Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. A return to Pre Covid status

US incomes have returned to their 2019 level, adjusted for inflation.

The adjusted rate of inflation was 2.9%.

While people will continue to complain, this is pretty close to being back to the economic status of 2019.

Oil dropped yesterday to $69/bbl.

September 25, 2024

Delta To Pull Out Of Casper Airport, Last Flight Is Dec. 3

Delta To Pull Out Of Casper Airport, Last Flight Is Dec. 3

November 17, 2024

Boeing is commencing layoffs.

November 26, 2024

In a monumentally bad idea, President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he will issue executive orders imposing new tariffs on all imported goods from China, Mexico and Canada. with the rates being 25 percent tariffs would be imposed on Mexican and Canadian merchandise and 10 percent on Chinese goods.  This was tied, oddly, to his immigration goals.

December 2, 2024

President Elect Trump threatened 100% tariffs against Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. 

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia if they act to block the US Dollar ast he global reserve currency.

December 3, 2024

From a Fox News broadcast:

We are told that when Trudeau told President-elect Trump that new tariffs would kill the Canadian economy, Trump joked to him that if Canada can't survive without ripping off the U.S. the tune of one hundred billion dollars a year, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.

Apparently this was said by Trump in jest by our boorish embarrassment of a President Elect. 

December 11, 2024

$24B merger between grocery giants Kroger, Albertsons blocked by federal judge

Continuous arabica coffee futures on the ICE rose 4.1% to $3.44 a pound beating a record set in 1977 even before it is adjusted for inflation.

December 12, 2024

An Ontario message to Donald Trump from Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

We need to be ready to fight [on] January the 20th. We will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State and over to Wisconsin. I don't want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians and Canadians as a whole since we're the largest province. Let's see what happens as we move forward. But we'll use every tool in our toolbox, including cutting them off energy that we're sending down there.

Frankly, a lot of New York will freeze in the dark without Canadian hydroelectric.

On groceries, the item that a lot of Trump voters naively believed Trump could make the price of "go down":

It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard.

Donald Trump.

D'uh. 

There was no earthly way that Trump was ever going to be able to get the price of groceries to go down and a person would have had to have been bereft of economic knowledge to have believed that.  Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in fact bereft of economic knowledge.  As we've noted here before, that would require deflation, and deflation if prolonged, causes a Depression.

Trump back on November 4, 2024: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.”

Nope, they won't be.

So, now that he's been elected, this promise joins the one to end the war in Ukraine 24 hours after he's elected.  I.e., it'll be broken.

December 13, 2024

Pope Francis.

Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace

I. Listening to the plea of an endangered humanity

1. At the dawn of this New Year given to us by our heavenly Father, a year of Jubilee in the spirit of hope, I offer heartfelt good wishes of peace to every man and woman. I think especially of those who feel downtrodden, burdened by their past mistakes, oppressed by the judgment of others and incapable of perceiving even a glimmer of hope for their own lives. Upon everyone I invoke hope and peace, for this is a Year of Grace born of the Heart of the Redeemer!

2. Throughout this year, the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, an event that fills hearts with hope. The “jubilee” recalls an ancient Jewish practice, when, every forty-ninth year, the sound of a ram’s horn (in Hebrew, jobel) would proclaim a year of forgiveness and freedom for the entire people (cf. Lev 25:10). This solemn proclamation was meant to echo throughout the land (cf. Lev 25:9) and to restore God’s justice in every aspect of life: in the use of the land, in the possession of goods and in relationships with others, above all the poor and the dispossessed. The blowing of the horn reminded the entire people, rich and poor alike, that no one comes into this world doomed to oppression: all of us are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Father, born to live in freedom, in accordance with the Lord’s will (cf. Lev 25:17, 25, 43, 46, 55).

3. In our day too, the Jubilee is an event that inspires us to seek to establish the liberating justice of God in our world. In place of the ram’s horn, at the start of this Year of Grace we wish to hear the “desperate plea for help” [1] that, like the cry of the blood of Abel (cf. Gen 4:10), rises up from so many parts of our world – a plea that God never fails to hear. We for our part feel bound to cry out and denounce the many situations in which the earth is exploited and our neighbours oppressed. [2] These injustices can appear at times in the form of what Saint John Paul II called “structures of sin”, [3] that arise not only from injustice on the part of some but are also consolidated and maintained by a network of complicity.

4. Each of us must feel in some way responsible for the devastation to which the earth, our common home, has been subjected, beginning with those actions that, albeit only indirectly, fuel the conflicts that presently plague our human family. Systemic challenges, distinct yet interconnected, are thus created and together cause havoc in our world. [4] I think, in particular, of all manner of disparities, the inhuman treatment meted out to migrants, environmental decay, the confusion willfully created by disinformation, the refusal to engage in any form of dialogue and the immense resources spent on the industry of war. All these, taken together, represent a threat to the existence of humanity as a whole. At the beginning of this year, then, we desire to heed the plea of suffering humankind in order to feel called, together and as individuals, to break the bonds of injustice and to proclaim God’s justice. Sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about. [5]

II. A cultural change: all of us are debtors

5. The celebration of the Jubilee spurs us to make a number of changes in order to confront the present state of injustice and inequality by reminding ourselves that the goods of the earth are meant not for a privileged few, but for everyone. [6] We do well to recall the words of Saint Basil of Caesarea: “Tell me, what things belong to you? Where did you find them to make them part of your life? … Did you not come forth naked from the womb of your mother? Will you not return naked to the ground? Where did your property come from? If you say that it comes to you naturally by luck, you would deny God by not recognizing the Creator and being grateful to the Giver”. [7] Without gratitude, we are unable to recognize God’s gifts. Yet in his infinite mercy the Lord does not abandon sinful humanity, but instead reaffirms his gift of life by the saving forgiveness offered to all through Jesus Christ. That is why, in teaching us the “Our Father”, Jesus told us to pray: “Forgive us our trespasses” ( Mt 6:12).

