Sunday/Temptation

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

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From Glanmore:

The corrugated iron growled like thunder
When March came in; then as the year turned warmer
And invalids and bulbs came up from under,
I hibernated on behind the dormer,
Staring through shaken branches at the hill,
Dissociated, like an ailing farmer
Chloroformed against things seasonal
In a reek of cigarette smoke and dropped ash.

Lent came in next, also like a lion
Sinewy and wild for discipline,
A fasted will marauding through the body;
And I taunted it with scents of nicotine
As I lit one off another, and felt rash,
And stirred in the deep litter of the study. 

(Seamus Heaney)

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Sunday/Temptation

First Sunday of Lent

Today's gospel is The Temptation in the Desert. Christ is asked by the Devil to change stone into bread, is offered dominion over the earth, and is offered the opportunity to summon angels. The temptation of God is unsettling even if we can rationalize it under Christ's duality. This event has been translated as the temptation of Israel but there is a peculiarity here that does not go away: Who is Christ proving Himself to? He is not being asked to change stone to bread because He is hungry but to prove He can do it. Ditto the display of throwing Himself from the precipice. These are displays of proof, confirmation of His divinity. And, as Christ does not need the Devil for dominion, one thinks the Devil is superfluous.

What the devil is going on?

What this really looks like is a heavenly internal debate (and a joy to the Manichees): "I could do it this way but won't. This way but won't. Nor this way." 

But Christ is not being asked by the Devil for proof.

The Devil is us.

SatStats

Soon after Trump recaptured the White House, Chinese leader Xi Jinping asked aides to urgently analyze the U.S.-Soviet Cold War rivalry, concerned that, as Trump prepares for a showdown with Beijing, China could get isolated like Moscow during that era--wsj

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SatStats

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More jobs were lost in the Rust Belt in the northeastern United States between 1950 and 1980 … than in the decades that followed.

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A Government Accountability Office report last spring estimated the “federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.

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The United States has run an annual trade deficit every single year since 1976.

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Since 1999, trade as a share of GDP has risen from 31 per cent to 55 per cent in the eurozone, whereas in China it rose from 34 per cent to 37 per cent and in the US from 23 per cent to just 25 per cent. This openness was an asset in a globalising world. But now it has become a vulnerability.

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Energy firm Wood Mackenzie has estimated that the IRA’s energy subsidies could hit $3 trillion through 2050, and his own forthcoming estimates push the number even higher—to as much as $4.7 trillion over the same timeframe.

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Estimate for 2023 (2024 data aren’t available yet) are the Bureau of Land Management lost $734.6 million, the Forest Service lost $9.77 billion, and the National Park Service lost $2.82 billion.

In 2015 the Department of Commerce estimated that all federal lands were worth $1.8 trillion. Applying a simple long-term government bond yield of about 5%, a $1.8 trillion asset should yield $90 billion a year, not lose more than $13 billion.

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Germany has lost almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs since the start of the Covid pandemic as companies and politicians sound the alarm that Europe’s industrial heartland is suffering an irreversible decline…

The contraction of Germany’s industry is evident in the fall of market value in the sector. Together, Dax constituents Volkswagen, Thyssenkrupp and BASF have lost €50bn, or 34 per cent, in market capitalisation over the past five years. From 2010 to 2014, carmakers on the Dax index were more valuable on average than their peers in any other sector, but valuations have slipped as demand has started to falter. VW’s deliveries to customers last year slumped by nearly a fifth compared with the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

In other industrials, steelmaker Thyssenkrupp has announced plans to reduce its production capacity by up to a quarter and cut 40 per cent of jobs. BASF is looking to cut costs at its Ludwigshafen headquarters, the world’s largest chemical site, by €2bn a year

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GAO earlier estimated that 11% to 15% of unemployment benefits during the pandemic were fraudulent, totalling between $100 billion and $135 billion.

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Today more than 1 percent of the world’s industrial energy is devoted to making ammonia fertilizer. “That 1 percent,” the futurist Ramez Naam says, “roughly doubles the amount of food the world can grow.”

Musk's Principles

BlackRock analysts found that Americans now estimate they will need over $2 million saved for retirement. However, the average American only has $87,000 saved in their retirement accounts.
69% have less than $150,000 saved and an astonishing 33% have no retirement savings at all.

