On Monday, three Chinese warships collided with and damaged three Philippine Coast Guard ships.

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The Arsonist Passes the Torch

Well, no rebalancing of the American political wheel last night as Biden raged into the night. The intergalactic torque remains--but the center holds. Sex cannot be defined. Price controls are reasonable governmental tools and may work. Police are a danger to public order. America can be run by people with no experience; indeed, they can be sought out. Voting is not necessary.

So, no answer to the lightning and the dark clouds.

The Revenge of the Community of Innocence

The Revenge of the Community of Innocence

I have been watching a culture progressively lose its mind, culminating recently as a major political party invalidated its primary, canceled the results, and substituted a new winner by fiat. There, as usual, was no discussion or criticism. So imagine the shock when, after Harris rolled out her solution to inflation--wage and price controls--she received an avalanche of criticism from the Press.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

One wonders if some line has been crossed, if some huge distortion has shifted and rebalanced. Perhaps an avalanche will be unleashed to counter the craziness that has been built up and the craziness now will shift the other way to compensate the previous goofiness.

Maybe Biden tonight will rise up in bitterness, pardon Hunter--as expected--but also pardon Trump.

Notes and Notables

Notes and Notables

22 days ago Biden dropped out of the presidential race and neither Biden nor Harris have publicly commented.

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Harris has said she wants to eliminate taxes on tips.

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There is a definitive tape of Gov. Walz' stolen valor speech. Why would someone do this and why would the press not care?

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US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army

China missiles filled with water, not fuel according to US intelligence.

And:…vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively

Suleiman the Magnificent

The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman in 1299 and it was ruled for ten successive generations by capable and often brilliant leaders, culminating in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), who led the Empire to its cultural and geographic zenith. He built Topkapi, captured Belgrade and Budapest, and completed the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of central Europe, and except for a quirk in the weather would have taken it. He was well on his way to solidifying the Ottomans as the rising historic star in Europe.

All that changed when he met the redhead.

He was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana, as part of his share of a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland. She must have really been something. He was so taken by her he rejected his hundreds of other harem girls and spent his time with her exclusively. Then he did the unheard of. He married her.

She was soon known as "The Witch." She had a son, Selim II, and she poisoned Suleiman against his favorite, the brilliant and able Mustafa, to the advancement of her son. Mustafa was clearly the man to succeed to the throne but she had Suleiman kill him. Suleiman actually watched as it was done. Selim became the new leader of the Empire and its new genetic father. A drunk and a coward, he brought dissolution to the Empire, personally and genetically. He started the tradition of killing every male in reach that looked to be a competent rival. This negative selective pattern reaped incompetent rewards. The behavior continued into the 20th Century when the Ottoman Empire fell apart in World War One, leaving the rest of the world with the aimless Middle East.

There is a great difference between phenotype and genotype. Its sharp edge can split the world.

Investing in America

Investing in America

Trade surpluses and deficits measure the movement of money across borders. So buying an EV made in China moves a car into the U.S. and money out to China. While that's a fair trade, the accounting follows the money. That fair trade gives China money in exchange for its metal car and is booked as a deficit. This accounting includes investments. Like the car buyer invests in the Chinese EV, the investor invests in an economy.

Surpluses simply mean that global investors, including those in the country in question, consistently find better investment opportunities outside of that country than within that country. Why countries, such as the U.S., that are net recipients of these investments, should complain is a mystery. This is the advantage of lower corporate tax rates: they attract investment.

An even worse error is to describe surplus countries as “trying to … acquire other countries’ assets.” The amount of capital in the world or in any country isn’t fixed; it can and does grow. When the Dutch company Ikea builds a store in Newark, it doesn’t so much acquire assets that once belonged to Americans as it creates assets in America that would not otherwise exist – assets that improve employment opportunities for Americans as well as expand Americans’ access to goods and services. Ditto when the German company BASF builds facilities in Louisiana, when the Mexican company Cemex constructs a plant in Texas, and when the Japanese company Toyota erects a factory in Kentucky. It’s beyond mysterious why someone, who’s frantic to have more manufacturing in the U.S., peddles policies that would reduce such foreign investment on America’s shores.

The foreign buying of so-called 'strategic land' is probably a different question and is worth discussion though it might be reasonable to start with being less polite to spy balloons.

A Riddle of Freedom

A Riddle of Freedom


We are teetering on the edge of an election that will pit viewpoints against each other that bear little resemblance to principles that are woven through the country's history since its founding.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “One of those riddles is: how is it that the people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body, while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for it, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?”

Symbolic Trade and Tradeoffs

Good news! Chess has been discovered to be unfair and a paper offers a solution to the distortion!
After White's first move, Black gets to make two moves consecutively. Then White makes two moves in a row, after which the game resumes as normal.

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Kamala Harris choose Eric Holder to review and recommend possible candidates for VP.

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Symbolic Trade and Tradeoffs

When the Trump administration decided in 2018 to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imported steel, ... employment tradeoffs emerged…. The steel industry employs about 147,000 workers, while there are roughly 2.3 million workers in steel-using industries. The tariffs cost Ford Motor Company a billion dollars in added costs of production because the tariffs made American steel the most expensive in the world. The higher steel costs also hurt Caterpillar and John Deere, as well as machinery producers. One study suggested that, as a result of the steel tariff, the number of jobs in the iron and steel industry and the fabricated metal products industry would increase by 44,000, but there would be 17,000 fewer jobs in motor vehicles and parts and 209,000 fewer jobs in construction.--irwin

While not perfect, it's a close approximation of zero-sum game theory, like corporate taxation.