6. Once we lose sight of our relationship to the Father, we begin to cherish the illusion that our relationships with others can be governed by a logic of exploitation and oppression, where might makes right. [8] Like the elites at the time of Jesus, who profited from the suffering of the poor, so today, in our interconnected global village, [9] the international system, unless it is inspired by a spirit of solidarity and interdependence, gives rise to injustices, aggravated by corruption, which leave the poorer countries trapped. A mentality that exploits the indebted can serve as a shorthand description of the present “debt crisis” that weighs upon a number of countries, above all in the global South.

7. I have repeatedly stated that foreign debt has become a means of control whereby certain governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets. [10] In addition, different peoples, already burdened by international debt, find themselves also forced to bear the burden of the “ecological debt” incurred by the more developed countries. [11] Foreign debt and ecological debt are two sides of the same coin, namely the mindset of exploitation that has culminated in the debt crisis. [12] In the spirit of this Jubilee Year, I urge the international community to work towards forgiving foreign debt in recognition of the ecological debt existing between the North and the South of this world. This is an appeal for solidarity, but above all for justice. [13]

8. The cultural and structural change needed to surmount this crisis will come about when we finally recognize that we are all sons and daughters of the one Father, that we are all in his debt but also that we need one another, in a spirit of shared and diversified responsibility. We will be able to “rediscover once for all that we need one another” and are indebted one to another. [14]

III. A journey of hope: three proposals

9. If we take to heart these much-needed changes, the Jubilee Year of Grace can serve to set each of us on a renewed journey of hope, born of the experience of God’s unlimited mercy. [15]

God owes nothing to anyone, yet he constantly bestows his grace and mercy upon all. As Isaac of Nineveh, a seventh-century Father of the Eastern Church, put it in one of his prayers: “Your love, Lord, is greater than my trespasses. The waves of the sea are nothing with respect to the multitude of my sins, but placed on a scale and weighed against your love, they vanish like a speck of dust”. [16] God does not weigh up the evils we commit; rather, he is immensely “rich in mercy, for the great love with which he loved us” ( Eph 2:4). Yet he also hears the plea of the poor and the cry of the earth. We would do well simply to stop for a moment, at the beginning of this year, to think of the mercy with which he constantly forgives our sins and forgives our every debt, so that our hearts may overflow with hope and peace.

10. In teaching us to pray the “Our Father”, Jesus begins by asking the Father to forgive our trespasses, but passes immediately to the challenging words: “as we forgive those who trespass against us” (cf. Mt 6:12). In order to forgive others their trespasses and to offer them hope, we need for our own lives to be filled with that same hope, the fruit of our experience of God’s mercy. Hope overflows in generosity; it is free of calculation, makes no hidden demands, is unconcerned with gain, but aims at one thing alone: to raise up those who have fallen, to heal hearts that are broken and to set us free from every kind of bondage.

11. Consequently, at the beginning of this Year of Grace, I would like to offer three proposals capable of restoring dignity to the lives of entire peoples and enabling them to set them out anew on the journey of hope. In this way, the debt crisis can be overcome and all of us can once more realize that we are debtors whose debts have been forgiven.

First, I renew the appeal launched by Saint John Paul II on the occasion of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 to consider “reducing substantially, if not cancelling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations”. [17] In recognition of their ecological debt, the more prosperous countries ought to feel called to do everything possible to forgive the debts of those countries that are in no condition to repay the amount they owe. Naturally, lest this prove merely an isolated act of charity that simply reboots the vicious cycle of financing and indebtedness, a new financial framework must be devised, leading to the creation of a global financial Charter based on solidarity and harmony between peoples.

I also ask for a firm commitment to respect for the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person can cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to a future of prosperity and happiness for themselves and for their children. Without hope for the future, it becomes hard for the young to look forward to bringing new lives into the world. Here I would like once more to propose a concrete gesture that can help foster the culture of life, namely the elimination of the death penalty in all nations. This penalty not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation. [18]

In addition, following in the footsteps of Saint Paul VI and Benedict XVI, [19] I do not hesitate to make yet another appeal, for the sake of future generations. In this time marked by wars, let us use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global Fund to eradicate hunger and facilitate in the poorer countries educational activities aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change. [20] We need to work at eliminating every pretext that encourages young people to regard their future as hopeless or dominated by the thirst to avenge the blood of their dear ones. The future is a gift meant to enable us to go beyond past failures and to pave new paths of peace.

