America 1

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made her first video on TikTok and used the platform to defend the communist Chinese app from being banned nationwide after TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, donated six figures to a Hispanic caucus of which she is a member.

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Since Fetterman was sworn in as senator, the U.S. Senate has voted 69 times. Fetterman missed 53 of the last 64 roll-call votes, which is just under 83 percent.

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Meanwhile, in Canada...
Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explains that proponents of “2 + 2 = 4” are grounded “in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.” Although Rubel acknowledged the equation “literally” equals four, the statement is “used as a kind of basic truth & way to ridicule many critiques of mathematics as white and as western and as exclusionary.”

America 1

There is a wonderful story about America in a book called "Finding Oz" by Evan Schwartz. In October of 1869, in Cardiff, New York, a small town outside of Syracuse, a farmer named William Newell discovered a twelve-foot "petrified giant " while digging a well. He soon placed a tent around it and charged admission. He eventually sold it to a local businessman for 37,000 dollars, a huge amount at the time.

Meanwhile, archeologists examined the giant and declared it a recently created fake. Then a factory owner named George Hull admitted that he had commissioned its creation out of gypsum-just to prove how easy it was to fool Americans--and gave it to his cousin Newell to be "accidentally discovered". This apparently grew out of an argument he had with a local fundamentalist who believed that, according to Genesis, giants once roamed the earth.

Case closed, right? No. People kept coming. People kept paying to see it. P.T. Barnum offered an unbelievable 60,000 dollars for it and, when rebuffed, had his own replica built and advertised it as the real fake. ("There is a sucker born every minute" was apparently coined by the owner of the "original fake.") But Barnum's observation was more profound: "The American people love to be humbugged," he observed.

There was a local man, L. Frank Baum, a Syracuse castor-oil merchant, who watched this evolve and took it to heart. When he wrote "Wizard of Oz" and the wizard is finally revealed as a fraud, he says, "it was the only thing I could do." The people of Oz were eager to be deluded and were willing "to do anything I wished them to."

Other generalizations are yours to make.

The New Apocalypse

Humza Yousaf was confirmed as the first minister of Scotland on Tuesday, becoming the first person of color to head the Scottish government, and the first Muslim national leader in any Western democracy.
U.K. just got its first Hindu leader in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Britain’s capital city is headed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants.

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When President Biden’s official White House Facebook account announced the suspension of J&J’s COVID vaccine, Facebook’s algorithm censored the account for encouraging vaccine hesitancy—an algorithm that had been implemented at the request of Biden’s administration.

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Is there some ambivalence about the judgment of the Nashville shooting, like that of Ted Kozinski?

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The New Apocalypse

It's nice to see that the environmental movement is continuing basic human themes and traditions.

"Greenism shares with its Biblical precursor an obsession with days of judgment, with vengeance upon the wicked, and the dream of a redeemed world. But there’s a vital difference between the Biblical apocalypse and its green iteration. Those to be judged today are not a portion of sinful humanity. No, they are all of humanity. And the redeemed world dreamt of by climate activists is not the kingdom of God promised by earlier apocalyptic narratives. Instead, it is a kingdom of nature, and it is distinctly opposed to humanity. In short, the green End Times amount to a very anti-human apocalypse.

At the forefront of the arms race in catastrophic prophecies is Extinction Rebellion. (XR)

XR co-founder Roger Hallam puts it in one blog post, XR members must ‘understand that redemption only comes through suffering and the only honorable life is to move into that suffering in an act of faith that there will be another side to come out of, into a state of grace’."--Crowley

One can only hope that those old tried and true judicial arms, like inquisitions, won't be necessary.

Spies for Peace

What’s wrong with the 1619 Project is that it is factually preposterous. The essence of the story is that Americans fought the American Revolution because Lord Dunmore said that slaves fighting on the British side would be emancipated. Well, he said that in November 1775 – after Lexington and Concord, after the Boston Tea Party, after the Boston Massacre, after the Stamp Act. The war was up and running, and this is after George Washington had been put in charge of the troops.
So it is factually illiterate to say this. And that is why, to use your term, it’s not a good-faith kind of argument. It’s tendentious, meretricious, and propagandistic.--will

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Federal prosecutors in November charged eight people with running an international operation to poach wild monkeys. Among those charged were two Cambodian wildlife officials, one of whom was arrested in the U.S.—while traveling to an endangered species conference. About 60% of the 30,000 biomedical research monkeys imported annually to the U.S. used to come from China, but Beijing banned those exports during the pandemic, forcing American companies to pivot to Cambodia

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National Public Radio (NPR) claimed that “there is limited scientific research” supporting the idea that biological males have a “physical advantage” over biological females in competitive sports.

