—and when the coronavirus outbreak was still very much in the background—Politico published a story (with some reporting from the South China Morning Post) framed around the idea that “U.S. policymakers” were worried that China could “weaponize” its drug exports to gain leverage in a trade dispute.

The piece was designed to scare. “The U.S. relies on imported medicines from China in a big way,” authors Doug Palmer and Finbarr Bermingham wrote right at the top. “Antibiotics, over-the-counter pain meds and the stuff that stops itching and swelling—a lot of it is imported from China.”

How much is a lot? “In all, 80 percent of the U.S. supply of antibiotics are made in China,” they wrote, linking back to a press release from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa). (Remember, this piece was in Politico.)

But that’s not what the press release says.

Grassley’s statement was publicizing a letter Grassley sent on August 9 to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA, asking them to conduct more inspections of foreign drug manufacturing facilities to make sure they meet American standards.

“Unbeknownst to many consumers … 80 percent of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients are produced abroad, the majority in China and India,” Grassley wrote.

There’s the first bit of context collapse: the authors of the Politico piece merged Grassley’s “80 percent … are produced abroad” into “80 percent…are made in China.”

All of this also raises another question: Where is Grassley getting that information? His letter sources that claim to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report which itself cited FDA data on pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world. And that report makes it clear that the U.S. has a diverse supply chain for drugs that goes well beyond India and China.

“Nearly 40 percent of finished drugs and approximately 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) are manufactured in registered establishments in more than 150 countries,” is how the GAO summed up America’s pharmaceutical supply chain.

In two jumps, we’ve gone from “80 percent of American drugs are manufactured in more than 150 countries around the world” to “80 percent of drugs come from two countries” to “80 percent of drugs come from China.”'

There are simply too many sources of information, misinformation, and disinformation out in the world for the individual to monitor. So the individual expects the trusted sites, who analyze information for a living, to do it. But they may be unable--or unwilling--to do so.

Do We Need Press Briefings?

                                

                 Do We Need Press Briefings?

Seven former White House press secretaries joined six former State and Defense briefers for an open-letter CNN opinion piece arguing for a return to regular press briefings.

The Trump White House has not held a traditional press briefing since March 11, when Sarah Sanders was still the press secretary.


They argue:
"The process of preparing for regular briefings makes the government run better. The sharing of information, known as official guidance, among government officials and agencies helps ensure that an administration speaks with one voice, telling one story, however compelling it might be.
Regular briefings also force a certain discipline on government decision making. Knowing there are briefings scheduled is a powerful incentive for administration officials to complete a policy process on time. Put another way, no presidents want their briefers to say, day after day, we haven't figured that one out yet. ...
Using the powerful podiums of the State Department, Pentagon and White House is a powerful tool for keeping our allies informed and letting our enemies know we are united in our determination to defeat them both on the battlefield and in the world of public diplomacy."

Asked for a response, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Axios:
"This is groupthink at its finest. The press has unprecedented access to President Trump, yet they continue to complain because they can’t grandstand on TV. They’re not looking for information, they’re looking for a moment. This president is unorthodox in everything he’s done. He’s rewritten the rules of politics. His press secretary and everyone else in the administration is reflective of that.
In terms of the former press secretaries — they can publicly pile on all they want. It’s unfortunate, because I’ve always felt I was in this small club of only 29 others who really know what I deal with each day, and that was always comforting. They may not say it publicly, but they all understand why I do things differently. They know I have three roles. They know my boss has probably spoken directly to the press more than all of theirs did combined. They know the press secretary briefs in the absence of the president, and this president is never absent — a fact that should be celebrated.
Like so many trailblazers, history will look back on this presidency with praise — until then, I’m comfortable with how I do my jobs — and my team and I are always available to the press."

Plausibility

It is their [“an elitist class of progressives”] divisive message that marks the black race as forever broken, as a people whose healing comes only through the guilt, pity, profits and benevolence of the white race. This perception is playing out on our nation’s college campuses, where young white Americans claim privilege due to their skin color and young black Americans, with no apparent shame, accept this demeaning of their own color as truth.--Burgess Owens

Mom is in West Virginia again for another round of meetings.
I've been busy, in my own smaller way.

Imagine what people who suggest spending 10 trillion dollars on a project of any sort must think of money and our economy.

Google makes you wonder if we have gone from an enterprise culture with a philanthropic arm to a philanthropyc culture with an enterprise arm.
 
Wind turbines only last for around 20 years, so many of them are now wearing out. That raises serious questions about disposal of defunct wind turbine parts. The turbines’ giant blades are not recyclable, so they must be dumped in landfills.
If a wind farm includes 100 turbines, that means that 500 million pounds of concrete (which off-gases CO2, by the way) have been poured into what previously was likely farm land. When the turbines are defunct after a mere 20 years, what will be done with hundreds of millions of pounds of concrete? Maybe walls on the edges of the oceans?

Gnosticism (with links to classical Hinduism) forms the foundation for feminism and transgenderism. Why? Because radical feminism and transgenderism reject the ontological and biological basis of womanhood and gender. “One is not born, but becomes a woman” (Simone de Beauvoir).--Gomes
Plausible.