IV. The goal of peace

12. Those who take up these proposals and set out on the journey of hope will surely glimpse the dawn of the greatly desired goal of peace. The Psalmist promises us that “steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss” ( Ps 85:10). When I divest myself of the weapon of credit and restore the path of hope to one of my brothers or sisters, I contribute to the restoration of God’s justice on this earth and, with that person, I advance towards the goal of peace. As Saint John XXIII observed, true peace can be born only from a heart “disarmed” of anxiety and the fear of war. [21]

13. May 2025 be a year in which peace flourishes! A true and lasting peace that goes beyond quibbling over the details of agreements and human compromises. [22] May we seek the true peace that is granted by God to hearts disarmed: hearts not set on calculating what is mine and what is yours; hearts that turn selfishness into readiness to reach out to others; hearts that see themselves as indebted to God and thus prepared to forgive the debts that oppress others; hearts that replace anxiety about the future with the hope that every individual can be a resource for the building of a better world.

14. Disarming hearts is a job for everyone, great and small, rich and poor alike. At times, something quite simple will do, such as “a smile, a small gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed”. [23] With such gestures, we progress towards the goal of peace. We will arrive all the more quickly if, in the course of journeying alongside our brothers and sisters, we discover that we have changed from the time we first set out. Peace does not only come with the end of wars but with the dawn of a new world, a world in which we realize that we are different, closer and more fraternal than we ever thought possible.

15. Lord, grant us your peace! This is my prayer to God as I now offer my cordial good wishes for the New Year to the Heads of State and Government, to the leaders of International Organizations, to the leaders of the various religions and to every person of good will.

Forgive us our trespasses, Lord,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

In this cycle of forgiveness, grant us your peace,

the peace that you alone can give

to those who let themselves be disarmed in heart,

to those who choose in hope to forgive the debts of their brothers and sisters,

to those who are unafraid to confess their debt to you,

and to those who do not close their ears to the cry of the poor.

From the Vatican, 8 December 2024

December 17, 2024

Canada's Finance Minister resigned.

This of course gave the chance for our bratty twelve year old president elect to make another one of his snotty tweets.

The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!

Where this conduct comes from, and why its tolerated is another question.

December 18, 2024

Elon Musk is campaigning against the bill that would provide stop gap funding until the next Congress convenes.

December 19, 2024

The Fed is cutting interests rates.

December 20, 2024

After tanking one continuing budget resolution, following his super wealthy "DOGE" appointees, Trump supported a second, which tanked last night.

And here we enter interesting territory.  In spite of widespread public belief to the contrary, Trump was set to inherit a strong economy.  Now he's tanking it.

EMERGENCY VIDEO! SHUTDOWN??

December 21, 2024

A CR passed but House Republicans defied a Trump request to raise the debt ceiling.

Why would Trump want to raise the debt ceiling if he intends to be true to the spirit of his campaign?

And now Trump is threatening the EU with tariffs if they don't up oil and gas imports, which are already at capacity.

Related threads:

September 10, 2024. Pearls Before Swine.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part 3. The Decarbonizing the West and Electronic eartags Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2024, Agriculture, Alcohol, Canada, Cattle, Climate Change, Coal, Computers, Disease, Economics, Health, Internet, Labor unrest, Railroads, technology, Unions, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Getting the Economic Dope Slap

The law of unintended consequences is a frightful thing.

It's possible, with things lining up the way they are, that Wyoming populists are about to get the biggest economic dope slap in the state's history.

Of course, the rest of us will get it too.

Wyomingites drank the populist kool aid and went back for more bucket sized additional helpings.  Shoot, the average Wyoming voter was practically drunk on the stuff, having started imbibing about a decade ago.  In going for Trump, they were voting for a return to an imaginary 1950s, sort of, combined with an imaginary 1930s, combined with an imaginary 1960s.  Full employment for all "real" Americans, none of these Spanish speaking brown folks, a uniting of our economic extractive needs with a concept of science as we want it, not as it is, and the sexual morays of the mid 1970s, really.

Average Wyoming candidate on campaign trail.

Wyomingites don't really want to go back to the past as it really was, particularly on some of the things the way I feel they should be.  Divorce isn't going to be hard to get, for example, and there's not going to be a criminal penalty for screwing around.    No hyperinflation either, and no economic depressions.

Well. . . 

The past so many envision, and there's some truth to the depictions,  and what we imagine we want again, except with tattoos and only the laws we actually like and think we remember.

Donald Trump, fresh from his political recovery thanks to a Democratic Party that couldn't get a clue and the rise of malevolent populism is threatening to throw a 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico and a 10% one on goods imported from China.  Apparently we can p.o. the Chinese, but not as much as we can Mexico and Canada, safely.

Or maybe not p.o. the Chinese at all. During the campaign Trump talked about 60% tariffs on China.  10% on China combined with 25% on Mexico and Canada actually conveys a trading advantage on  China, while raising the costs of prices at home.

The United States is the largest goods importer of goods in the world.  China was the top supplier of goods imported into the United States, followed by Mexico ($454.8 billion), Canada ($436.6 billion), Japan ($148.1 billion), and Germany ($146.6 billion).

The United States is the world's second largest goods exporter in the world, behind only China.  Canada is the largest purchaser of U.S. goods, around 17%.

That's probably about to change.

What do we import?  Well, darned nearly everything, even food from Mexico.

What do we expert, darned near everything, including even petroleum.

We're going to be paying more for everything, and we're going to be exporting less of everything, as we get hit with retaliatory tariffs.

