This is your reminder that the Three Stooges Obama, Trump I, and Biden shut down about 148 gigawatts of coal electric generating capacity in the United States

 Obama 60

Trump I 52

Biden 35

 

 

Increasingly positive views of socialism at Gallup are mostly at the expense of the growth of corporate power in big businesses

 Increasingly positive views of socialism at Gallup are mostly at the expense of the growth of corporate power in big businesses.

There's an app for that, but we don't use it enough.

It's called antitrust law.

And of course since Citizens United on January 21, 2010, money has increased the political power of the speech of corporations, so it makes sense that positive views of big business have collapsed from 50 to 35 over the period of the survey. 

American patriots have hated the political power of corporations since before the Revolution of 1776, rejecting the argument meant to appeal to the Loyalists among us, that we are mere subjects of his royal highness, The Boss, The Man, The King:

An English colony is a number of persons, to whom the king grants a charter, permitting them to settle in some distant country, and enabling them to constitute a corporation enjoying such powers as the charter grants, to be administered in such forms as the charter prescribes. As a corporation, they make laws for themselves; but as a corporation, subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they continue subject. ...  

-- Samuel Johnson, Taxation No Tyranny, 1775

 That's why we say . . .

 

 

Overall consumer prices in August 2026 are up 3.39% year over year, core up 2.44%

That's 78% worse than during Trump I, and 24% worse, respectively, mostly due to higher energy prices affecting overall prices this year but also due to tariffs which were worse last year than this year for core prices but remain an overall drag.

Not seasonally adjusted: 

CPIAUCNS January - August 2026:

2.38, 2.41, 3.25, 3.81, 4.24, 3.53, 3.36, 3.39

Trump I CPIAUCNS average 1.90

2025 Average 2.63

2026 to date 3.29 

 

CPILFENS January - August 2026:

2.50, 2.45, 2.59, 2.75, 2.85, 2.59, 2.47, 2.44

Trump I CPILFENS average 1.96

2025 average 2.83

2026 to date 2.58 

 

Trump voters be like:

 

Wei Tu Fast

 

These are the people we want in America, but Trump doesn't want them

 

Industrial production missed the consensus estimate yesterday, so they trotted out Larry Kudlow to tell you otherwise lol

 For month over month in July, the consensus estimate was for +0.3%. Instead we got +0.2%.

Meanwhile the big picture shows, like so many indicators, that industrial production hit the big brick wall of Reaganism in 1984.

Post-war industrial production grew handsomely and its growth rate trended upward from 1948 to 1984, but not after.

Why is that?

I think it's because the incentive to invest in domestic industry went away because of the Reagan tax revolution.

Up to that time, high ordinary income tax rates had pushed owners of capital to invest in America for decades because by doing so they could take advantage of relatively much lower long term capital gains tax rates when they wanted to take income. After the dramatic Reagan cuts to ordinary income tax rates, that arbitrage disappeared. From that time onward owners of capital, now flush with cash from taking income at low ordinary income tax rates year upon year, found it more advantageous to invest abroad where low labor costs and unregulated markets promised even more fabulous returns on investment as America hobbled itself with regulation at home. The exit of businesses of all sizes from the United States to East Asia which began from this time turned into a flood after China was admitted into the WTO in 2001.

But today J. D. Vance thinks the U.S. Dollar's status as the world's reserve currency is the cause of all our problems.

If you want to know what makes me despair, that's it.

The following news story was more accurate than Kudlow. 

US: Industrial Production Up Again in July as Modest Manufacturing Recovery Continues 

Historian Gordon S. Wood on America: a unique nation dominated by ordinary, Bible-toting people, violent and obsessed with consuming alcohol and making money, vulgar and vibrant, barbarous and boisterous ...

... one that awed and frightened some of its own citizens and many Europeans. It seemed to represent the future for all of humanity.

Here. 

Michigan, Texas, and New Mexico in the news feed tonight:

 

Well, it wasn't because she was hot

 'Why are you naked?': Officers arrest naked woman driving stolen Pleasant Prairie fire vehicle

 

Well well well

 Lettuce at Taco Bell in five states confirmed as source of a diarrhea-causing parasite outbreak

... lettuce from Mexico ... A Food and Drug Administration investigation identified a single supplier of the lettuce. ...

