I mean, what are the chances?

 

The Coin Belongs to Caesar, But Caeser Belongs to God

Bishop Barron, Word on Fire 

 

 

Um, that's not in the Bible, Drudge, and not even in the news story

Good Samaritan kills 16-year-old shooter...

That right there is one hell of a badly mangled analogy.

Thought that one up himself, he did. 

You know only a heap of broken images

 

 

 

Clues Are Everywhere, Society Is Growing Stupider

- James Marriott, Washington Post

 

... Studies have shown declines in IQ over the past two decades, with the sharpest drops among age brackets that use their phones the most.

 

... Entertainment and the arts are undergoing what might be termed a Great Simplification. 

... complexity seems to be rapidly draining out of culture.

The same relentless pressures toward simplification are at work in almost every creative industry.

... lyrics are becoming simpler, more repetitive and less rich in their vocabulary. Another study suggests that melodies are becoming less complex, too.

... Books are getting simpler and easier to read. An Economist analysis of New York Times best-selling books from the 1930s to the 2020s found that “sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.” 

... culture risks being transformed into a ... wasteland. ... 

 

 

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. 

 

 Rubio Urges Defense Of Western Civilization At Acropolis: "We Choose The Unapologetic Pursuit Of National Power"

... "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." ... 

 

Mood: Capitalism and Failing Companies Go Hand in Hand

Teachers Unions and Failing Schools Go Hand in Hand

 Daniel Di Martino, NY Post

Trump's IRS turns a blind eye to illegal alien employment

 

Exposed: Illegal Alien Employment Workaround

Victoria Manning, Restoration News

 

Federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring an unauthorized immigrant and from employing someone without work authorization. Yet a growing network of nonprofits and universities is teaching the illegal alien community exactly how to get around the law, one Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) at a time.

The IRS only cares about collecting taxes—illegal or not. It all starts with the ITIN.

Immigrants Rising, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is one of several organizations Restoration News has uncovered that openly help undocumented immigrants bypass work authorization requirements. It is just one example in our investigative series on the topic.

... Even though foreigners should not work in the United States without work authorization, an ITIN can be used to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) to establish a business. The IRS is aware of this workaround—and looks away.

 

... The IRS states that an ITIN does not “authorize you to work legally in the U.S.” However, you can “apply for an ITIN regardless of immigration status.” Uncle Sam wants its tax money, even if the employment violates work authorization laws.

 

The process is severely flawed. Lawful immigrants who follow the lengthy and costly process to come to America legally often still must wait in line to receive proper work authorization. Yet the IRS turns a blind eye to illegal aliens who circumvent the law to take jobs away from legal migrants and citizens.

 

The IRS allows third-party groups known as Certifying Acceptance Agents (CAAs) to process paperwork and certify the identities of applicants to obtain an ITIN. Nearly anyone can become a CAA—just complete the online training, apply, and wait for approval. Illegal aliens can then go to a CAA to obtain an ITIN without ever having to interact directly with the IRS. A student identification card (for individuals under age 24), a foreign driver’s license, and a foreign birth certificate are acceptable documents to verify a person’s identity for an ITIN. No need to prove legal status, and those documents don’t have to be sent to the IRS. They remain with the CAA.

 

... The IRS should stop treating tax compliance as a substitute for legal status. And the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department should start asking why elite universities and tax-exempt organizations are functioning as distribution channels for a workaround to federal law. 

Lexus uses an average everyday normal idiot to write copy instead of AI

Category assigned: ROFLMAO.

 

Larry Kudlow is back touting a non-existent booming economy just like he did during Trump's first administration

 This Is the Best 'Hard Goods' Boom in Decades

... Tuesday’s industrial production report showed back-to-back gains in June and July for both total production and manufacturing production. ...

Larry is rightly happy about the increase in the durable manufacturing index. 

No doubt about it, it is up, but notice that it is still not as high as it was in Trump 2018 or Obama 2014. 

More importantly, percent change in the index for 1H2026 was 1.94, lower than the 2.28 in 1H2018 when Trump was president the first time.

But this isn't an economic boom, and neither was that. 

Those are welcome highpoints but in a long-term trend all down hill since the 1980s when Reagan was president, and no one asks why.

Kudlow & Co. never go back in the data as far as they should, even though they served in the Reagan Revolution and touted the results for the economy of the posthumous JFK tax cut in the Revenue Act of 1964, which cut the top marginal rate from 91% to 70%.

Today they use these data sets which go back only to the beginning of 1972, but even at that there is a giant durable goods growth spike of 9.02% in 2H1983 which we have been unable to reproduce since then, which should make them ask themselves, What went wrong?, but it doesn't.

Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living.

So let's examine it.

Robust post-war growth is a truism which is true!

Industrial production generally, and for manufacturing specifically, grew robustly year over year, and the trend for those growth rates was itself strongly positive, as the chart for 1948 to 1984 shows.

But look at what happens after 1984. 

You still get positive growth rates year over year, but not as robust as before, and the trend for those growth rates becomes strongly negative.

Something changed in the 1980s to cause this.

I say it's the Reagan Revolution in ordinary income tax rate reductions which caused this, not because tax cuts for rich people is bad, but because Reagan unintentionally sabotaged the tax rate arbitrage which before those tax cuts existed had pushed rich people for decades to make long term capital investments here at home in order to get low capital gains taxes in return.