And that's assuming our neighbors are nice.  They might not be.  If I was the P.M. of Canada, I'd tell Americans living in Canada to pack up and go home.  A lot of them are up there on business.  And I'd end cooperation with the US on defense.

And oil?  Well, the Saudis are seriously threatening to drop the price per barrel to $49.00, which would wipe out most U.S. production.  Again, if I were the Canadians, and the Mexicans, both of which produce a lot of oil, I'd join them.  They probably won't, but that's what I'd do.

So, Wyoming populists, even without retaliation, you are going to pay more for absolutely everything. We all are.

And a lot fewer of you are going to have jobs. Same for us all.

Well, at least you can be happy about deportation. . . and a lot of you will, at long last, be deporting yourselves to your own states.  You'll have to. There won't be any work here.

Blog Mirror: Will China Rise and the US Retreat?

 

Will China Rise and the US Retreat?

Sunday, November 2, 1924. Huang Fu became the acting President of the Republic of China.

Huang Fu became the acting President of the Republic of China.

Flying boats, Culebra, Puerto Rico, November 2, 1924.

Last edition

Saturday, November 1, 1924. Political, and real, warfare.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 Election, Art, Crime, Disease, Ireland, J. F. Kernan, Ku Klux Klan, Oklahoma, Personalities, police, Politics, Royal Air Force, Ulster, United Arab Emirates, Weather

Friday, May 31, 1974. The Golan Heights.

The Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria was signed in Geneva.  Artillery fire stopped at 1:15 p.m.  The United Nations Disengagement Force was created by UN Security Council Resolution 350.  Israel was left with the Golan Heights.

The British Home Office announced the end of the "bread and water" diet as a prison punishment.

Malaysia and China established diplomatic relations.

Vietnam Veterans marched from Boulder to Denver in protest over the war, which the US had of course withdrawn from, and for amnesty for draft evaders and deserters.

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 27, 1974. Memorial Day and Los Seis de Boulder.

Sunday, February 24, 1974. Advent of Fireforce, getting mad at Confucious.

The Fireforce vertical envelopment tactic was used by the 1st Battalion of the Rhodesian Light Infantry in the first example of its use.  The tactic was developed as Rhodesian Aérospatiale Alouette III had a limited carrying capacity in comparison to the very large helicopters used by the US in similar roles.

Rhodesian Alouette III.

The use of aircraft outside of their original intended roles was fairly common in African wars of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The People's Republic of China began a a nationwide campaign to discredit Confucius and Lin Biao as "reactionaries who tried to turn back the wheel of history" which was certainly cutting a pretty wide swath given that Confucius died in 479 BC, and Lin Biao in 1971.

Last prior:

Wednesday, February 14, 1974. Solzhenitsyn expelled.

Seriously?

Think of President Xi. Central casting, brilliant guy...He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant everything perfect.

Donald Trump.

And people are thinking of voting for this guy?

Saturday, January 19, 1974. The Battle of the Paracel Islands.

The People's Republic of China and the Republic of South Vietnam engaged in combat, mostly naval, but some ground, over the Paracel Islands. The events had been preceded by maneuvers and landings the prior few days after South Vietnam found the Chinese had landed on an island and had armed vessels nearby.

The following day, January 20, the Chinese would prevail.

The South Vietnamese defeat would later be regarded as a Vietnamese one in general as North Vietnam also did not welcome the Chinese incursion and would, post Vietnam War, demand that the Chinese depart, which they have not.  North Vietnam, upon taking over the entire country, praised the efforts of the South Vietnamese troops who attempted to defend the islands.

The People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan) and Vietnam, all claim the islands

The French government floated the franc, which would continue for six months, in order to maintain its value.

Wednesday, January 2, 1974. 55 MPH.

The National Maximum Speed Law reduced the speed limit on the nation's highways to 55 mph.

While ultimately hated, the law had an immediate impact in reducing highway deaths, which of course was not its actual intent.  Reducing the consumption of petroleum was.

The first Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks were mailed in a program designed to address those disabled but unable to qualify for Social Security. The law allowing for this to occur had come into effect the prior day.

The People's Republic of China announced that eight senior military figures were being reassigned in an apparent attempt to disrupt their ability to form a base of power.

Early country music pioneer and actor Tex Ritter died at age 68 of what was believed to be a heart attack.  His son, John Ritter, would die in 2003 at age 54 of aortic dissection and its likely that this was actually the cause of his father's death.

Tuesday, June 12, 1923. Trouble in China.

The remaining eight hostages taken by train bandits in what became known as the Linceng Outrage were freed.  The payment of ransom by Shanghai mobster Du Yuesheng to Sun Meiyao of the Shandong Outlaws resulted in the final freedom of what originally had been 300 such hostages.

Du Yuesheng, who controlled the Shanghai opium trade, would become a significant supporter of Chiang Kai Shek, and has been honored with a memorial in Taiwan, where he died.

Sun Meiyao would be executed by the Chinese Army in December.

On the same day, Chinese general Feng Yuxiang issued an ultimatum to Chinese President Li Yuanhong to resign.  He himself would go on to briefly lead the country, and then support the Nationalist as well, before becoming, in later years, a critic of it.  While a Christian, he was comfortable with the Communist regime and was honored by it when he died in 1953.

