Trump says Norway has ‘indelible stain’ for not awarding him Nobel Peace Prize
Why does Trump crave honors from the most antisemitic country on the planet?
Saturday, October 10, 2026
If you can keep your head . . .
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
-- Rudyard Kipling 1910
Friday, October 9, 2026
Sanctions but not really makes Trump no different from NATO buyers of Russian energy, proceeds of which do and will fund the Russian war against Ukraine
Trump’s diesel agreement with Putin accused of contradicting Russia sanctions law
Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets
Oh yeah, poor, poor Abdul, who is constantly addressing the Joos
Will someone please give a thought to the terrorists?
Thursday, October 8, 2026
Donald Trump is Marco Rubio's Thumos personified
... he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself. ...
-- Plato, Republic IX
You can spot the place where Marco was interrupted by the game on TV while he was writing his little speech because in his thumos he left an incomplete sentence behind
Ah, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat:
Marco Rubio, student of Wikipedia lol, suddenly warms to Platonist philosopher and biographer Plutarch
But what about the welders, Marco?
And even today's Greeks know that Western law is far more Roman than it is Greek.
Marco is what the Athenians would have called a spermologos:
Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met Paul. And some said, "What would this babbler say?"
-- Acts 17:18
The MAGA boobeoisie is taking Marco seriously, which is even funnier than Marco himself, but he's still trending way behind International Lesbian Day.
... "Many people are surprised to learn that the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was not an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist. The most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch," Rubio said. "Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship and republic and government were shaped in the Greek city-states." ...
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
If there's a better metaphor for Trump's Golden Age I don't know it: Bonds have been at their very worst in the whole history of the country ever since Donald J. Trump entered politics
Sep 2016-Sep 2026: -2.23% per annum nominal.
Compare VUSTX discussed in a previous post: 10-year total return per annum through 9/30/26 at -2.20%.
It's eerie.
Anyway yields at 5+% now portend better times ahead for good old American bonds, eventually.
As usual with American news stories about the riots in France, they deliberately hide the role of immigrants, and this time the role of the left fueling the immigrant riots
Student riots engulf France as far-right presidential frontrunner Le Pen vows fiscal turnaround
CNBC furnishes this photograph sending the message that it is ethnic French confronting the police, not African Muslims:
They're not showing you the truth.
October 3, 2026:
Riots spread from Paris’s immigrant suburbs across France
France struggled to contain riots that grew out of school protests in Paris suburbs with large immigrant populations, with schools set ablaze, police attacked and around 5,000 people arrested.
Saint-Denis, Aubervilliers and Pantin were among the centers of the unrest in Seine-Saint-Denis, northeast of Paris. Immigrants accounted for roughly 32% of the department’s population in 2020–2021, according to national statistics agency INSEE. French-born residents with at least one immigrant parent accounted for a further 32%. ...
France’s suburbs have repeatedly been the starting point for nationwide unrest involving young people from immigrant families. In 2005, three weeks of riots followed the deaths of two teenagers of African descent hiding from police in an electricity substation. In 2023, the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of North African descent, triggered another wave of violence. ...
And today:
... For the right, the images of crowds dominated by immigrant-descended young people burning down ornaments of the French republic without fear of the forces of order feels like an early Christmas gift. ... it is easy for voters to see crowds with few white faces in the news and interpret this as representative across urban France. Without data easily available, the truth can be whatever you want it to be.
... The protests which began in lycée Saint-Exupéry in the Créteil banlieue of Paris before steadily spreading across France, caught the government by surprise in their scale and intensity. They have also shocked the French public by the high representation of second and third generation immigrants in the protests, and by the direct participation of elected officials from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard left La France Insoumise (LFI) party in the riots.
... The most shocking thing for the general public is not just the violence and the damage itself, but the openness with which Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party has aligned itself with the aims and the means of the protests.
From the very beginning of the protests, LFI politicians have been present at the school gates — something that would be seen as shocking particularly to a British audience. ...
If Republicans were smart they'd run on SPX hard for the remainder of the campaign because it's all they've got
S&P 500 rises to record high as oil and yields move lower
Yields aren't significantly lower, oil is $88 and $98, and USA gasoline is $4.32.
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