On the road again

 

My wife and I are on the way to LibertyCon in Chattanooga.  It's our "home" convention, bringing together authors, publishers and fans for a fun weekend every year.  After that, we'll be spending a few days in Georgia, researching a new book.

Blogging will be light and intermittent for the next week and a half.  Sadly, that includes my regular meme posts, as I won't have time to browse the Web to find new material.  As and when I can, I'll put up a post or two.  Regular blogging will recommence on July 1st.

Meanwhile, please check in now and again to find anything I've been able to post;  and spend a bit of time with the bloggers listed in my sidebar.  They write good, too!

Prayers for a safe journey and a peaceful return will, as always, be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, friends.

Peter

Are some "researchers" just perverts with official titles?

 

I was horrified to read comments by Defense Secretary Hegseth last week about some of the "research" being funded by his department in recent years.

President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, testified before the Senate that the Department of Defense was spending tens of millions of dollars on tests that involved sticking “marbles in the rear ends of cats.”

Hegseth brought up the cruel and wasteful animal research during his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on Wednesday.

The exchange began as Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin grilled Hegseth about his administration ending many wasteful research grants.

“Give me an example of a ‘boondoggle’ in medical research and defense health,” Sen. Durbin said, likely unprepared for the response.

“I mean, we’re talking about some stuff I shouldn’t say in public, you know, marbles in the rear ends of cats, tens of millions of dollars,” Hegseth said while pantomiming inserting a marble in a cat’s rectum. “Things that don’t have a connection to what you’re talking about ... the Defense Department has been a place where organizations, entities, and companies know they can get money almost unchecked to whether or not it actually applies to things that happen on the battlefield.”

. . .

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, WCW uncovered a $10 million DoD contract funded through the Navy’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for grotesque experiments on cats at the University of Pittsburgh. These sick tests involved inserting marbles and balloons into the rectums of cats and subjecting them to electroshock treatments to study constipation and erectile dysfunction.

WCW provided The Gateway Pundit with photos from the experiments.

There's more at the link, including the photographs mentioned above (which I'm not going to reproduce here, because I find them disgusting and cruel).

I can't even begin to understand how inserting marbles into cats' rectums (recta???) can possibly assist studies into "constipation and erectile dysfunction".  I can't even figure out how cats' erections have anything to do with human erections, apart from the usual inflationary causes, so to speak.  As far as their human owners are concerned, cats might even be described as anti-erectionary . . . there's a reason why one of our feline companions pets masters is known as "cattus interruptus"!

All jokes aside, though, how was such "research" ever even envisaged, let alone authorized and funded?  Was/is there any genuine benefit to be derived from it?  It looks to me as if some perverted, animal-hating, cruel SOB devised this "research" purely for the kicks he/she could get out of it, and then persuaded some equally perverted SOB to shell out taxpayer dollars to pay for it.  I can see no other reason for this at all.

I'm delighted that Secretary Hegseth has put a stop to this.  Now, how about referring all concerned for criminal investigation on the grounds of cruelty to animals?  I submit that an appropriate punishment might be to use them as research subjects in the same way as the cats - perhaps using bowling balls instead of marbles, to ensure a more appropriate fit.  While we're at it, how about freezing the bowling balls before use, so we can claim to be studying frigidity?

Peter

"What Do I Do When Someone is Shooting At Me?"

 

That's the title of a lengthy article by Marc MacYoung, a well-known self-defense and street-smarts instructor.  He offers ways to analyze a situation and assess the real risks it entails, rather than merely react in a knee-jerk fashion to events you don't understand.  Here's an excerpt.

I came up with a list of the six most common results when someone IS trying to kill you. They are:

1) You die

2) You spend a long time in the hospital

3) Someone runs away (usually you)

4) You shoot back (often prompting the other person to retreat)

5) You retaliate with such ferocity the other person is injured, killed or runs away

6) Someone else intervenes resulting in some combination of 1-5. 

If those weren't the results, then the person WASN'T trying to kill you -- no matter WHAT you want to believe or tell others.

In a similar vein, just because someone is waving a gun, that isn't the same as them shooting. And– in a bit you'll see why this is important– just because you're in an area where someone is shooting doesn't necessarily mean they're shooting at you specifically.

If there's a gun spitting lead, it's safe to assume the person is trying to kill. The question is "Who?" If not you then someone else. People intending to kill you usually don't stop until 

a) they've succeeded, 

b) they believe they have succeeded or 

c) the danger to them becomes too great to continue. 

The importance of that is simple: People who are trying to kill someone else don't really care about you unless you get in their way. Someone who is trying to kill you specifically will be more dedicated to that task than someone intent on killing someone else or anybody in the area. This strongly effects what your options are.

That is why you must look at what happens before it becomes physical -- even with weapons. Because what is going on before the weapon is drawn and what occurs while the weapon is displayed is critical for assessing what is the best course of action for you.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Mr. MacYoung is well qualified to talk about the overall environment of crime and violence "on the street", as opposed to in textbooks.  He goes well beyond the "how to use a gun to defend yourself" perspective, and discusses whether or not you should use a gun at all, and how using one may get you into more trouble than refraining.  He also points out that if you don't understand the situation, you're much more likely to make a mistake that lands you in trouble with the law rather than your adversaries.  Best of all, of course, is not to be in an area where you're exposed to trouble of that sort.