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U.S. authorities recovered $31 million in cryptocurrency stolen in 2021 cyberattacks on Uranium Finance, a Binance Smart Chain-based DeFi protocol. The platform launched in April 2021, but hackers quickly exploited vulnerabilities in its smart contracts to drain its assets and push it to premature death, causing millions in investor losses.

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Musk's Principles

Murray has a column in the WSJ about Musk. Here's a segment.

"What do we know about Musk as a leader? Fortunately, ...Dennis Kneale has provided a guide. His new book is called “The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk” and boils it down to 11 key principles. If “The Art of the Deal” tells us what we need to know about Trump’s leadership style, Kneale’s book does the same for Musk.

Here are Kneale’s 11 principles, ranked by me from the least to the most idiosyncratic: 

-It’s better to launch and burn than never to launch at all.
-Always bet on yourself, and double down.
-Dream huge, and be willing to spend decades in pursuit.
-Reduce, reduce, reduce. The key to business success, and life, is simplification.
-Most people are loafers; work harder than you ever have before.
-On the media: to hell with them, they are shameless shills.
-Free speech is everything; stand up and be heard.
-Tease your critics and torture your enemies.
-The most likely outcome is often the most ironic (and unexpected) one.
-The highest nail gets pounded down first. Strap on a helmet.
-This all may be fake, so just go for it."

That last one is a reference to Musk’s often restated belief that, as Kneale puts it: 'We are living inside a superreal virtual simulation, mere characters in someone else’s videogame.'"

Musk is a lot. This disappointing article is considerably less so because people are hard to summarize. Thankfully. We are subtle and nuanced; distilling us is a task braved only by the arrogant or the foolish...like sociologists, Marxists, and racists. Summarizing us is mental shorthand, binary, not analog. Not accurate but convenient for those with a limited purpose. Think commissars or CRT. We are a race of tendencies, like dog breeds, but unlike dog breeds, those tendencies are only the starting points. it is that promise that makes us so inspiring, and our failures so disheartening, to everyone except the collectivist. The Americans created a political culture where the limits on an individual are individual and innate. There are no breeds here and no laws declaring a courser a pointer. And most importantly, he is of equal value before the law.

Every child is born a Musk, or a DiVinci or a Shakespeare until he proves otherwise. But he will always have the dignity and integrity of a free individual regardless of his accomplishments.

Conclave

36% percent of airlines worldwide that said cybersecurity is their top priority for tech spending in the coming year.

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A Spirit Airlines flight was forced to divert after it was struck by gunfire from gangs while trying to land in Haiti's capital

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The recent Corporate Chess League standings: Jane Street was number one, Google number two, DoorDash 17.

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Conclave

It's the award season where entertainment artists congratulate each other. One beneficiary of this annual mutual admiration ritual is Conclave, the Harris story about choosing a pope.

Harris has been a productive writer. Archangel was a provocative, interesting book and a better movie with Craig. Munich was dry but surprisingly informative, Second Sleep was profoundly sad and wistful. Pompeii alone was pedestrian. I did not read Conclave but it was a disappointing movie. It was filled with talented people--actors and technicians--but the story itself was beyond redemption.

Spirituality is a difficult topic and Hollywood is particularly bad at it. Conclave's struggles are temporal and mundane in spiritual drag. And it culminates in a rabbit-from-a-hat, substituting shock for depth. Like its lush tapestry, the story is simply style. Skin deep.

I came across this review which I reworked. (I can't remember where I found it.) There is a big spoiler.

Conclave is a faithful adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 novel—and an absurd portrait of the Catholic Church. A thriller about the politicking that occurs when cardinals gather to elect a new pope, it depicts a clash between racist conservatives and supposedly insightful liberals who talk like a cross between an HR manual and a greeting card. Although the film’s hero describes “certainty” as the enemy, the movie has no doubt about who the bad guys are. Not even a subtle, intelligent performance from Ralph Fiennes can salvage the film’s simplistic morality. It aims to be a doctrinal treatise, but Conclave mistakes social struggle for moral conflict.

The best art about the Catholic Church doesn’t necessarily endorse its tenets, but it at least takes them seriously. Novels like Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair and Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour found tragic and comic potential in the Church’s most difficult and otherworldly teachings. They asked questions like, What if marriage really is indissoluble, and a character resolves to act accordingly? The answers were never easy, but they were always interesting. Conclave is incapable of tapping the dramatic potential of Catholic dogma, for the simple reason that the dogma it believes in is not Catholic but progressive.