On this day in 1522, one of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships—the Victoria—arrived at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Vittoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan Sebastian de Elcano, who took charge of the vessel after the murder of Magellan in the Philippines in April 1521.

                                               Plausibility

Time Magazine columnist Ian Bremmer tweeted a quote from President Donald Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that quickly went viral — but it wasn’t real.

“President Trump in Tokyo: ‘Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.'” Bremmer wrote on Twitter. Bremmer left the false post up for several hours before conceding he made up the quote and deleting the tweet, which he defended as “plausible.”

"The Plausible" is a short step from "If you can conceive of it, it could happen" to "If you can conceive of it it did, or will, happen." This used to be the province of people who were called "airheads." It has become, in some circles, political and economic philosophy.

Three Strikes and You're Out

“For I hate feminism. It is poison.” Thacher


No elevator working in the office building today. I'm on the 11th floor.
Mom redid the floor in the Summer Palace.

The Mueller Hearings did show an interesting tendency: The Congress does love a grownup.

A truly funny idea from Ridley: "Why are wolves increasing all around the world, lions decreasing and tigers now holding steady? Basically, because wolves are in rich countries, lions in poor countries and tigers in middle income countries." There is a notion among the illiterate that prosperity is, somehow, a problem and not a solution.

Vintage is becoming big business as The RealReal and other upstarts feast on the emerging appeal of secondhand clothes, shoes and accessories.(wsj)

In 2012, 2014 and 2015, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni commissioned a survey of college graduates and found that less than 20% could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. Less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown. One-third of college graduates were unaware that FDR introduced the New Deal. Over one-third of the college graduates surveyed could not place the American Civil War in its correct 20-year time frame. Nearly half of the college graduates could not identify correctly the term lengths of U.S. senators and representatives.

The European economy is said to be struggling. If so, how will they fare with a possible 25% US import tariff on European automobiles before year-end? And will the Europeans be understanding?

Gandhi said, “Today man wants to visit England; tomorrow he will want to visit the moon.” This analysis led Gandhi to reject the goal of getting more, and to recommend the goal of wanting less. 
But the social engineers, taking credit for solving the production problem, now believe the only thing separating us from Utopia is solving the distribution problem. And we will all be satisfied.
But we are a restless, grasping species. To our credit, we can never be satisfied.

On August 16, 1920, Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was struck in the temple by a ball pitched by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. He died 12 hours later. This was the first and only death to occur as the result of a pitched ball in major league history.

             Three Strikes and You're Out

The three significant events that have occurred in the last two years are the election of Trump, the Brexit vote and the election of the conservative government in Australia. And each of these events came as a staggering surprise to the experts and pundits alike. So the really important moments in the West over the last two years were completely missed by the experts. It is one thing to be wrong, it is quite another to attribute your errors to strange, unfathomable forces. And when your are making errors repeatedly in the same sphere one might expect a reassessment.

This is the hallmark of the contemporary American Press: A failure of reflection.
In the face of astonishing miscalculations they make the next one as if nothing had happened prior. This implies an inability to learn.

That and a lack of humility.

First Amendment

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. -Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher

We and the McGraws could not get tickets to the Holmes play at the Foster.
I've made some progress with my diet; sort of level 2 of three. But broke down last night with some of Chris' great bread.

Do you get the feeling the Press was furious that Trump did not attack Iran?

During Buttigieg’s recent appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd read him a statement from the Reverend Rodric Reid, an African-American pastor in Indianapolis. “I guarantee,” Reid had told the Indianapolis Star, that Buttigieg’s marriage to another man “is going to be an obstacle. . . . That is really still a touchy subject, specifically and especially in the African-American church.” Todd also noted that he’d talked to black congressmen who said Buttigieg’s homosexuality could be a problem with segments of the African-American vote.
Why is that opinion so accepted when if it were, say, from a Mormon, it would not?

The dates on our food labels do not have much to do with food safety. In many cases, expiration dates do not indicate when the food stops being safe to eat — rather, they tell you when the manufacturer thinks that product will stop looking and tasting its best. Although some foods, such as deli meats, unpasteurized milk and cheese, and prepared foods such as potato salad that you do not reheat, probably should be tossed after their use-by dates for safety reasons.
84 percent of consumers at least occasionally throw out food because it is close to or past its package date, and over one third (37 percent) say they always or usually do so. That food waste in landfills generates carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas 28 to 36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. And you are not just wasting calories and money. You are wasting all the resources that went into growing, packaging and transporting that food.

In Britain last year, generously using the Final Energy Consumption metric, 4 per cent of energy came from wind and solar, 3 per cent from nuclear and less than 1 per cent from hydro, the three zero-carbon sources. The common misconception that wind and solar are bigger contributors comes from forgetting that electricity is just 20 per cent of energy: the rest is heat, transport and industry. (Think firing a steel furnace with wind.)

AbbVie struck a deal to buy Allergan for about $63 billion.