As another well-known instructor, John Farnam, has said (and we've repeatedly quoted in these pages):

The best way to handle any potentially injurious encounter is: Don’t be there. Arrange to be somewhere else. Don’t go to stupid places. Don’t associate with stupid people. Don’t do stupid things. This is the advice I give to all students of defensive firearms. Winning a gunfight, or any other potentially injurious encounter, is financially and emotionally burdensome. The aftermath will become your full-time job for weeks or months afterward, and you will quickly grow weary of writing checks to lawyer(s). It is, of course, better than being dead or suffering a permanently disfiguring or disabling injury, but the “penalty” for successfully fighting for your life is still formidable.

Crowds of any kind, particularly those with an agenda, such as political rallies, demonstrations, picket lines, etc are good examples of “stupid places.” Any crowd with a high collective energy level harbors potential catastrophe. To a lesser degree, bank buildings, hospital emergency rooms, airports, government buildings, and bars (particularly crowded ones) fall into the same category. All should be avoided. When they can’t be avoided, we should make it a practice to spend only the minimum time necessary there and then quickly get out.

“A superior gunman is best defined as one who uses his superior judgment in order to keep himself out of situations that would require the use of his superior skills.”

Wise words, particularly in our cities where demonstrations and riots are becoming a daily event.  An unarmed, apparently non-violent protester has already been shot dead through being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Let's not follow his tragic example.

Peter

Two great images

 

I found both these images while scrolling through photographs on social media.  One was just amazing:  the other made me laugh out loud.

The first is a fantastic ultra-close-up shot of a dragonfly covered in water droplets.  The sheer artistry of nature can be breathtaking.

The second is just too funny.  Babies' expressions are often that way!

Captures the moment perfectly, doesn't it?

When I have a couple of minutes to spare, I enjoy browsing through photographs like these.  They can really brighten my day.  I hope these two brightened yours.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 266

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Dances composed for full orchestra have long been a staple of Central and Eastern Europe.  Well-known examples include Brahms' Hungarian Dances and Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, which still form part of the modern classical music repertoire.  There are also less well-known collections, including the Moravian Dances collection by Czech composer Leoš Janáček, dating from 1888.  I thought you might enjoy hearing them.

If you enjoyed that, try his Lachian Dances, based on themes from the Moravian Wallachian region.

There are lots of orchestrated folk songs and dances in the classical world.  They repay exploration.

Peter

Israel strikes Iran, and the "little people" pay the price

 

I'm not going to get into finger-pointing over who did what, with which, to whom, and who did it first.  The facts appear to be that Iran had refused to give up its uranium enrichment program.  According to Israel, Iran had, in fact, gathered enough enriched nuclear material to make up to 15 nuclear weapons, and was in the process of trying to assemble them over the past week or so.  Israel felt it had no choice but to interrupt the process.  As a result, the bombs and missiles (so far, thank God, non-nuclear) are flying again.

The problem with a nuclear weapon is that it changes the dynamic permanently if, and only if, it's used.  Israel has had nuclear weapons since the 1960's, if rumor is correct, and (based on the Vela incident in 1979, of which I had more than passing knowledge) probably upgraded much of its nuclear arsenal to thermonuclear weapons in the 1980's and beyond.  However, because it's never admitted to having them, and has never been proved to have detonated one, it's been able to stop further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.  Let that "plausible deniability" curtain be torn down, even by a nuclear test, and every nation in that part of the world will have nukes before you can say boo to a camel.  Let a nuclear weapon be used against an enemy, and that'll happen even faster.  (For example, I understand Saudi Arabia has bankrolled part of the Pakistani nuclear program, and Saudi has Chinese ballistic missiles that can carry such weapons.  I think it'd take only as long as transport aircraft would need to fly from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia for the latter country to have its own nuclear arsenal.)

So far, Israel's strikes against Iran have used only conventional weapons.  One hopes that'll continue . . . because if one of those strikes should (God forbid) actually set off one of Iran's nukes, or blow up a reactor causing massive radiation pollution of the area and everything (and every country) downwind, then hell's come to breakfast.  If Israel uses a nuclear weapon against Iran, hell will be there for lunch and supper too.

The real tragedy of these strikes, and any Iranian retaliation, is that the "little people" nearby - the ordinary citizens who live close to the targets - are going to suffer very severely.  Bombs don't care if you're innocent or guilty;  they'll kill you anyway.  There may be thousands killed and wounded in these strikes, on both sides.  Nobody is thinking about them, and they'll get precious little help from the authorities, who are preoccupied with preserving their weapons and related programs, and with hitting back.

I have all too intimate personal knowledge of the victims of violence, those caught in the crossfire between two enemies.  I've tried to stop the bleeding from their shattered limbs, and held them in my arms as their lives fled their tortured, tormented bodies.  I've picked up the pieces of their corpses (and yes, I mean that literally).  They are not responsible for the evils being done around them, but they pay the greatest price for them.  Nobody cares about them.  Those giving the orders and wreaking the havoc are focused on "bigger" problems.  The innocent who are caught up in the violence are just "collateral damage".