Juneau Alaska, June 12, 1923.

Monday, May 14, 1973. Skylab launched, but damaged.

Skylab was launched.  The US's first space station was damaged due to a signals error, and the launching of the crew therefore had to be delayed.

This is, I'll admit, one of those areas of history I should be interested in, but I'm not.  I'm not sure why, but post Apollo space exploration just does't interest me very much.

The US opened its first diplomatic mission to the People's Republic of China.

Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty in Northern Ireland.

Sunday, March 4, 1923. Doomed efforts.

Vladimir Lenin published an article called Better Fewer, But Better, arguing that global revolution was inevitable because the Eastern countries such as Russia, India, and China had larger population than the rest of the world.

Of course, Communism would never come to India, and in Russia it was busy reducing the population.  Seas of blood would flow in the Soviet Union until after World War Two, at which point they started flowing in the newly Communized China.

The 68th Congress of the United States commenced.

On the same day, the Anti Flirt Club launched the first, and last, Anti Flirt Week.

The club's purpose was to protect young women from unwelcome attention from men.  It had the following rules:

1. Don't flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure.
2. Don't accept rides from flirting motorists—they don't invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don't use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don't go out with men you don't know—they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
5. Don't wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
6. Don't smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know.
7. Don't annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
8. Don't fall for the slick, dandified cake eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
9. Don't let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.
10. Don't ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.

The name aside, the club existed for a real reason.  Increased mobility in society meant that for the first time a lot of unattached young women either left home for work or college, or were outside the house for most of the day, putting them outside the eyes and protection of family members.  The Roaring Twenties, moreover, encouraged a flirtatious attitude on the part of the flapper class of young women, and even a bit of a promiscuous attitude in the case of some.  It's often claimed, with some justification, that the 1960s were simply a repeat of the 1920s in this matter, with the 20s interrupted by the disastrous 1930s.

Thursday, February 21, 1963. Training SEALs.

US Navy Seals in training in the Virgin Islands, February 21, 1963.  Note the original verion of the M16 in use here, before it had been actually adopted as a theater rifle by the U.S.

I don't normally put posts from 60 years ago, but as I don't anticipate being around when these photos hit the 75 or 80 year mark, I thought I'd go ahead and post them.

As we have these up, we'll note a few things about the day.

The Telstar 1, the first privately funded satellite, became the first satellite destroyed by radiation.  The U.S. had conducted a high altitude nuclear test the day prior.

Oops.

The satellite had inspired a hit instrumental by the Tornados.

The Soviet Communist Party wrote the Chinese one, proposing a meeting in hopes of clearing up differences between the two bodies of thuggery.

In East Berlin, the Communist government yielded in the face of a student protest which simply assigned occupations to graduating students, rather than allow them to pick their own paths, prior to being able to attend university. The occupations that had been chosen were all manual labor jobs.

Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago received a shipment of surplus Mannlicher-Carcano rifles.  One of them would later be purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLV. At War With Nature and the Metaphysical

At war with God. 

We are at war with God.

Joseph Stalin, caught in tape commenting to Molotov.

I don't pay any attention to the Grammy's anymore.  I never much did. Anymore, however, nobody pays much attention to them.  The same has become true of all the other big awards in entertainment that once meant so much.  Now, heavily politicized in a PC fashion, they're really not very interesting and people pretty much ignore them.

Therefore, I ignored the flap over Sam Smith's performance when it came out, even though with Douthat commented on it I started to take a little note.  But then I noticed something else.

It's no secret that a certain segment of Western, liberal, society is at war with our existential nature, which calls into mind, for a believer, Stalin's quote.  And well it should. Communism claimed at first to act in accordance with man's nature, but soon saw it that it couldn't force the nature that it wished for, so it decided to make a new Communist man that was the antithesis to real men in some ways.  It failed.

That's what we have going on now.

Sam Smith is a homosexual.  While Pope Francis is certainly correct that making homosexuality illegal, as it actually is in much of the world, is wrong, celebrating it is nonsensical, just as celebrating hetrosexuality would also be.  It is a deviation from the genetic norm. In spite of that, however, and particularly post Obergefel, now a person can hardly even point that out.

And as people who were well attune to development and trends pointed out, the Obergefel decision was going to inevitably lead to a full scale assault on normality and nature itself, which has busted out in the transgenderism craze.  It was claimed that this would not occur, but with the guardrails down, it pretty much had to.  Not surprisingly, he collaborates with German songwriter Tim Petras, a man who was chemically and probably surgically mutilated as a very early teen, and who goes by the name of Kim Petras and affects a female appearance.

In Smith's performance, he affected a Satanic visage and gave what can only be called an open embrace of what that entails.  Perhaps fully unwitting, Smith has exposed openly what most in his camp have hidden, perhaps for the better.

And by so doing, he joins Stalin in that category. For all his defects, Stalin was a genius and his comment was not only open, I don't believe it to be metaphorical.  At least he had the courage to admit what he was up to.

Of course, like all such efforts, it failed.

It's worth noting that this argument still prevails even for those who claim not to believe or doubt.  Most of the general fundamentals of Christianity in regard to men, women, and what they do and interact, are not only Christian principles, they're principles of every religion, and exhibited in every natural society.  That's why, we'd note, that Communism works no better in North Korea than East Germany.  It's contrary to human nature, as is what these performers are exhibiting.  

