... “People higher in the belief that words can harm tended to be younger, female, non-White, and politically liberal.”
... restricting speech feels like protection as opposed to censorship.
... mental health appears to influence political ideology more than political ideology influences mental health, with increases in psychological distress predicting a subsequent shift toward political liberalism.
... the most empathic people support the least tolerant policies. ...
More.
The Wall Street Journal, here:
... The strait has been a particular source of frustration. Before the U.S. went to war, Trump told his team that Iran’s government would likely capitulate before closing the strait, and that even if Tehran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Some of the president’s advisers were caught off guard that tanker traffic would grind to a halt so quickly after the bombing began, according to a person in contact with the White House.
Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the U.S. doesn’t need or want military assistance. ...
White House concerns about security threats have been heightened, aides said.
In recent weeks, for example, Trump and his team have noticed an increase in security. On a cloudless night in April at Mar-a-Lago, every umbrella was up on the patio in an unusual arrangement, guests said. Club members were told that there was an effort to limit drone visibility, a Mar-a-Lago member said.
Rubio told others about standing outside his home at the military compound where he lives and watching a suspicious drone, administration officials said. Secret Service protection teams have expanded to carry weapons White House officials had never seen before. ...
WASHINGTON—President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.
In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said. ...
... Iran is still believed to have a vast stockpile of mines, cruise missiles on trucks and hundreds of undamaged boats in hidden facilities with deeply dug tunnels along the coast and on islands, said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on Iranian defenses at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“I think it will take weeks to reach a point where there can be safe operations in the strait,” he said. “Even then, a lot of the Iranian assets will survive.” ...
Houthi militants in Yemen, who are aligned with Iran, waged a two-month campaign last year with missiles, drones and unmanned boats against international shipping that parallels Iran’s closure of the strait. The U.S. struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen, but never succeeded in halting Houthi attacks fully until the two sides declared a truce in May. ...
More.
The best part was the professor who lamented Epstein's typos while he himself misused the word disinterest:
“It was nihilistic almost in its total disinterest in communicating,” Bessner said.
... Brookes cited a Pentagon projection that China’s submarine force will reach 80 vessels by 2035, about half of them nuclear-powered—up from the current estimated fleet of more than 60 subs, most of which are less capable diesel-powered vessels that have a shorter range of movement and must surface more frequently than nuclear-powered ones. This projection has appeared in past Pentagon annual reports on China’s military power. ...
... Following years of investments into EV technology, the Detroit Big Three ... have announced more than $50 billion in combined write-downs.
EV sales fell more than 30% in the fourth quarter, after a $7,500 federal tax credit that had juiced U.S. sales expired in September. ...
Automakers’ retreats and massive write-downs have come as Republican lawmakers abolished a lucrative federal tax credit for EVs last fall, while also doing away with federal fuel-efficiency mandates. Even with federal support, EV demand was below expectations. ...
Tom Homan’s Bid for Minnesota Reset Begins With Series of Demands
MINNEAPOLIS—Tom Homan, the White House border czar, arrived here with a series of demands for Minnesota’s Democratic leaders. Topping the list: an agreement from them to turn over more immigrants from the state’s prisons and jails, people familiar with the matter said. ... Walz has said the premise of the demand is false. “They’re taking credit for people that we’ve had in jail for a long time,” he told reporters Sunday. “We always hand them over.”
Oh, so that's why Border Patrol was in front of Glam Doll Donuts on Saturday. They were just looking for inmates.
And you don't put protective tariffs on trade when you have nothing to protect.
“We’re in charge,” he told reporters. “We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.”
More.
Then: "The U.S. properly worked for China's inclusion".
Now: "An era of folly began in the new century. Leaders of both political parties supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization".
I can't wait for the Wall Street Journal to admit that America's decline actually began under Reagan forty years ago, not twenty-five, because at this rate I'll be dead before they do.
... On the eve of the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford wanted to hold a motorcade parade in Grand Rapids, where he grew up ... filled with boarded-up buildings ... a downtrodden place ...
America on the eve of 2026 feels an awful lot like Grand Rapids in 1976. There’s a palpable sense that the country is struggling, if not starting to fail. It isn’t only the sorry state of big cities. It’s the state of the nation’s schools as kids fall behind in basic math and reading. It’s the state of the body politic as division and violence spread. It’s the sorry feeling that we’re a nation without a rudder, drifting toward inevitable decline. According to Pew Research, about half of Americans say the U.S. can’t solve many of its important problems. ...
More here.
Do you remember when COVID hit and Trump said we should just stop testing to make it go away?
... Because the October CPI was canceled, Thursday’s report did not have all the usual data points of a typical CPI release. The BLS said it was unable to retroactively collect the October data, but did use some “nonsurvey data sources” to make the index calculations.
Economists may be hesitant to read too much into this report as the start of a downward trend in inflation because of the lack of October comparison data in the release. ...
More here.
This entire drug war is a charade.
Trump, April 2011: "I'm only interested in Libya if we take the oil".
He just pardoned the former Honduran president sentenced to 45 years over cocaine, but he's going after the Venezuelan president over drugs?
Venezuela has 4x the proven oil reserves of the United States, tops in the world, and it's right in our backyard.
Trump isn't interested in peace and freedom in Ukraine, either. All he wants is a piece of action.
All that lizard brain cares about is money.
Reported here:
... The effort to keep up with higher prices feels relentless to Teri Kopp, who lives in Southbury, Conn., and works as an administrator at a synagogue. “I’m tired,” she said.
Kopp and her husband Bill, an HVAC technician, earn a combined $115,000 a year. They often sit in the dark with only strings of LED lights on to save on electric costs. She is considering painting rocks to send to friends as Christmas gifts. Their biggest vacation this year, a road trip to Maine, was mostly covered by cash back from a shopping-rewards program.
Kopp, 59 years old, doesn’t see any way to quickly pay off the $15,000 in credit-card debt the family took on largely to cover medical bills for knee surgeries. She also has $30,000 in debt from her daughter’s undergraduate degree in biology, which has yet to yield any job offers in a tough labor market for new graduates.
Kopp voted for Trump last November in part because she wasn’t happy with how Biden handled the economy. She approves of the job Trump is doing but is skeptical that it will lead to any relief on costs soon. “I think Trump has a hard nut to crack to bring all this stuff down,” she said. ...
Do the two Rachels at the Wall Street Journal who write this sob story about the middle class "buckling" realize that about half the country makes $45k or less? What about those people? Well, they don't read the Journal anyway, right?
You have to be in the 64th percentile to be like Teri and Bill, the high end of the middle 33-66%.