That may sound OK to those killing them, but it's very cold comfort indeed to those doing the dying.  Try telling a shrieking, wailing two-year-old whose mother has just been decapitated by a burst of fire from a machine-gun that "everything's going to be OK".  It's not.  She may not be able to reason at all, at her age, but she knows that the face that's looked down with love at her all her little life is now unrecognizable raw red blood and brains and fragments of bone splattered against a wall.  She knows - but cannot understand why - the arms that have always cradled her when she needed comfort are now limp and lifeless.  A strange man she's never seen before is trying to take her away from her mother to whom she's desperately clinging, whose love and reassurance she desperately needs but will never know again.  How do you tell that child that she's just "collateral damage", and that she should suck it up and get on with life?

Those are the people I'm thinking about this morning.  Once you've seen their suffering, you can't forget it.

May Almighty God have mercy on them all . . . because nobody else is going to.

Peter

I like this sheriff

 

As most readers know by now, Saturday, June 14th is being called "No Kings" day, with pro-illegal-immigrant, pro-socialist, pro-progressive left-wing demonstrations being organized across the country.

Around here, our cops aren't worrying too much about it.  Their biggest problem, if such demonstrations arise (I doubt they will), is going to be to stop enthusiastic locals dealing with the problem before the police can arrive to protect the demonstrators.  This part of Texas ain't friendly to rioters.

I think the best law enforcement approach was exemplified by Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida, yesterday.  Here's the centerpiece of his address, set up to start and end at the right points.

Nicely put, Sheriff!

Peter

Just another brick in the (political) wall?

 

EDITED TO ADD:  Last night, when I wrote this post, I found several versions of this news article on different social media platforms.  However, this morning, most of them have vanished.  I'm therefore treating it as unconfirmed rumor rather than hard news, and have deleted the content until it can be properly confirmed or denied.

Peter

Some very thought-provoking essays

 

I subscribe to a few Substack authors that pique my interest and make me think outside my usual box.  This morning I'd like to mention a few articles that have hit the mark over the past few days.  I highly recommend that you read them.  Individually and in aggregate, they try to forecast where our society is going - and with it, our future.

First, Ted Gioia says that "a huge change is coming".

Would you believe me if I told you that the biggest news story of our century is happening right now—but is never mentioned in the press?

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

But that is often the case when a bold new worldview appears.

• How long did it take before the Renaissance got mentioned in the town square?
• When did newspapers start covering the Enlightenment?
• Or the collapse in mercantilism?
• Or the rise of globalism?
• Or the birth of Christianity or Islam or some other earthshaking creed?

The biggest changes often happen long before they even get a name. By the time the scribes notice, the world is already reborn.

. . .

There’s a general rule here—the bigger the shift, the easier it is to miss.

We are living through a situation like that right now. We are experiencing a total shift—like the magnetic poles reversing. But it doesn’t even have a name—not yet.

So let’s give it one.

Let’s call it: The Collapse of the Knowledge System.

It's a valuable examination of why our "common knowledge" is becoming uncommon, to the detriment of our society and those who are (and will be) growing up in it.  Very important, IMHO.

Next, El Gato Malo (who eschews capital letters, but will doubtless forgive me for using them) points out that the political playbook of the progressive left is nothing new.

why is so much of the modern left constantly in alliance with the worst possible people and trends?

why do they champion only anti-social anti-heros?

why do they attack virtue, resilience, and any sort of rugged individualism?

why do they seek to break any sort of successful structure, high trust system, cultural or individual confidence, exceptionalism and function?

it’s a playbook.

they do it because they need to.

and nothing about this strategy has changed since 1919.

. . .

only in the first phase is marxist-leftism about lawlessness.

that's the precursor to set up the conquest.

it's ultimately authoritarian subjugation by boot and bayonet.

the disruption serves to destroy your culture and set the stage for the demand for another one, a strongman to step in and make the streets safe and put food on the table and stop the chaos.

the goal is destruction. they want wreckage and dissolution, amorality and failure.

they want fear and dependence. that’s the only soil in which such an odious weed of tyranny can take root.

this is why marxist revolutions always commence by wrecking everything high function about the societies they seek to subsume.

they seem like the enemy of success and sanity, of flourishing and fecundity because they are.

they can only win by wiping such things out, destroying them utterly.

Last but by no means least, Rod Dreher sees in the Los Angeles riots a portent of a new civil war, one that might easily spread to Europe and engulf the entire Western world in a new "civilizational collapse".

Waking up this morning in deepest Gascony ... I can’t help wondering if what’s happening in L.A. — and that spread overnight in some ways to other US cities, I’m just seeing — is a foretaste of Europe’s future. Except things are far, far worse in Europe. If they try mass deportations here, what’s happening in L.A. will look like a schoolyard fight.

. . .

Are we at the point of Submission Or War? If Trump’s decision to enforce American law — think about that: enforce American law! — is an autocratic casus belli (as the California governor says), then … where are we, exactly? Put another way, if the only way to avoid this conflict is for Trump to say that borders don’t matter, then isn’t that a choice to surrender the country?

. . .

Yesterday in Camus’s vast living room, we listened to him discourse on how cultural knowledge has already collapsed in France. Camus is not a politician or a political polemicist, though that role has been forced on him. He became a polemicist because he is a deeply cultured man who has lived through the ruin of the things he values most. As he makes clear in his Great Replacement writings, the barbarians from abroad were aided and abetted by the native barbarians — chiefly his former comrades on the Left — who demolished cultural knowledge and authority for the sake of “justice”. This grand leveling has dispossessed the French in their own land (and has happened throughout the West). I pointed out too that technology has more recently played a role, with professors back in the US telling me that their students now can scarcely read. It’s not that they are illiterate, in the sense of not understanding what words mean; it’s that they lack the attention span to process a lengthy text, and don’t see why they should have to make the effort. AI is going to “remember” it all for them, right?