You can be at war with nature, but you won't win.

It's interesting to note. . .

Related to the above, that in the commentary in Playboy documentary that aired one of the models flat out stated that she believed Hugh Hefner to be possessed, and that a girl who was a centerfold or "bunny", I can't recall which painted something essentially stating the same thing prior to her committing suicide.

It was really Kinsey, and his bogus report, that started us down this road, although I've blamed Hugh Hefner, justifiably, a lot.

During World War Two, Alfred Kinsey, with colleagues, was busy studying the sexual habits of perverts who were incarcerated, resulting in a text entitled Sexual Behavior In The Human Male, which would have been better entitled Sexual Habits of Incarcerated Perverts Who Couldn't Be Drafted.  It's one of two examples of 1940s "studies" being really results driven.  I.e, a report that isn't a study, but a conclusion being justified subsequently by a report, the other being SLAM Marshall's Men Under Fire.

Both texts have done a lot of damage.

Taken objectively, it turns out that really gross perverts act perversely, which didn't stop Kinsey and his associates from actually arranging some acts that should be regarded as solicitation, or prostitution, or just weird.  Anyhow, their conclusions were erroneous, as is now well known, but so damaging and influential, they're still regarded as persuasive.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of men and women actually had very limited numbers of, as we like to say now, "partners".  Most men and women had no sexual experience at all of the really intimate type until they were married, and it was universally regarded, irrespective of not everyone keeping the standard, that sex outside of marriage was morally wrong.

Enter perversion fan Kinsey and this began to weaken, followed by Hugh Hefner.  Not too surprisingly, we are at where we now are, at war with nature.

99 Luftballons

The entire Chinese balloon flap has been very interesting.  I'm sure that we're not going to know the truth of it for many years.

What we know is only the basics. The Chinese have been flying spy balloons over the United States, and in this case, although barely noted, over Canada as well.  The choice of the two nations together may be simply atmospheric, perhaps that's how you get a balloon over the continental US, or it may be strategic, that flies it over and through NORAD.

It would not appear that the NORAD, American or Canadian response has been stellar. This was apparently, if we're being told the truthy, and we very well might not be, the first time a PRC spy balloon was detected, which if true is a shocking admission of a major NORAD failure.  And the entire story of waiting it so long to shoot it down doesn't pass the smell test at all.  This thing could have been dropped anywhere from the Aleutians to Wyoming harmlessly, but wasn't.  The story about not wanting to damage stuff on the ground simply isn't credible.  They were probably more likely to hit a boater where they took it down than they were to hit a human over much of its course.

Which means somebody is probably fibbing.

We now know that U2s accompanied the balloon nearly its entire route over the US. The high altitude spy plane was spying on the balloon, likely picking up anything it emitted, and perhaps messing with its own emissions.  That alone may be sufficient justification, justification that can't be admitted, for not dropping it until we did.

Chances are good, I'd note, that U2s are flying near the one now in the Southern Hemisphere.

The big question is why are the Chinese doing this?

Well, one reason is that they got away with it so far, and it did a good job of testing NORAD.  We overflew quite a few places with U2s until we simply couldn't, and it was never our intent to test air responses in doing it. We probably also intruded on Soviet waters with submarines for various spying reasons, and the Soviets and Russians probably still do that in some locations.

Nations spy.

But spying in this manner is really interesting.

They may have been able to pick up a lot of electronic data from the ground that a satellite simply couldn't.  And, importantly for a nation that is preparing for war with the United States, and it is, testing NORAD made sense.

A new Cold War?

This question came up on all the weekend shows. Are we in a new Cold War.  Nobody would say yes.

Well, we obviously are.

One analysis, that the level of trade was too high to support that claim, is nonsense. We didn't have a lot of trade with the Eastern Bloc countries, as they had nothing we really wanted to buy at the time.  China has been different, and intentionally so. The real model is the trade level between the Western combatants in World War One, prior to the war.  It was enormous, none of which kept the war from happening.

And this war will go hot.

Are the Chinese going to attack Taiwan?

Probably. 

Well, rather, they will probably try. 

I'd give it about 70% chance of happening by mid-decade.  I.e., we're close.

It'll also be an epic fail.

Crossing the Taiwan Strait will prove beyond them, their casualties will be massive, and their government will fall.

Liars.

Fox news crew with the network.

To nobody's really surprise, unless they chose to be completely self-deluded, Fox News personnel privately acknowledged that they knew Trump hadn't won the 2020 election.  Indeed, privately, some, notably Tucker Carlson, blasted him.

In spite of this, they just keep on keeping on.  If Fox had any honor, all of these people would go, and go right now.

But they won't.  And they'll just keep shoving the crap they're shoveling.

Lying about being Jewish

It's interesting that there is now some political cache, apparently, to being Jewish.

We've long had Jewish politicians in the United States, and even before that.  Francis Salvador, for example, served in the South Carolina provincial legislature at the time of the Revolution and hew as Jewish.  But it can't be doubted, additionally, that being Jewish was once a serious hindrance to obtaining higher office.  While Salvador was undoubtedly an exception, by and large successful 19th Century Jewish politicians in the US, and there were some, came from districts where their constituents at least partially had the some background.