Early on, we are introduced to Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a wily Italian traditionalist who tries to persuade another cardinal to vote for him to prevent an African from getting elected. Tedesco, who longs for the days of the Latin Mass, alo believes that only a European should be pope. In Conclave, racism and ritualism go together like bread and wine. In the real world, however, traditionalist Catholics have no greater friend in the highest reaches of the Church than Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah. Ironically, in the real world, it is the established West that is tugging at the traditional foundation.

Standing opposite Tedesco are the liberals, led by Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes). Lawrence opens the conclave with a homily that declares, “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” This inherently inconsistent claim, treated as a searing insight, does nothing to diminish the certainty of his fellow progressives. While claiming to favor “tolerating other views within our own Church,” they resolve to do everything in their power to stop Tedesco.

In one scene, Lawrence uses the sacrament of confession to extract information from a nun about a rival cardinal who had sex with her years before. Employing the sacrament for one’s own purposes, as Lawrence does, is a grave act of spiritual abuse. So is what he does next: Lawrence confronts the offending cardinal with what he has learned—thus breaking the confessional seal.

All of this could make for good drama, in a film that regarded the Catholic sacraments as capable of commanding belief. If Lawrence were genuinely Catholic, he would be racked by his conscience as he weighed his sacramental transgression against the noble aim of preventing an unworthy man from becoming pope. Instead, he intones something about his respect for the sacrament he has just violated, and moves on. This casual transgression is so flagrant as to be unmistakable even to the most passive moviegoer.

A similar flippancy emerges at the end of the film, when the newly elected Pope Innocent is revealed to be intersex. Catholic sacramental theology holds—for reasons grounded in scripture and elaborated over the course of centuries—that only a man can be ordained a priest, let alone made pope. A more interesting film might have dramatized the ironies arising from a doctrine that holds that an evil man can ascend to an office from which even the holiest woman is barred. But Conclave treats Catholic theology as mere policy, like the membership rules at Augusta National. And a genetic quirk is a special pass card.

One effect of doctrinal limits is to constrain the powerful. If a rule is understood to have been laid down by Christ, not even a cardinal or a pope can undo it. If Catholic doctrine can change, however, the high and mighty have more freedom to remake the faith as they please—a fact that Conclave celebrates. 

Redefining the basics--and rejecting any collected or spontaneous wisdom from Christ to Madison--is a tenet of modern progressivism. Just as the theorems define Euclidean geometry, non-euclidean theorems define a unique, non-euclidean geometry. The Progressive theorem whispers that man's efforts will fail without elite guidance. They are society's Grand Inquisitor. Idealism is beyond the reach of the average man without the firm hand of the elite; even Christ's rules are unachievable.

The film holds up Lawrence as an exemplary “manager,” as the late pope described him. Lawrence employs his procedural acumen both to enforce the rules of the conclave and to set them aside—whichever ensures the outcome he deems best. He blatantly manipulates the voting process. He digs up damaging information on leading candidates, breaking into the sealed chambers of the dead pope and violating the conclave’s ban on outside information by publicizing a dossier that swings the election. For these acts of interference, liberals praise him. “That firm hand of yours has its admirers,” a like-minded cardinal says.

If Lawrence is the image of a responsible managerial elite, his ideological opposite, Tedesco, is the ecclesial version of a conservative populist. He maintains that the Church’s leadership has fallen into lassitude and corruption since Vatican II, and his crude manners and colorful speech hint at a working-class background that he is happy to play up. (Harris’s book reports that he comes from a peasant family.)

The film explicitly proposes a parallel between sacred and secular politics, in case anyone missed the point. At one late-night meeting, a cardinal complains, “I feel as if I’m at some American political convention.” The machinations become so elaborate that another cardinal jokes that he is poised to become “the Richard Nixon of popes.” For Conclave, there is no real distinction between Church politics and electoral politics, between a Cardinal Tedesco and a Donald Trump. It’s all a power game in which anything is justified for the right cause.

If the movie has a saving grace, it is the way the camera admiringly lingers on the visible expressions of Catholic belief—the cassocks and tassels, the red silk, and white smoke. Perhaps the most striking scene is the one in which Lawrence is carefully vested in his holy livery. These images will communicate the Church’s charisma to some viewers, despite the film’s failure to reckon with the claims that underlie the visuals. Beauty is truth, and all.