It’s civilizational collapse all right. Camus said to us yesterday that it’s imperative that people today who want to survive this intellectually and culturally form retreats where the knowledge of what it meant to be a civilized human can stay alive. He likened this to the Benedict Option. This elderly gay agnostic French writer, who has retreated to his own small rural castle, full of books and music, has taken his own version, and says we all have to find ways to do the same.

Three very important articles, IMHO.  All three reinforce each other in identifying the collapse of education and "common knowledge" into a society more ignorant of reality, and deprived of wisdom, than any in the past century or two.  I recommend them all . . . and I'm grateful that I won't be alive long enough to see their forecasts come true, if the authors are correct.

Peter

Another blogger gets it

 

I've written often about inflation and its dangers in these pages, possibly so much that some readers have wandered off to read something more entertaining.  Oh, well . . . can't please everybody.

Now Francis Porretto does some calculations, and comes up with an interesting answer.

... the inflation rate from 1997 to 2025, if compounding occurs annually, was approximately 7.27%.

That's 7.27% every year on average over the past 28 years.  Click over to his place to read how he calculated that inflation rate.  Based on my own back-of-the-envelope calculations, and input from experts in the field, I'm pretty sure he's in the ballpark on that one.

If that rate of inflation, annually over almost three decades, doesn't scare the crap out of you, you clearly don't understand the situation.  It's why things cost so much today, and why we're running a deficit that's well on its way to hit $40 trillion before long.

Furthermore, that sort of inflation and its consequences are unsustainable.  They cannot go on.  Sooner or later (and I'm betting on sooner rather than later), things are going to cave in . . . and then we're all likely to find out what life during the (previous) Great Depression was like.

Peter

Heh

 

Found on X.com:

As my buddy Lawdog would say:  Gigglesnort!

Peter

No blogging today

 

I have to devote my attention (such as it is) to a number of issues that have been neglected for too long, so I'm afraid I won't have time to blog.  Back to normal tomorrow (hopefully).

Peter

A potential solution to the riots in Los Angeles?

 

Israel provides the example.

I know exactly how many knees I’ve hit, says Eden, who completed his service in the Israel Defense Forces as a sniper in its Golani infantry brigade six months ago. For much of the time, he was stationed along the border with the Gaza Strip. His assignment: to repel Palestinian demonstrators who approached the fence.

“I kept the casing of every round I fired,” he says. “I have them in my room. So I don’t have to make an estimate – I know: 52 definite hits.” 

But there are also “non-definite” hits, right?

“There were incidents when the bullet didn’t stop and also hit the knee of someone behind [the one I aimed at]. Those are mistakes that happen.” 

Is 52 a lot?

“I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not hundreds of liquidations like in the movie ‘American Sniper’: We’re talking about knees. I’m not making light of it, I shot a human being, but still ...” 

. . .

Shedding light on this very recent slice of history entails talking to snipers: After all, they were the dominant and most significant force in suppressing the demonstrations at the fence. Their targets ranged from young Palestinians who were trying to infiltrate into Israel or who threw Molotov cocktails at soldiers, to prominent, unarmed protesters who were considered to be major inciters. Both categories drew the same response: Live ammunition fired at the legs.

There's more at the link.

Looking at the violent demonstrations on TV, I suspect a few perforated kneecaps could be classified as a relatively mild response.  If the demonstrators complain that it hurts, we could always suggest that they put an ICE pack on it . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 265

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I've been enjoying the songs made famous by Elaine Paige (and which, not coincidentally, made her famous as well).  She's dominated British musical theater for decades, and has richly earned all the plaudits that have come her way.  Most of us know them:  "Don't cry for me, Argentina";  "I know him so well";  and, perhaps the most famous of all, this one, which she performed at Andrew Lloyd Webber's 50th birthday celebration.

Wikipedia says of her music:

In addition to being nominated for five Laurence Olivier Awards, Paige has won many other awards for her theatre roles and has been called the First Lady of British Musical Theatre due to her skill and longevity. She has released 22 solo albums, of which eight were consecutively certified gold and another four multi-platinum. Paige is also featured on seven cast albums and has sung in concerts across the world. Since 2004 she has hosted her own show on BBC Radio 2 called Elaine Paige on Sunday.

In 2014, Paige celebrated her 50 years in show business.

A remarkable performer, and a remarkable voice.

Peter

Remembering the Greatest Invasion

 

Back in 2014, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France, Jean-Christophe Rosé produced this 90-minute documentary for France Télévisions.  It uses archival footage that was remastered and colorized, and is probably one of the best sources to understand what the run-up to D-Day involved (with training and other preparations) and the reality of combat on that day.

I'll also mention my father, who was not part of D-Day itself, but served in the Royal Air Force throughout World War II, and shouldered his share of the burden.

Finally, may all those who died on D-Day, on all sides, rest in peace.  There's no enmity beyond the grave.