Exceptions started in the 19th Century, however.  Portland, Oregon had back to back Jewish mayors starting in 1869.  Washington Bartlett was the Jewish Governor of California starting in 1887.  And so on.

Be that as it may, Jewish Americans being quiet about their religious identity, in some instances, was pretty common well into the 20th Century.  Indeed, most Jewish actors in American films changed their names, if they had a name that might identify them as being Jewish.

Now that's changed so much that we apparently have two freshman members of Congress claiming Jewish identify when they have none. George Santos is one, and now Anna Paulina Luna is another.  Luna claimed to be raised as a Messianic Jew and that she’s part Ashkenazi Jewish, but has now converted fully to Christianity.

In actuality, she's always been a Christian and one of her grandfathers, a German immigrant, served i the German Army during World War Two.

What's up with this?

Last Prior Edition:

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLIV. Pope Francis writes Fr. James Martin, S.J.

Monday, February 21, 1972. Nixon lands in China.

 Richard Nixon landed in China on this day, or yesterday depending upon where you were, in 1972.  

In the US, on this day, 60,000,000 people tuned into their television sets to watch President Nixon deplane and shake the hand of Zhou Enlai.

It was the start of a rapid process in which the United States would recognize the Communist government in Peking, which of course was the government of the country, as that.  Up until that time, the Nationalist government in Taiwan was recognized as the government of China.

Rather obviously the status of Taiwan continues to linger. . . 

Monday, February 14, 1972. Made In China.

On this day in 1972, President Richard Nixon removed restrictions on American exports to the People's Republic of China. The ban had been in place for over twenty years.

This meant, of course, that things would soon work the other way around as well. . . the People's Republic of China could export to the United States.

Nixon was getting ready to visit the PRC shortly.

Dr. Suess' The Lorax aired for the first time on CBS.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Aftermath. Part IV

So if the PRC attempts to invade Taiwan, and it plays out like I've run it, what then.

It's hard to say. The government seems firmly entrenched, but then nearly ever authoritarian government does until it is not.

The Chinese economy is really not in as good of shape as it casually seems from the outside.  A war with the west, even a victorious one, would wreck it.  A lost war would be a national embarrassment and the end of decades of work with failure.  Chinese regimes that are embarrassed have historically not lasted, even though the country has never manged to be democratic.  It'd meet with massive internal discontent, aided by massive unemployment.

Even a victorious war, however, may not bring a victorious peace.

China's counting on its continued role as a global exporter. . . the role the US occupied in the world's economy following World War One and up until the 1970s, and which the British had occupied before that.  China's underlying belief is based on hubris, it's too important to be disregarded.

Those positions, the economic dominance of the US and UK, were, moreover, occupied under conditions in which trade tended to be more closed, and economies developed and changed much more slowly.  And they also existed under conditions in which the US, and the UK before it, retained a large native laboring class. We still have that class, but its nothing like it was before.  Much of it has moved into the quasi white collar middle class, and even keeping it in that position has become a matter of national policy to the point of subsidization, if necessary.

Nobody can really fully determine how this would play out.  History is our only guide, really.  But the long term history of nation's on China's path, that of Imperial Germany, or for that matter Nazi Germany, has not tended to be a happy one.

Hubris turns out to be a bad basis for making policy.  Hubris lead Hitler eventually into the Soviet Union. . . hubris lead Stalin to present a final set of demands to Hitler in 1940 that couldn't realistically be granted in exchange for the USSR becoming a Germany ally.

None of which will likely deter them from acting.  That lesson, for autocratic states, never seems to be learned.

Prior threads:

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Part I.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Weighing the costs and benefits from a Red Chinese prospective. Part II

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Can the People's Republic of China pull it off? Part III

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXIII. Trial, what trial? Looking for a fight. Free Peng Shuai. Leisure, rights and politics.

Eh?

There's a widespread assumption that lawyers follow criminal trials because they're lawyers.

That's incorrect.

For the second time in recent months, I've been asked by somebody what I thought of 1) the accusations against Kyle Rittenhouse and the 2) trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

This presume that I'm following anything in regard to Kyle Rittenhouse. 

I know a little more about his situation than I did a couple of days ago, but only as I started to pay a little more attention after it was brought to my attention for the third time.  

The first time I was in a trial myself and was called by a client.  "What do you think about the accusations against Rittenhouse?".

I had no idea what this referred to, even though I was dimly aware that some teenager carrying a M4 style carbine had killed somebody in a disturbance somewhere.  More recently, the same person asked what I thought of about was coming out at the trial.

"I've been so busy, I haven't been following it".

That was true, but only partially so.  I wasn't following it, and I am very busy, but I don't usually follow criminal trials anyhow.

Finally, I was in a deposition when the verdict came in. The deponent actually had his phone set to rig a bell when the news came in, he was following it so closely.  He actually asked if we could take a break to read about it.

No break.

In the next break, none of the lawyers discussed it. One spoke about his upcoming holiday where he was going to a Ferrari race car driving school. That did sound pretty interesting.

This brings up a couple of things.

Living by the sword

Marines in Hue.  If you want to live like this constantly, there are places that you can do it for real, rather than pretending that it's about to happen here.

I knew a former University of Wyoming football player who didn't follow football at all.  He was always caught flat-footed when somebody asked his opinion on football matters.  He'd played football and presumably liked it, but he just didn't follow it after his college athletic career concluded   

I get that.