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Spies for Peace

The Greenbrier Resort, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of America's most famous luxury hotels. Underneath the sprawling property was a bunker about the size of a Walmart, that would be able to house every member of the House and the Senate in the case of a nuclear attack. The bunker used special technology to keep radiation out, had space for over 1,100 people to store belongings, a special room to allow Congress to be held while underground, and a six-month food supply.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that there needed to be a place for Congress to go as the threat of nuclear warfare became imminent. In 1958, government workers began building the bunker, in an operation known as "Project Greek Island."

So, in case of a national disaster, at least all the giant brains in the country will be protected. Britain had a similar plan years ago, saving the government. Knowing your priorities is very important.

Sunday/ Lazarus

The political left has never understood that, if you give the government enough power to create “social justice,” you have given it enough power to create despotism. Millions of people around the world have paid with their lives for overlooking that simple fact.--Sowell

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In early February, nearly five million people weren’t working because they were caring for children who weren’t in daycare or school, according to the Census Bureau.

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More than 550 Americans are reported missing in Mexico. Soaring violence and government dysfunction have fueled a crisis that’s left at least 112,150 people missing, according to government records

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Social Security and Medicare. Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs are the drivers of our current and future debt. And to drive home the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.

Lazarus

Today's gospel is the raising of Lazarus. You would think that would be enough but Christ magnifies the event. On hearing Lazarus is ill Christ says ambiguously, 'This sickness will not end in death, but it is for God's glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.' Mary and Martha will be rewarded, but not just yet.

Back to Bethany.

Bethany was dangerous territory for Christ. "The disciples said, 'Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'"
And Thomas, just a great human guy: "Then Thomas -- known as the Twin -- said to the other disciples, 'Let us also go to die with him.'"

In it, Christ is upsettingly emotional. Seeing Christ cry is unnerving as the gospels never report He ever laughed. But His intensity points to one thing: death is the lynchpin in all of life's discussions. This passage does not recoil from the ironic horror that Kazantzakis exploits later in The Last Temptation of Christ where Lazarus follows Christ around as a living, decaying man.

David One, Goliath Zero

 “When you are told that all (stock) repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEO’s, you are listening to an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive)”.--Buffett

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Clarence Darrow defended John Scopes in his trial over teaching evolution. Williams Jennings Bryan was prosecutor and Darrow succeeded in having him called to the stand as a bible expert. This was a pivotal exchange in favor of Darrow and Scopes:

Darrow: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"

Bryan: "Yes, sir; I have tried to.... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy."

Darrow: "Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?"

Bryan: "I believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."

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Importantly, we find that bans or restrictions that specifically target “assault weapons” increase demand for handguns, which are associated with the vast majority of firearm-related violence.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Sarah Moshary, Bradley Shapiro, and Sara Drango.

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David One, Goliath Zero


One wonders about leadership, particularly in top-down, narrow hierarchies. 

We usually give our opponents more credit than they deserve. 

Biden welcomed Zelenski to the U.S. asylum. He did not want or need it. We always assume that Chinese leadership is smarter than ours. But the idiot radicals here are bred in the same toxic philosophies as the Chinese leadership. Maybe such philosophies and hierarchies have their own inherent flaws and expiration dates.

Take China's relentless bullying of the Philippines.

After a decade of suffering China's aggressive acts against Philippine vessels, fishermen, and energy exploration efforts in waters within the archipelago country's Exclusive Economic Zone, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently welcomed an expanded US military presence.

Marcos now has responded to continued Chinese belligerence by granting US forces access to five additional military bases on Philippine territory.

In a direct rebuke to China, two of these new bases are on Palawan, one of the disputed Spratly Islands, which are also claimed, as is much else, by Communist China. A US military presence in Palawan will be a direct challenge to the Chinese Communist Party's plan to ultimately seize Taiwan: Palawan is the closest large Philippine island to Taiwan and the equally disputed waters of the South China Sea. US air and naval assets in Palawan could potentially play a large role in supporting the Free World forces against China.