Nonetheless, in its crude view of the Church and its lack of genuine drama, Conclave is even worse than the last great ecclesial potboiler, The Da Vinci Code. That earlier movie was pulpier, including a brief flash of a ritual sex scene. And Tom Hanks’s performance does not compare to that of Fiennes. But The Da Vinci Code was in a certain way the more intelligent film. Despite its hysterical suggestion that the Catholic Church is a grand conspiracy of albino monks and Hispanic prelates devoted to covering up the fact that Jesus fathered a child, it at least recognized that sacramental ideas, including the all-male priesthood, are central to Catholic belief. Conclave fails because it takes itself—and not its subject—seriously.

Nullification

 

Bill Clinton earned nearly $18 million as an adviser and honorary chancellor for the international for-profit college network Laureate International Universities, between 2010 and 2015.It's reported that between consulting, writing, and speaking fees, Bill Clinton brought in $65.4 million during Hillary Clinton's four years as Secretary of State.

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Trump is always accused of being under Russian influence but wasn't it the Bidens who got millions from the wife of the Russian mayor?

And wasn't it Biden who threatened Ukraine with canceling a $1 billion aid package if they did not fire a prosecutor pursuing Hunter?

And Musk is characterized as an unelected government influence but who ran the executive during Biden's long period of obvious incompetence? Hunter? And didn't Jill run cabinet meetings?

The Democrats will never escape the Biden legacy.

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Nullification

The nullification doctrine is the constitutional theory that upholds the right of states to nullify federal acts within their boundaries. Essentially it was an effort to codify the notion of 'States' Rights.'

It had a history. Jefferson asserted that the federal government was the agent of sovereign states with certain specified, delegated powers and the states retained the authority to determine when the federal government exceeded those powers. States--not the courts--could declare acts “void and of no force” within their jurisdictions.

In 1828, tariffs, the so-called Tariffs of Abomination, were passed, designed to protect northern manufacturing, and incidentally negatively impacted southern cotton products. Enter South Carolina.

Vice President John C. Calhoun secretly drafted the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which argued the tariff was unconstitutional. When the tariffs were modified in 1832 but did not have much effect, the legislature of South Carolina called for a special state convention, and on November 24, 1832, the convention adopted the Ordinance of Nullification.

The ordinance declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.” It also forbade the appeal of any ordinance measure to the federal courts and required all state officeholders to take an oath of support for the ordinance. The state said it would not collect the tariffs and threatened secession if the federal government tried to collect tariff duties by force. In the meantime, Calhoun resigned from the vice presidency to speak for his state in the Senate.

President Jackson did not back down and passed the Force Bill, which threatened federal intervention. South Carolina's efforts to rally Southern support failed. Jackson, to preserve the Union, sent Federal troops to Charleston.

With the help of Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky, a moderate tariff bill more acceptable to South Carolina was passed on March 1. The South Carolina convention responded on March 15 by rescinding the Ordinance of Nullification but three days later maintained its principles by nullifying the Force Bill.

When South Carolina threatened secession and passed the Ordinance of Nullification it set a precedent for future disputes between the Federal Government and the states. President Jackson’s handling of the Nullification Crisis also led to his political opponents forming the Whig Party. It is part of the answer Larson asks in Demon of Unrest: how could such a poor, backward, tiny, insignificant state have such an impact on U.S. history?

The potential for chaos exists within the federalism/states' rights debate. The founders anticipated this by carefully structuring options for minorities to slow majority enthusiasm and risk of tyranny. So, does the minority need extra help? Does it need the intervention of wild street demonstrators and embittered militias? Or should we rely on the insights of the minority-preoccupied geniuses like Jefferson and Madison who placed their safeguards in the Constitution?

Or, in the words of Lincoln, "...whether in a free government, the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves."

In this vein, one could ask, what exactly are these people doing creating "sanctuary cities," coteries of people refusing to live by general, national laws? And, more importantly, what motivates these people? Power? Personal agrandizment? The fidelity to some faith-based social concept they hold above civil law like Mormons? 

Or do these people champion the very position Lincoln feared: the incapability of the people to govern themselves? 

Do they mistrust the country and its representative structure so much they must grab the reins?

Examining the Valley of Death:Trying to Understand Ukraine

A man arrested and charged with capital murder of a policeman was released on bond in Texas.