(Oh - and for those wondering about the headline:  the D-Day invasion, known at the time as Operation Neptune, was the largest in history so far, in terms of numbers of people [on land, at sea and in the air], numbers of ships and aircraft, etc.  The largest invasions of the Pacific War were Operation Musketeer (the invasion of the Philippines), Operation Detachment (the invasion of Iwo Jima) and Operation Iceberg (the invasion of Okinawa), but none of them were as large as Operation Neptune in Normandy.  The planned invasion of Japan in Operations Olympic and Coronet would have been larger, by a significant degree, but those invasions never took place, thanks to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

Peter

Both President Trump and Elon Musk should know better, and stop posturing

 

I'm sure that by now, most of my readers are aware of the dissension between President Trump and Elon Musk over the former's "Big Beautiful Bill".  The President is trying to pass an omnibus but temporary fix for some of the biggest problems confronting him, while Mr. Musk thinks that it panders too much to past priorities and doesn't sufficiently address past problems such as deficit spending, etc.

The problem is, both of them are right, and at the same time both of them are wrong.

President Trump is trying to do what he thinks is politically possible at the present time.  He can't ask for too much, because Republican Party majorities in both the House and Senate are paper-thin, and if only a few representatives and/or Senators break ranks to vote against him, his legislation will not pass.  Therefore, he is forced to pander to at least some extent to what the less robust Republicans (to coin a phrase) demand, or he'll lose their support.  He therefore rightly (from his perspective) sees Mr. Musk's demands as being too perfectionist, asking for more than his wishier-washier supporters are willing to concede.  That's a political perspective, and one all politicians are forced to adopt most of the time.

Mr. Musk, on the other hand, is an entrepreneur and a very savvy businessman indeed.  He owns his companies, and can exercise very tight control over them.  He doesn't have to persuade his staff to support him:  they do so, or they get fired or resign.  Those are the only two options available to them.  He doesn't have to pander to the expectations of others.  Being a highly intelligent man (as his track record amply confirms), he can understand the essentials, the core and heart of a matter, and focus laser-like on implementing them while cutting away everything and anything that gets in the way.  From that perspective, he is undoubtedly correct in his opposition to the "Big Beautiful Bill".  It concedes too much to the bloated political practices of the past, and doesn't do enough to cut away the excrescences that bedevil US politics at the present time.  That's a business perspective, and a perfectionist one, too - and from those perspectives, Mr. Musk is right, too.

Unfortunately, neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Musk appear willing to concede that there's right and wrong on both sides.  President Trump's ego has gotten involved (one of his worst failings, IMHO), and he's digging in his heels.  Mr. Musk's ego is also involved, in that he knows he's right (and, from his perspective, he is), and he can't understand why the President can't accept and acknowledge that.

When we look at the "Big Beautiful Bill", it's as if we're looking at a house on the top of a hill.  From my position on the north side of the hill, I'm seeing a white house with a red roof.  It's as clear as day.  There can be no possible mistake about that.  On the other hand, from your position to the south of the hill, you're seeing a red house under a red roof.  Again, it's as clear as day, and you know you're right.  In reality, of course, we're both equally right from our perspective, but we can't see the whole picture from where we are.  Only if we circle the house together, and look at all sides of it, can we acknowledge that it takes both perspectives to describe the house adequately.

I don't like the "Big Beautiful Bill" because of all the pork it contains.  I find myself on the side of Mr. Musk in this;  I hate it, and want it to go away.  On the other hand, I'm forced to concede to President Trump that, to quote Otto von Bismarck, "politics is the art of the possible".  He can't get more of what he wants at this time, because he doesn't have the congressional support to be sure it would pass.  He can't afford to take a perfectionist, all-or-nothing perspective.  He has to govern a nation, with all the fractures and differing perspectives that involves - not a business that functions at his beck and call.

For the good of the country, both President Trump and Mr. Musk need to take a deep breath, apologize to each other (yes, publicly would be good), and make up their differences.  We need both of them, and we can't afford to do without either of them.  To both gentlemen, I say:  "A little more maturity, please!  Stop throwing your toys out of the pram!  All you're doing with your public squabbling is to play into the hands of the enemies of our nation!"

Unfortunately, I don't suppose either of them is listening to my voice in the wilderness...

Peter

Reverse 9/11???

 

From user A New Pope on X.com:

Peter

A review that's more fun than the movie

 

Back in March, The Dark Herald (who blogs at Arkhaven Comics) reviewed Disney's then-new Snow White movie.  The film flopped at the box office (from all accounts, deservedly so).

The review is one of the most devastating, and also funniest, critiques of a film that I've ever read.  I laughed out loud several times.  Here's an excerpt.

The film decided that all things being equal it needed to provide an explanation for Snow WHITE’s melanin surplus.  She was born in a blizzard… And the snow was white. 

Moving on. 

The king and queen run a communism-that-works-just-like-Marx-said-it-would magic kingdom, with an economy based on apples.  This is a fantasy after all. 

The queen dies off-camera and the king acquires a mysterious beautiful Israeli queen with evil Jew sorcery or something.  Anyway, the hippie king, decides to get killed defending his borders, although given the ethnic make up of his realm it’s rather surprising he had any.

The Queen takes over, puts princess Snow White in rags and makes the bitch work for a living. The narrator moans about her monetarist economic policy as opposed to the previous regime’s apple based currency. 

. . .

Snow White in the original, does the feminine thing; she cooks and cleans for the Dwarfs as a way to earn her keep and they come to love her for it.  Here, Snow White demands that they do a better job of cleaning their house for her and bosses them around while dancing and singing uselessly like any good Marxist. Domestic incompetence is the hallmark of any proud feminist.

