Rand Paul lashes out at the Trump administration after he was disinvited from the military parade, calls Steven Miller a "knucklehead," says "The level of immaturity is beyond words."
A call to give up on literary prizes.
Very fine black and white photographs of Greek historical sites by Robert McCabe: classical, Mycenae.
Contract is awarded for the construction of the UK's first small modular nuclear reactor.
Update on the San Jose shipwreck; the Colombian government says they are going ahead with recovering its treasure.
Thomas Mann's politics: forced by German history to become a liberal, he nonetheless remained in his heart a conservative, and this essayist says that is why so many admire his political writing.
Large Roman villa complex unearthed in France. (English news story, French original with many more pictures)
Taking down Curtis Yarvin's nonsense about US death camps for German soldiers after WW II.
Quentin Skinner and the long-running philosophical debate about "freedom." What does it mean? And has the meaning changed drastically over the past 250 years, as Skinner argued? (The Nation)
LLMs battling each other at Diplomacy: "DeepSeek turned warmongering tyrant. Claude couldn't lie—everyone exploited it ruthlessly. Gemini 2.5 Pro nearly conquered Europe with brilliant tactics. Then o3 orchestrated a secret coalition, backstabbed every ally, and won."
The long, bitter argument among Paleoanthropologists over the Toumaï Skull from Chad; upright-walking human ancestor, or unusual ape? And why are leading Paleoanthropologists such brutes?
This week's past post is George Orwell's Definition of Nationalism, which perfectly explains a great deal about Trump and MAGA.
Elizabeth Warren says she agrees with Trump about one thing: we should abolish the debt ceiling. (NY Times) I agree as well.
The Yoruba ritual of "dancing away sorrow" as practiced at a Nigerian Pentacostal church in Ireland.
Tyler Cowen contemplates the collapse of Haiti.
And Tyler interviews Any Austin, a YouTuber whose analysis of video games includes stuff like trying the calculate the unemployment rate in Skyrim.
The Supreme Court revives the lawsuit that began when the FBI violently broke into the wrong house in search of a man who lived two blocks away.
Another Friday the 13th gives me another chance to spread the real story of why the number thirteen is unlucky.
Perun on the big picture consequences of the Ukrainian drone strike on Russian bombers, 1-hour video.
Ukrainian intelligence claims that Russia is helping North Korea set up production of Shahed-type drones.
6 comments:
Elizabeth Warren says she agrees with Trump about one thing: we should abolish the debt ceiling. (NY Times) I agree as well.
Are you insane? We're already on track to be unable to afford the ongoing interest accruals on our national debt within just a couple decades. We are literally on the verge of a crisis of unimaginable scale and unprecedented hardship for Americans as an inevitable result.
Yes, I know the debt ceiling keeps getting pushed up higher and higher anyways, but this is like an alcoholic who manages to convince a barkeep to not cut them off, and then starts arguing "You know, you shouldn't even HAVE a limit..."
And the irony of ALSO talking about Haiti - the poster child of what happens to a country where international debt outstrips the economy's ability to pay it off - later in the post...
The debt ceiling does nothing to restrain the debt; it does nothing but creat fake crises every so often. Did is restrain George W. Bush when he announced a huge tax cut, a major expansion of Medicare, and a trillion-dollar war at the same time? Is it restraining Trump now? It is not. So what is the point?
Principle, if nothing else.
As for "fake crises", they are REAL crises, we just keep cheating our way out of them.
Now how about a counter proposal? How about we insist that our government representatives actually enforce the laws and rules we have formally established, instead of ignoring them whenever it is politically expedient for them personally?
How about we create real consequences for malfeasance and misgovernance? How about we make it so that any politician who votes to raise the debt ceiling immediately (upon passage of such a motion) surrenders their government benefits, and is has their salary reduced to that of the lowest paid government worker? How can we allow them to keep drawing government funds when they are actively working to increase the national debt, at the expense of everyone else BUT themselves? In what world is that SANE?
Returning to the notion of principle, one might ask what was the point of anti-Fascist elements of the German government in the 1930s making political gestures of opposition to Hitler and his regime, despite the clear practical futility and the even clearer risk of retaliation.
Or one might ask what was the point of Suffragettes attempting to cast ballots and vote in various elections before their right to vote was legally recognized?
One might ask what was the point of the John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry; or what was the point of the unknown protestor in Tiananmen Square standing for those few brief seconds in front of that tank; or what was the use of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising when everyone involved knew there was no chance of any kind of victory or escape.
Forget proposals and Consequences. It's THE PEOPLE who are responsible for our runaway debt, no one else. Fact is people like getting goodies that they won't have to pay for, but some future generation will. SCREW THEM! It's a very popular form of financing. Has been since Reagan. Look at war. There is no end to wars now that we know we can borrow to finance for them, and someone else gets to pay for it. Go to war -- no conscription, no money out of my pocket to pay for it -- such a deal. We should have wars more often . . . and we do! A constitutional amendment forcing us to raise taxes to pay for wars as we go is what we need. Let's see how many wars we fight/finance once that amendment passes. "YOU MEAN I HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS! THAT'S A JOKE, RIGHT?
The debt won't be dealt with until THE PEOPLE insist on it being dealt with, and we are a long way from that. Not until politicians are voted out of office for failing to deal with it will they deal with it. When I hear one of those endless discussions about mandatory versus discretionary, and how social security and medicare are breaking the bank, I wonder when someone will interrupt and say: "Excuse me, but the reason we are having this discussion is because a trillion dollars of the budget is targeted for paying the interest on the debt, and we will pay that interest by borrowing, which will increase the debt as well as next year's payment. Perhaps we should be doing something about that." I thought about including the military budget, but that will be taken care of when we pass the amendment.
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