From a brutal interview with the feminist Dr. Phyllis Chesler by Louise Perry:
In 1979, Chesler was raped by her then-employer, Davidson Nicol—a senior official at the United Nations and dignitary from Sierra Leone. She tells me that this rape proved to be less traumatic than the subsequent behaviour of her fellow feminists. When Chesler disclosed what had happened to Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem—some of the most powerful women in the movement at the time—they refused to support her in confronting her attacker. Chesler writes that Morgan told her that it would “look bad for feminism” for a “white feminist to charge a black man with rape and sexual harassment,” and that Steinem backed up this decision. Even Andrea Dworkin failed to stand up for her, telling Chesler that in her opinion “accusing a black man would make feminists look like racists.” This, despite the fact that several women of colour were supportive of Chesler’s desire to confront Nicol, particularly given that he was well known to be predatory.

Big companies are scrambling to grab a share of the $150bn (£119bn) global cannabis market, eyeing products as diverse as beer and dog treats according to a report by Standard & Poor's which predicts further expansion as legal cannabis becomes acceptable.The report by the ratings agency says growth may be volatile, because of the changing regulatory framework. Two of the biggest investments in the sector have come from Altria, owner of Philip Morris cigarettes, and Constellation Brands, owner of Corona beer, which have each invested more than $1bn in such products.

Republican Roy Moore—who narrowly lost to Democrat Doug Jones in a 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate in Alabama—announced he will run again. This country is reasonably concerned about surplus and scarcity. Now look at the 2020 presidential candidates. Why should a country of this size and competence have so much difficulty attracting good leaders? 


On this day in 1876, American Indian forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River.


                             First Amendment


The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Writing about NPR and PBS, Bordeaux raises an interesting question that is new to me.

"Note that among the freedoms guaranteed by this Constitutional provision are freedom of religion and freedom of the press. The authors and ratifiers of this amendment wisely sought, among other goals, to prevent the federal government from exercising influence over religion and over the press.

If the First amendment is violated when federal taxpayer funds are channeled to schools operated by churches – channeled with no intention by the state (or anyone else) either to give any religion an advantage or to deny the people of any religion the freedom to worship as they please – why is the First amendment not violated when federal taxpayer funds are channeled to organizations that are part of “the press”?

Put differently, if it is Constitutionally permissible for Uncle Sam to have a policy through which some of its tax revenues are channeled to support some media outlets, why is it Constitutionally impermissible for Uncle Sam or the states to have policies through which some of their tax revenues are channeled to support religious schools?

Indeed, if there is any Constitutionally relevant difference between the two cases, it seems to me that federal-government funding of NPR and PBS – funding made through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – is more Constitutionally dubious than are school vouchers. NPR and PBS were created by the CPB, itself created by the federal government and whose funding comes almost entirely from Congressional appropriations. In contrast, none of the religious schools, or religions, that receive, or that would receive, funding through school vouchers are creatures of the state.

The principal purpose of school vouchers is to promote schooling, not religious belief or churches. Any promotion of religious belief or churches is indirect. In contrast, the principal purpose of government funding that goes to NPR and PBS is to promote journalism. Government funding that goes to NPR and PBS is meant to affect the operation of the press in a rather direct manner, while government funding that goes to churches through school vouchers is not meant to affect the operation of churches or the acceptance or rejection of any theology."

So, why are government subsidies of the Press tolerated? Is it that the Press is seen as more pure than religion?

Wilson and the War

In Search of a Goldilocks American Government

While CNN has very few viewers in the U.S., it seems to be the major source for the rest of the world's insights into the policies and politics of the U.S..  Most of this is negative--at least since Obama has been gone. American efforts at stabilization, regime support and change, military action and the like have been presented in a particularly critical light. Quora, a site purporting to have a higher level of social intercourse, has very similar takes on American positions. Much of this is Monday morning grousing--the Americans do too much, or they do too little--and opinions of U.S. leadership swings from the overtly evil to the simply laughable.

In the spirit of such discussion, here is an interesting opinion from Henderson:

Imagine how different things might have been had President Woodrow Wilson not declared war on Germany and Austria in order to “make the world safe for democracy.” Without the U.S. government lending its mighty power to one side in the European war, Germany and Austria would likely have negotiated a peace with France, Britain, and Italy very different from the Versailles Treaty. In particular, Germany would not likely have been saddled with such huge reparations payments; therefore, Adolf Hitler would have had less support from the German people.
Consider, too, that in return for financial support of Russia’s Provisional Government that took over after the czar abdicated, President Wilson had insisted that the Russian government stay in the war. The war’s unpopularity with the Russian people was part of the reason that they supported, or at least did not strongly oppose, a communist revolution. Historian and diplomat George Kennan claimed that Allied pressure on Russia to stay in the war hastened the failure of the Provisional Government, which led to the takeover by the Bolsheviks.
In short, a reasonable case can be made that without Wilson’s intervention in World War I, there would have been no Soviet Union. So it’s arguable that without U.S. involvement in World War I, there would not have been a World War II and we would still be referring to World War I as the “Great War.”