. . .

It’s not that Zegler is uniquely horrible.  Far from it. Most theater kids are as obnoxious as she is. However, most have to go through some period of time where humility is forced down their throats. Fighting their way up from the chorus line and waiting tables to make ends meet. Eating crow when the star upstages them during their single line of dialog. That kind of thing.  Rachel Zegler on the other hand was hurled straight from singing on YouTube to headlining Speilberg’s West Side Story as Maria. She never learned how to not be obnoxious.  She seems spoiled and vicious on Twitter but most people her age are. 

Regardless, every time she opened her mouth she not only stuck her foot in it but she would inevitably find some way to fit the other foot in there with it.

There's more at the link.

I highly recommend reading the whole review.  It's laugh-a-minute stuff, particularly if you're tired of Disney's political correctness and the "woke" entertainment industry as a whole.

Peter

Makes me feel old...

 

Stephan Pastis' cartoon last Sunday made me smile, but also wince a little.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

When I first came to this country, back in 1996, that's exactly how I found my way around.  I rented a car, bought a big fat Rand McNally road atlas for the whole nation and a few Thomas Guides for big cities, stopped at welcome posts as I crossed state lines to pick up more free maps there, and navigated my way around by keeping the current map open on the passenger seat as I drove.  If things got complicated, I sometimes folded the map small and held it on the car's steering wheel as I drove.  (A couple of times, cops stopped me because they said that was careless and negligent, but each time my foreign accent persuaded them to give me a break.)

Things have certainly changed.  Between in-car navigation systems and GPS and map systems on our cellphones, it's almost impossible not to find the place you're looking for.  Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder what would happen on our roads if a major power failure took out all the cellphone towers and other infrastructure on which our vehicle navigation depends.  Within a split-second we'd be cut off from all our modern aids, and having to navigate as we did in the 1990's - but few of us still carry road atlases or Thomas Guides in our cars.  (I still carry a Rand McNally atlas, but that's because I had to navigate all over the world - not just in America - using maps and a compass, and I've never lost the fear that I may need to do so again.  I dislike total dependence on any particular technology.)

How many of you, dear readers, learned to drive using a stick shift, and found your way around using paper maps?  How many of your children can say the same?

Peter

The housing market as a bellwether for retirement

 

It looks like the double whammy of inflation on house prices, plus much higher mortgage rates, is hitting the property market very hard.

There’s a total of $698 billion worth of homes for sale in the U.S., up 20.3% from a year ago and the highest dollar amount ever.

. . .

April 2025 is the most recent month for which data is available. For the purposes of this report, the term “value” is interchangeable with “list price”; i.e., when we refer to “total home value,” we mean the sum of all list prices. We define “stale inventory” as home listings that spend at least 60 days on the market and are actively listed for sale on the final day of the relevant month. Please see the end of this report for more on methodology. 

The total value of U.S. home listings is at an all-time high because of the combination of growing inventory, slowing demand, and increasing home-sale prices:

• Housing supply is at a 5-year high. There are many more sellers than buyers in the market. The total number of homes on the market nationwide rose 16.7% year over year in April to its highest level in 5 years, with the mortgage-rate lock-in effect easing and homeowners trying to cash out due to economic uncertainty. New listings increased 8.6% to a 3-year high.
• Homes are sitting on the market longer. The typical home that sold in April took 40 days to go under contract, 5 days longer than a year earlier. There’s also a growing share of inventory that has been sitting on the market for longer than two months; see the next section of this report for more details.
• Homebuying demand is falling. Home sales are declining, and Redfin agents in much of the country report that would-be buyers are backing off due to record-high monthly housing costs and widespread economic instability.
• Home prices are rising. The median U.S. home-sale price rose 1.4% year over year in April. Note that the total value of inventory is up by much more, 20.3% year over year, which signals that in recent years, the rising number of listings is a bigger factor in the total value of inventory than rising prices. 

Another Redfin analysis found that there are nearly 500,000 more home sellers than buyers in today’s housing market. The fact that so many homes are being listed without buyers out there to purchase them, along with continually rising prices, explains why there are 12 figures worth of unsold inventory sitting on the market.

“A huge pop of listings hit the market at the start of spring, and there weren’t enough buyers to go around,” said Matt Purdy, a Redfin Premier agent in Denver. “House hunters are only buying if they absolutely have to, and even serious buyers are backing out of contracts more than they used to.”

There's more at the link.

What few people are talking about in all those statistics is their impact on those about to retire.  A very large proportion of Americans are relatively cash-poor, but asset-rich:  and their biggest asset is their homes.  They've bought them over decades, and always figured to downsize to a smaller home when they retired and use the extra money they got from selling their bigger home to provide a retirement nest-egg.  However, I'm hearing from more and more of my readers that they aren't able to get the prices they expected for their pre-retirement houses.  Buyers either aren't willing or (more likely, given mortgage rates today) aren't able to afford those prices.  Sellers are having to wait much longer to sell their otherwise desirable homes, and when they do sell the prices they're getting are usually quite a bit lower than they want.  Even in high-cost housing markets such as California or Washington state, the prices paid for houses are said to have dropped by 20-30% over the past couple of years.  (Readers living in those states, please confirm that in Comments, if possible.)