In other words, Reagan destroyed the negative incentives which drove domestic investment. Take away the penalty of high ordinary income tax rates, and suddenly there's no reason to plow your money into the investments which drive business, jobs, and GDP, especially as enthusiasm for regulations of all kinds began to grow and hamstring profits. 

The new tax cut windfalls freed up a lot of money to seek return wherever it could be found, and in the aftermath of the Reagan era that money increasingly went abroad. For people who lived through it, the one persistent theme of the business news was one business after another closing up shop in America and moving production overseas. After China entered the WTO, the steady departure of businesses from America became a flood.

And that's why that last chart, for 1984 to the present, looks like hell.

It has nothing to do with the U.S. Dollar being the world's reserve currency either. That is the dumbest thing I've heard in years, and I can't tell you how amusing that is coming out of the mouth of a Yalie. I guess they don't teach 'em at Yale that the dollar was the world's reserve currency 1948-1984.

I am not an economist. I do not know how to wave a magic wand of policy to make it all right again. 

I am just a scholar in the humanities who wanted to know what turned my world upside down in 2007 and why I and millions like me have never recovered.

I have made a life for myself in spite of it all, as people do, but I tell you what, America was pretty great once, so don't tell me this is an economic boom.

I knew the economic boom. The economic boom was a friend of mine. And Larry, this isn't an economic boom.

 

 

University of Michigan snowflakes in the news

  University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to ‘Curb Mental Health Crisis’

A pilot program aims to ease pressure on freshmen and help them adjust to demands of college

The University of Michigan will drop grades for first-semester freshmen next year in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,” according to the school. ... 

Good morning to everyone except the bourgeoisie, which cheated to get through college and is going to vote for Abdul

 

Good morning, philosophers

 

The first step is admitting that you have a problem

 Here.

 

 

Nine in ten Iranians must welcome it

 Trump threatens to ‘decimate’ Iran if it tries to kill him, as Treasury sanctions alleged financier

Still can't spell it

MAMDAMI-MANIA: Socialists Took City Hall. Now They're Aiming at Congress...

Trump has paved the way to the billions of dollars Vance says Iran will need to rebuild its nuclear program lol

 Yale man.

 

 

How do you spell Mamdani?

DC's Mandami Moment? Frontrunner for mayor is avowed Socialist...

 

... Janeese Lewis George, proudly affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America ...

Trump merely decimated Iran, but Cushing he has annihilated

 

In March Pete Hegseth couldn't decide if Iran's military was merely decimated or totally devastated, and now Trump tells us Iran's military wasn't really hurt at all

 Humpty Dumpty says words mean whatever he says they mean.

Meanwhile I'm quite certain nine in ten members of Iran's military prefer decimation to devastation. 

 

 

When you just read the typo and go with it lol

 

RJK Jr's Anti-SSRI Campaign Is Long Overdue

Stella O'Malley, UnHerd

 

Who is this RJK Jr? I don't think I've ever heard of him.

 

Will there ever be a pill to stop typos, or a pill you can take to catch them?

 

... Struggle is part of the human lifecycle, but antidepressants disrupt this rhythm. They can offer hope, but they can also blunt emotional range and alter how people relate to themselves and others. ...

 

 

 

Ha, taxes coerce behavior whether you like it or not, so you'd better decide what behavior you want because you're going to get it good and hard either way

 Tax Power Not Designed To Coerce Behavior - Gary Abernathy, RCEnergy

... the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a welcome nod to the fact that the federal government cannot take tax laws intended to increase revenue and twist them merely to regulate business activities. ...

I mean, do these people not remember Ronald Reagan?

“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” 

But Ronald Reagan ignorantly reduced high marginal ordinary income tax rates, destroying the need for the owners of capital to make the arbitrage decision going forward between either choosing low long term capital gains tax rates or the high ordinary income tax rates. 

The owners of capital had been no dummies and had picked the low rates for years. That drove domestic investment throughout the post-war because it had to, and produced the good paying full time jobs and GDP which too few even remember now. But faced with an easier path to low taxes, they took it.

The tax windfall set the conditions for the hollowing-out of the U.S. economy when those billions of dollars met the opening to China in 2001, where they worked for pennies on the dollar and regulations were practically non-existent.

20,000 domestic manufacturing establishments alone were lost in the wake of the 1986 tax reform, and 70,000 more after 1997. Millions of manufacturing jobs went with them, and with them the American middle class and the American dream.

All because Ronald Reagan, the liberal, thought rich people knew best what to do with their own money.

In the mid-1980s we had maybe 35 billionaires and people in their 20s routinely married and bought their first home. Today we have 1,135 billionaires and people are nearly 40 before they can afford to buy their first home. And we have Ph.D.s all over the place who can't spell in their own language let alone in a foreign one.  

Put a random set of 100 people in a room and the fact is only 25% of them are college material, but the rest need and deserve good jobs the same as they do, and they aren't going to be "knowledge" jobs.

I can still remember my company's HR head telling my truck-driving employees in the 1990s that they had to start thinking of themselves as "knowledge workers" instead of as what they were. I got the hell out of there. By 2003 most of those new "knowledge workers" of mine had lost their jobs driving truck when the company had to "restructure". Just one tale in tens of thousands of such tales.

America will not begin to be great again without tax policy which favors the American people over some eggheaded libertarian's idea of a principle which favors only the rich.