If you work every day in the law, you have a lawyers prospective, but given that, you likely know that there's a lot nobody knows about anything being tried and, moreover, the Press isn't very good at reporting trials anyhow.  

And frankly, most criminal trials are exclusively local news stories, not worth reporting on as big national news. This one is a slight exception, but it's getting a lot more press than it deserves and people are drawling conclusions which likely aren't merited.

One big conclusion is that lawyers are a lot less interested in the "big news" trials than other people seem to be.

There's probably a reason for that.

So what I now know is this.

Ritterhouse was 17 years old and went to a protest carrying a M4 type carbine.  The protest was racially charged and arose from an earlier Kenosha police shooting of an African American man.  Ritterhouse, while only 17, had an association with the current right-wing populist militia type groups.  He spent part of the night marching around, much like the armed men in downtown Casper during a similar event last summer.

While there, he encountered a Joseph Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum had been belligerent all night and at some point chased Ritterhouse.  Somebody fired a shot in the air, and Rosenbaum lunged at Ritterhouse and tried to disarm him. Ritterhouse shot  and killed him. He then fled on foot and was pursued and physically attacked.  The last assailant pointed a pistol at him but was only wounded when Ritterhouse fired first.

With that set of facts, there is no crime to commit Ritterhouse of.  He acted in self-defense.

Which doesn't really excuse him, or indeed some of the crowd.

Some things to consider.

Ritterhouse is part of the delusional set that exists in our country that feels that they need to walk around like they live in Hue in 1968. They don't, and it's dumb.  It should stop.  Now he seems genuinely remorseful, but he'll live with killing two other humans for the rest of his life, and it'll be ages before he escapes what occurred.  Frankly, he probably ought to change his name and disappear for a long while.  Lt. Calley overcame his crimes, so Ritterhouse will this too, but it'll be a long time.

He shouldn't have been there.

Next, while this event was supposedly over the killing of a black man by the police, all those involved in these shootings were white.  White right-wing militia kid Ritterhouse and three white protestors. 

 Joseph Rosenbaum was being belligerent and was just out of the hospital after trying to commit suicide.  He was a convicted child molester.

He should have been in the hospital.

His family showed up to protest the results, complete with a sister with a nose ring.  I'm not going much further on this, but Ritterhouse was not only a mess, but at least a partially icky violent mess.  That he got shot isn't all that surprising.

The second shooting victim, Anthony Huber, had served two prison stints, one for domestic abuse and one for trying to choke his brother.  

The third guy, the one who was wounded, pointed his handgun at Ritterhouse "accidentally", but also had a criminal history.  He had a concealed firearms permit which, oddly enough, expired that day.

You can draw lessons from this, and the survivors should.  Almost none of them will be the ones that are bandied about by anyone.

And once again, African Americans, who do have a story to tell here, have had their thunder stolen by a bunch of youthful whites ended up playing out on the stage when this really ought to have been focused on something else.

Let the stupid comments begin

Notwithstanding the fact that most people don't understand how the legal system actually works, there will be floods of really bad punditry and for that matter just regular public comment as a result of the verdict. Some will demand that Ritterhouse be hauled in front of a Federal Court as they perceive that justice wasn't done, others will want to give him the Congressional Medal of Honor for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with insufficient maturity not to appreciate that he wasn't Sgt. York.

Already I've seen a comment on a list serve that's usually dedicated to lost cats and such things.

Uff.

Free Peng Shuai

I skipped all the concern over Brittany Spears when it was rolling around.

I hope that Peng Shuai gets at least as much attention.

I don't follow women's professional tennis, which is no surprise as the only professional sport I really follow is baseball, and this year I couldn't even get into it.  At any rate, I take it that she is a well known, and Chinese, tennis star.

She recently accused Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of forcing sex upon her.

It's actually more complicated, and frankly icky, than that.  It started off, apparently, as an off and on extramarital affair and concluded with an assault, she alleges, with guard posted outside of her door.

And she's now disappeared.

The Chinese are really resisting opening up on this, which demonstrates what a thugocracy it is. Sooner or later it'll fall, but right now it has a chokehold on the Chinese people and is looking to expand its brutal grip over Taiwan.

We only put up with this due to money.

The Chinese Communists are bad for everything.  They're bad for the Chinese, and they're bad for the environment.  It ought to stop.

The US is demanding to know what's up with her whereabouts.  The Chinese, who are used to simply offing the difficult, seem surprised and more than caught a little off guard.

The proletariat

The Peng episode brings up something that will play itself out in the coming years, and probably more rapidly than we might suspect.

Most of the Chinese are still very poor, but as they build a middle class, that middle class is not going to cooperate with being out of power.  There is already a Me Too Movement in China, and it's pretty clear the authoritarian government doesn't know what to do about it.  

This is no surprise as it doesn't know what to do with the democracy movement either.

The infusion of money into people's hands eventually transforms them into a class that wants some sort of power.  It doesn't always work perfectly at first, as Russia provides ample evidence of.  And on the flipside, rich capitalist countries can undermine themselves by failing to heed Jefferson's warnings about wide scale funding of the public feeding trough, which I suspect may relate to more in this post than people are willing to admit.

Chanteuse

Apparently Taylor Swift and Adele have new releases out.

M'eh.