People selling in those states, then moving to lower-cost states for housing (e.g. California to Texas, something we've seen a lot locally) are still able to buy something nice, and have money left over.  However, that's getting more difficult.  I'd say housing prices have about doubled here over the past 4 years or so, due precisely to the influx of out-of-staters willing to pay higher prices than locals to get what they want.  Californians who know what their friends paid here a few years ago are disillusioned that they can't get the same favorable prices today.  Thanks to getting less for their old houses, and paying more for their new homes, their retirement nest-eggs are considerably reduced from what they expected;  sometimes well into six figures less than they anticipated.

What does this mean for those planning to retire, and use the money from their McMansions or expensive houses to fund their retirement?  I suspect it means that a lot of them are going to be less well-off, perhaps a lot less comfortable, than would otherwise have been the case.  At the same time, high mortgage rates are preventing new homeowners from entering the market, except for low-cost housing that often needs a lot of owner "sweat equity" to make it livable.

I mentioned in these pages, some years ago, a local family who were building their home bit by bit.  A young couple got married and bought a piece of land on a local farm-to-market road nearby.  They began by living in a small travel trailer (only about 20-22 feet).  Over the course of a year or so, they built a shed on a concrete slab, insulated it, installed electricity and water, and moved into it for their utility space (keeping the trailer as their bedroom).  A carport followed, plus an extension to add another room for their first child.  Today they have a couple of added rooms, plus the carport, a backyard shed, and two kids.  They aren't in debt, except for the land, and they've paid for all their housing improvements as they built them.  They have my admiration for the adult, mature way they've approached the problem.

I wish there were more people willing to follow their example, but such owner/builders aren't common in today's market.  All the estate agents to whom I speak (and there are a number around here whom I tap regularly for information about the market) tell me that people want a "starter home" with everything already laid on, including several elements that are anything but basic.  They've grown up with everything they wanted, and can't (or won't) even think about starting their new family life with less, making do while they put money away to improve their property later.  Builders here won't build real "starter homes" because they know they'll have major difficulties selling them later, for precisely that reason (and banks are reluctant to grant mortgages on them).  It baffles me.  Right now, there are three small (700-800 square feet) 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom homes available in my town for $79,000 apiece:  very basic interior fixtures and fittings, functional (i.e. not smart) floors, but livable-in and perfectly good homes for a young couple willing to work at further improving them.  Astonishingly, most first-time buyers won't even look at them!  They want more, even if they can't afford it!

I look at the property market, and at those banking on it (literally) to retire in the next few years, and I worry.

Peter

"Taking a life is a terrible thing. Sometimes not taking a life is far, far worse."

 

Lawdog has some trenchant thoughts on the terror attack in Boulder, Colorado last weekend.  I endorse them wholeheartedly.

Go read, and ponder.

Peter

Getting out from under our national debt?

 

James Kunstler offers his perspective on what President Trump is trying to accomplish.

One reality we struggle with is the doleful fact that there is no work-around for the nation’s monumental debt. Since it can’t possibly be paid off, there are two stark paths for it: default and ruinous deflation (that is, money vanishes and the nation goes broke); or a futile attempt to inflate it away with more fake money creation (you’ll have money, but it’s increasingly worthless, so you’re effectively broke). Either way, you’re broke. In the meantime, the remorseless interest that has to be paid on $36.2-trillion squeezes out everything else we’re supposed to care for as relates to the common good.

Every broke-ass family or individual person knows how debilitating money-worries can be. And since unpayable debt is the common denominator across all of Western Civ, this perhaps explains the gross, suicidal mental disorder displayed lately by leadership all across Europe, North America and Anglo-Oceania. Europe, especially, exhibits behavior that is completely cuckoo — inciting war with Russia, inviting in murderous hostiles from foreign lands, and sadistically policing their own citizens.

The exception is Mr. Trump, a businessman-outsider to government trying to pull off an escape from the deadly debt quandary. It’s probably impossible, but he is trying nonetheless. It has three main features:

1) to readjust trade relations that, in theory, would restore industrial production across the land — a bootstrapping operation to kick off “growth.”

2) to engineer a severe re-set of the money system that would effectively amount to defaulting on debt but somehow without the feature of disappearing money. At best, this would induce some kind of fall in living standards, but mostly among the small sector of financial buccaneers who thrive on swindles and the Boomers living on investment accounts (figment wealth), who are now dying off anyway — which is to say, Great Depression Lite. And:

3) the least understood feature of Trumpism: to decouple the USA from the resource scarcity in the rest of the world, and the consequent strife it’s inducing, and withdraw into a sort of Fortress North America that can somehow carry-on self-sufficiently while everybody else collapses.

As big pictures go, this is a pretty wild one, stupendously ambitious, risky, and perhaps improbable. But what do Mr. Trump’s domestic opponents have to offer? To go back to their asset-stripping operation with its insane sideshow of race-and-sexual hoaxes and hustles? ... And despite his daunting agenda, Mr. Trump at least presents a sense of confident determination to get the country righted in some fashion, to recover a sense of purpose and enterprise after years of feckless, dissipative drift into the hallucinatory madness of the Left. You must give him a chance. There is no one else right now with no other way.

There's more at the link.

I'm not an out-and-out Trump fan.  I've had reservations about aspects of his personality, and his policies, and I continue to have them.  However, I'll be the first to admit that he's done a spectacularly good job at upsetting the progressive left-wing apple-cart that's dominated our nation for far too long.  He's done so many things right that I'm more than willing to suspend judgment on things where I think he's made flawed decisions, in the hope that over the long term, he'll bring all things into balance once more.  He's certainly achieved more in five months in office than many Presidents have achieved in an entire four-year term.  