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"The end of the war is very, very far away,"--Zelenskyy

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Examining the Valley of Death: Trying to Understand Ukraine

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

How will there be progress in Ukraine? Well, practice makes perfect. We poor humans will always jump at a chance to die for glory, justice, and retribution. And we might be getting better at it as we seem to fight on the same battlefields. After all, Tennyson wrote "Charge of the Light Brigade" about a cavalry charge in the British action against the Russians in the Crimean War in 1854. 1854! The British have been fighting the Russians in Ukraine for almost 200 years. But what can you expect from people who define their conflicts in terms of 'decades' and 'centuries.' George Washington had a point. There's no rush to join a European war; we can join at any time.

But if our thinking has not evolved, our weapons have. Modern 'Javelins' are not lances. Modern explosions can kill the world.

And now Ukraine is back.

The public blowup with Zelenskyy over the weekend raises several frightening worries. Superficially, after weeks of negotiations, Zelenskyy declined to proceed. He left with the American administration publically furious, was feted in Europe by members of the EU who offered emotional support (but little else), and Trump's administration was attacked by the Left as being pro-Russian and in thrall to Putin, perhaps treasonously so. (The Left suddenly hates Russians.)

                                      WWII

Ukraine was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union when dictator Josef Stalin seized the rich, fertile land from the local farmers in the early 1930s and forced them into a collectivized, state-run agricultural system.

The result was one of the worst famines of the 20th century. The death toll is still debated, but mainstream historians put the figure at 3 million to 5 million deaths in Ukraine. (Ukraine's current population is about 38 million.)

                                 Russia Dissolves

When the Soviet Union was falling apart in December 1991, Ukraine held a referendum on the independence it had long sought. A whopping 92% voted in favor — a result that helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet state just weeks later.

Ukraine worked out an unusual agreement in 1994, just three years after receiving independence. The country agreed to give up all the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union. In exchange, Ukraine received guarantees from Russia, the U.S., and Britain that its borders would be respected. (Read again. That was actually signed and celebrated. No wonder the Ukrainians worry.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it even harder with his repeated meddling in Ukraine, seeking to keep pro-Russia leaders in power. In 2004, Russia was seen as trying to rig the Ukrainian presidential election in favor of a pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. Ukrainians pushed back with massive street protests — the so-called Orange Revolution. Yanukovych was defeated. In 2014, Ukrainians again took to the streets in protest of Yanukovych — who at that point had served as president for four years. After weeks of demonstrations, he fled to Russia.

But shortly after Putin lost out politically in Ukraine in 2014, he sent the Russian military to seize Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and the troops have remained there.

                                         2022

Russia invades Ukraine again. Hilary Clinton says it will be good for America as it will "bleed" Russia. Biden offers Zelensky asylum in an astonishing display of detachment and stupidity. Zelenski's response is Churchillian: "I don't need a ride, I need guns."

                                         Istanbul

In March and April 2022, the first months after the Russian invasion, US allies Israel and Turkey hosted talks between Ukraine and Russia. In Istanbul, the two sides agreed to the outline of an agreement.

Under that deal, Russia would withdraw from territory seized after the invasion in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality and limits on its military. In addition, Kiev would recognize Crimea as Russian and its Western backers would lift sanctions on Moscow.

In April 2022, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and informed Ukrainian President Zelensky that he would not receive Western support if he signed the deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Most of these reports are Russian and Johnson has denied them, saying he just “expressed concerns” about the nature of the potential agreement.)

A common concern: “Many of us have, and it’s absolutely human, a willingness to see that the war ends as soon as possible, that people are not suffering, not dying, and that there are no bombings,” said a senior European diplomat who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about sensitive security issues. “There is an unfortunate dilemma. The problem is that if it ends now, there is a kind of time for Russia to regroup, and it will restart, under this or another pretext. Putin is not going to give up his goals.”

As part of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military entered Ukraine from Belarus. One of the initial moves was a push towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, as part of which a huge column of military vehicles moved south towards the city of Bucha. Russian troops entered and massacred the city. Ukrainian troops rallied and pushed the Russians away from Kyiv and out of Bucha. On April 1, 2022, following the Russian withdrawal, video footage was posted to social media that showed mass civilian casualties and dogs feeding on the corpses in the street.

With all the political and ethnic elements in the stew, the Bucha event was a factor in the failure of the Istanbul initiative. The Ukrainians were enraged, vengeful, and buoyed by their military success.

This conflict began to have a Bosnian element.