 

 

The communist New York Times favors State of Massachusetts dictation of minimum lot sizes, the very same idea bipartisan legislators are keen to impose on Michigan residents

 ... For decades, the state government has ceded control over housing policy to its 351 cities and towns. When it comes to housing policy, the state of Massachusetts is often a bystander, allowing town governments to impose classic “not in my backyard” policies. ... The initiative would prevent many towns from setting needlessly large minimums for lot sizes and effectively blocking the construction of middle-class homes. The campaign, Legalize Starter Homes, is now trying to gather the nearly 12,500 signatures it needs before June 17 to place the measure on the ballot. We endorse the initiative. ... The initiative would create a statewide minimum of 5,000 square feet, which is about the size of a basketball court, and bar towns from setting their own standards. ...

That's less than 1/8 acre lol.

The editorial is here. 

Yuri Zhivago once had his "too big" house taken away from him by the communists, too, to make room for thirteen families:

 

 

Mein Führer . . . I CAN WALK !!

 

 Elon Musk compares his company’s work to that of Jesus

... “It has enabled people who have completely lost their brain-body connection to speak again … and we believe it will enable people to walk again,” Musk said of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface, or BCI, technologies.

... “Restoring control of people who are tetraplegics and restoring sight I think are pretty big deals,” Musk said on Monday at the conference, adding: “They’re sort of what I might call Jesus-level technologies.” ...

 

 

 

Severe economic contraction incoming

 

I filed my taxes today

 

She's so . . . u n u s u a l

 Sotomayor: Do You Want to 'Unnaturalize People?'

... Sauer replied, “No, we believe the court should do what it did in Sessions v. Morales-Santana, where there was a ruling that would have deprived people who are already citizens of citizenship, and the court said this applies prospectively only. We think that’s the appropriate course here. ..."

 

Diamond and Silk weren't too keen in January 2016 on Kelly Megyn hosting another Republican debate after the fat pigs debate in August 2015

Trump boycotted the January 28, 2016 debate in Des Moines, Iowa.

 

Yeah, well, what you get with the Kelly Megyn Approach is just more shapeshifting to make a buck

 Megyn Kelly: If Republicans Take The "Mark Levin Approach" In November, They Deserve What They're Going To Get

... You understand the sacrifice that our troops make and the risk they take when they sign up. I would submit to the jury, it is not to die in a war for Israel. ... 

Republicans were always going to lose in November, well before the Iran attack on Feb 28.

 

 

Planetary Defense missed a 7-ton asteroid over Ohio yesterday, but cameras all over the place picked it up

 

If Congress is smart it will vote quickly to authorize 30-60 days of US operations against Iran and be done with it

One silver observer found someone projecting silver going as high as $1,400 lol

$1,400 silver seems absolutely ludicrous to me, but maybe not $300 silver.

The Coinage Act of 1792 fixed the ratio of silver to gold at 15:1. Gold then was $19.39 and silver was $1.29.

The Coinage Act of 1873 effectively ended this bimetallism in the United States in favor of gold but was not widely understood to have done so until after the fact. By 1913 silver averaged about only sixty cents, for various reasons, and the silver to gold ratio went to about 34:1. 

Gold at $4,533 on Friday implies silver at $302 at the 15:1 ratio, but silver is actually only about $80. Divided by 34, however, the implied silver price is about $133. The ratio at about $80 is 57:1.

The main driver of the silver price in our time is industrial, but the ratio is instructive for contextualizing, as the kids say, its relative value.

 

 

 

You just knew this would be the response in Australia

 Australia to tighten gun laws after Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre

The Muslim father and son alleged shooters reportedly owned six firearms legally under the already severely restricted laws since 1996 which have reduced firearm ownership in Australia to 25% of households.

The shooters' rampage went on for many minutes before police arrived to engage and stop them, in widely shared video on the site formerly known as Twitter.

AI says about 813k Muslims live in Australia, where over four million legal, registered firearms are owned by civilians in the country of 27.5 million. 

Australia plans tougher gun laws after police say father and son killed 15 at Bondi Beach

 ... The incident has raised questions whether Australia’s gun laws, among the toughest in the world, need overhaul, with police saying the older suspect had held a firearms license since 2015, along with six registered weapons. ... 

Two flags of militant group Islamic State were found in the gunmen’s vehicle, ABC News said, without citing a source. ...

Jews number about 150,000 of Australia’s population of 27 million, with about a third estimated to live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including Bondi.