The question is, has the rot gone too far?  Are the American people willing to work hard to generate a better future for themselves?  There's a real question mark over that.  As Mike Rowe has pointed out, there are millions of jobs available, but even more millions of Americans no longer want to work.  In so many words, despite all the excuses and weasel words, in reality they've grown used to living on handouts and expect to be allowed to continue that lifestyle.  That's simply not sustainable;  yet without a change of heart to bring many Americans back to the workforce, our economy's transformation and growth will be unsustainable.  We certainly won't be able to remove most of the illegal aliens from our midst, because our economy won't be able to function without them.  All of us, as individuals and as a collective, have to put our shoulders to the wheel, because without that national effort, nothing President Trump is trying to achieve will, in fact, be achievable.

All that funnels back into our crushing, unsustainable national debt, which we've discussed at length over the past few days.  Paying down that debt requires massive economic growth.  Economic growth requires not only hard-working, intelligent leadership, but also a willing workforce that is (or is willing to be) trained in the complex skills required for a modern production environment.  Leadership alone won't do it, just as a workforce alone won't do it.

Can MAGA bring the two elements together, to make it happen?  We're going to find out, over the next year or two.

Peter

Thoughts on Ukraine's drone strike against Russia's strategic bombers

 

We haven't seen any independent reports about Ukraine's drone strike yesterday morning against Russia's strategic bomber force (Tupolev Tu-95's, Tu-22's and Tu-160's).  Ukraine claims that 40 or more of these aircraft were hit by its drones;  if so, that would mean that up to a third of them have been damaged or destroyed.  (Since the factories that produced these aircraft, and components for them, have mostly been shut down or drastically reduced in capacity, a severely damaged aircraft will take so long to repair and restore that it might as well be written off as destroyed anyway.)

My first thought is that this attack is not a surprise.  Anyone studying military history and current military technology could have (and in many cases did) predict such a strike against Russian assets.  The only surprise to me is that it's taken so long to do it.  I thought it would come within the first couple of years of the war.

Second, this should be an extremely urgent wake-up call to the West.  Drone flights over our air bases have been publicly reported for years;  I'll be very surprised indeed if some, if not most of them were operated by potential enemies such as China, Russia, Iran and others.  Some may also have been operated by terrorist groups or drug cartels looking for potential high-profile targets.  A strike similar to Ukraine's could be launched against the USA at any time by almost anyone, because there will be no difficulty getting drones and their explosive payloads into this country and right up to the boundaries of the air bases concerned.  Our internal security measures are laughably poor (and I speak as one who had extensive experience of anti-terrorism measures in another country for the best part of two decades).  I hope Defense Secretary Hegseth and his top brass are alert to that possibility, and I hope they're doing something very concrete about it - because if they're not, we could lose half our Air Force overnight.  I mean that literally.  The same could happen to any or all NATO country(ies).

My third thought is that this might escalate the Russia-Ukraine war to a new level of viciousness.  Russia's strategic bomber force, one of the "nuclear triad" legs that safeguard its independence and national pride, has suffered a severe blow.  That might be enough to make already paranoid Russian politicians and military leaders even more so.  How might they retaliate?  There are a number of ways, up to and including tactical nuclear weapons.  Will they go that far?  Who knows?  I suspect we may be about to find out.

Fourth, where did the containers holding those drones come from?  I don't think they were all smuggled clandestinely across an active war zone to penetrate Russia.  I suspect at least some of them were shipped into Russia through third parties, perhaps as outwardly innocent-seeming commercial containers containing normal goods and products.  Can that have been done without the involvement of the intelligence and/or customs officials in those third party nations?  Possibly . . . but I'd be more inclined to believe that a certain degree of officially blind eyes were involved.  If Russia can determine the ingress routes of those containers, it may be able to use its own extensive intelligence resources to find out whether official tolerance was given to their passage.  If so, I won't be at all surprised if Russia does something nasty to discourage those nations from further meddling.  What might that be?  Who can say?

Finally, this highlights how parlous is the international security situation at present.  From Ukraine's point of view, this strike was a no-brainer.  Ukraine's already losing on the battlefield, slowly but steadily.  A big propaganda success like this, causing severe damage to its enemy, can only look positive from the loser's perspective.  However, for the nations supporting Ukraine, it's a lot more difficult and dangerous.  If it leads to Russian retaliation against, not just Ukraine, but every nation that supports it, that may drag the entire region into the war whether they like it or not.  The almost suicidal fixation of some nations to support Ukraine no matter what is another aspect of this problem (for example, Germany's recent removal of restrictions on its weapon exports to Ukraine, allowing the latter to use them to attack anywhere in Russian territory).  In physics, Newton's Third Law of Motion assures us that "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".  In war, the reaction is equally guaranteed, but not that it'll be equal.  It can be a lot more than equal, to make a point.  If Russia hits out at any and every nation it believes might have been involved with or supported the Ukraine drone strike, that may drag the whole of NATO into the war - and right now, NATO is in no condition to sustain a conflict of that nature for any length of time.

So . . . a propaganda and military success for Ukraine, but producing a much more volatile and dangerous situation for the wider region.  Was that a win, overall?  We'll find out . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 264

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.