China, by bullying its neighbors, is bringing about what it fears the most: a united phalanx of Asian powers under an American umbrella that is ready to prevent China from expanding to what it claims as its historic land and maritime borders. (from Franklin)

The Logistics of Extortion

The global commercial surrogacy industry grew to an estimated $14 billion in 2022. By 2032, that figure is forecast to rise to $129 billion. In Georgia, as in Ukraine, commercial surrogacy programs cost around $40,000-$50,000, while in Mexico they are about $60,000-$70,000. That compares with an average of $120,000 and higher in the U.S.

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The peso is the top-performing major currency this year, according to Bloomberg, and has more than recovered from its coronavirus pandemic weakness. It has risen 8.5 percent this year to trade above 18 to the dollar…
Foreign direct investment in Mexico hit $35.3bn last year, the highest level since 2015, according to economy ministry data. Transport manufacturing accounted for 12 percent of that.
Another source of foreign income has been resilient remittances from Mexican migrants in the US. The transfers from abroad now make up 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Even after growing to record levels last year, in January remittances were 12.5 percent higher than the same month a year earlier, according to Bank of Mexico figures.

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An interview with an MIT professor discusses China’s lackluster technological innovation and why declining foreign investment is more of a concern than a declining population.

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The Logistics of Extortion

The geniuses in the race industry have begun to ask funny questions, like where will the reparations come from?

Vaguely sensing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Hannah-Jones asks where the federal government would get the money to pay such a massive amount. Wouldn’t taxes have to be raised, she queries. [Duke University economist Sandy] Darity confidently asserts that no such action is necessary.

“It’s a matter of the federal government financing it in the same way that it financed…the stimulus package for the Great Recession” and the COVID-era CARES Act, Darity continues. To do so, the federal government needs only “spend the money but without raising taxes.” (David Henderson and Phil Magness)

There is a kind of symmetry between the mindless 1619 cult and the mindless view of economics the devotees and hustlers bring to fund it. And stupid ideas and behavior can be innocuous when small and contained. But...

The Ultimate Minority

 

Worker or capitalist, both are slaves to making things for others. Only the artist is free. Such progressive or conservative terminology is like calling an exchange of harsh words “verbal rape.”
We need terms for the physical violence entailed in actual slavery and in actual rape, and should not cheapen them by applying them to our middle-class vexations in NW6 or Marin County.--McCloskey

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School attendance, possibly through mechanisms of status competition and bullying, seems to raise the rate of youth suicide

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In two years’ time, the French capital will ban non-essential through-traffic from its city center. The plan, which is expected to eliminate around half of the daily car journeys through Paris’ core, has been a long-term objective for the city, part of its overall drive to slash the number of cars on the roads.

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The Ultimate Minority 

We have now moved from a democracy, where the majority has a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority, to where the majority must take the minority so seriously that, in most cases, they must defer to them. The Flat Earth Society gets interviewed. People who believe the U.S. faked the moon landing speak wryly on nighttime television shows. A child who wants to change his gender gets a contract instead of therapy.

The individual, the ultimate minority, is now the cynosure of the West. Everything he does has its own inherent value and validity. The Bell Curve is now irrelevant because we accept no norms. The Adam Smith community of productive, self-interested, and industrious individuals have had, insinuated into their midst, the inept, the disinterested, and the deranged--all of whom, in our brave new world, have their own value and story, too. Only the Nationalist seems to have allegiance less to an idea and more to some sinister, unseen group.

Recall the tremor that went through the academic community when the Unabomber was caught, the conflict, and ambiguous reflections. The guy was a bright, serious student and his social concerns overlapped those of many sensible, concerned observers of the new technological world. But you don't get a "Good Content-Bad Conduct Gentleman's C" in living. You can't get your murderous, vicious acts offset by a childhood Eagle Scout badge. No society can function on "compartmentalism;" Mussolini did make the trains run on time. But that is not enough. There is a bigger picture here. Ted Bundy was charming. World War II was loud. Goebbels had a PhD and a good first novel.

It's really quite simple: "By their fruits you will know them." Murder, chaos, mendacity, destruction. These are not faults in a greater, purer whole: These are the whole.