                              February, 2025

Trump indicated he would be willing to lift sanctions on Moscow, or at least begin to normalize the economic relationship between the superpowers, as part of a deal to end the war in Ukraine. “I am in serious discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia concerning the ending of the War, and also major Economic Development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Talks are proceeding very well!”

                                Rubio meets Zelensky

When asked about the growing tension between the two leaders, Rubio
said Trump's frustration with Zelensky escalated after Ukraine rejected
a proposed deal involving U.S. investment in the country's mineral
resources.

According to Rubio, the deal was intended to protect American economic
interests while also recovering some of the nearly $200 billion in aid the
U.S. has provided.

"We want to be in a joint venture with Ukraine—not because we're trying
to take advantage of them, but because we believe it's actually a security guarantee," Rubio said.

He claimed Zelensky initially seemed receptive to the deal but later publicly rejected it, contradicting what had been discussed and agreed to in private. Rubio was visibly angry over what he felt was a reversal of the agreement.

Diplomatic tensions appeared to ease between the Trump administration
and Zelenskyy after U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, retired Lieutenant
General Keith Kellogg, took a markedly different approach during his
meeting with the Ukrainian leader in Kyiv and reported progress.

                   Zelenskyy comes to Washington

After the Ukrainians agreed to the initial trade agreement regarding the
rare earth deposits, Zelenskyy flew to for the official signing. An intense
discussion was held on how Zelenskyy was to limit the public discussion before the signing ritual. Then, on to the ceremonial Press Conference.

Now for the worrisome news. It is said routinely on TV and in news articles that, after he was prepped by the Republicans on how to manage the ceremony, Zelenskyy spoke to the Democrats for 45 minutes where they advised against cooperating with the administration.

Then Zelenskyy walked into the Oval Office and, as he had earlier with Rubio, reversed course. 

                      Possible lessons:

Zelensky is unreliable. He may be a liar.

Zelenski may not want peace. After all, diplomatic solutions have been laughable. It may be a Bosnian bloodlust. Or mindless revenge. One upsetting theory says there can be no corruption investigation if the war continues.

Trump is clear-minded and results-driven but may be too harsh for weak-minded observers to consider. The European response has been almost foolishly symbolic.

Trump's opponents may never be able to approve of anything he does, regardless of merit.

People seem to have forgotten the implications of losing a war. (See Gaza.) The less success you have in war, the further you are pushed away from the negotiation table. War is diplomacy by other means.

Europe's response will be inept but it will be self-clarifying.

Important, too, is the Democrat behavior. If the reports of their meddling are true, it shines a light on the complete autonomy of their efforts that are unrelated to the benefits to the nation. In the background is the essential incompatibility of liberalism with the American revolutionary vision.

If the Democrats did interfere with the negotiations, is that treason?

 

Sunday/Form and Substance

A privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the moon, a feat only one other company has accomplished in spaceflight history.

The robotic lander, dubbed Blue Ghost, has been in orbit around the moon for roughly two weeks, preparing for its daring descent. Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace developed the spacecraft.

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A VAT is a consumption tax, not a tariff. It applies equally to all goods sold in a country – domestically produced or imported. If a country has a 20 percent VAT, both a domestically made car and an imported car sold within that country pay the same VAT. There is no built-in preference for local producers; in that sense, it is not discriminatory.--de Rugy

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Sunday/Form and Substance

Today's gospel is the fruit of the tree gospel, the nature of the individual will be shown in his deeds, not his words. This is such a known gospel that it may be fatigued. Yet the wheel always turns.

Our world today values the gesture. We punish the wrong opinion more firmly than the wrong action. In a sense, it is a version of the old "form vs. substance" discussion. And it is powerful. The international problems we face now in Europe scream it. Russia invades Ukraine, the strength of the act being the West's dependency on cartel oil. The solution to the energy threat, unleashing the U.S. energy resources, is captive to the green-world gesture.

So we wear the badge of social concern when the true problems hide in plain sight with their solutions.

And the fruit is revealing. Sometimes startling.

New York City's Abel Meeropol wrote a poem called "Strange Fruit" in the 1930s after seeing a photograph of a lynching. He later put it to music and it eventually found its way to Billie Holliday, who recorded it. It was called by Time magazine the "Song of the Century" in 1999.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Meeropol's son, Robert Meeropol, and his older brother, Michael, were raised by Abel Meeropol and his wife, Anne Meeropol after the boys' real parents — Ethel and Julius Rosenberg — were executed for espionage in 1953. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.