Saturday, August 1, 2026
Friday, July 31, 2026
They did this late on a Friday afternoon on purpose because no one is paying attention
Pirro moves to drop Reflecting Pool vandalism case, says damage caused by ‘flawed installation’
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro on Friday moved to dismiss an indictment charging U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool of the Lincoln Memorial, writing in a court filing that damage to the pool’s sealant was the result of a “flawed installation.” ...
The guy with whom Democrats in Maine replaced ex-Nazi Graham Platner, Troy Jackson, isn't objectionable because he's an ex-Republican?
They have hollers in Maine, but they don't call them that.
They could have just gone with the runner-up Mills, but that would have been too woodsy for Maine I guess.
I mean, isn't Maine famous for ranked choice voting and all that?
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Middle East tanker traffic July 23-29, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 1.3 per day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 10.7 per day
I find the Traffic Trends claim in JMIC Update 078 for BAM REALLY difficult to believe.
Combined cargo and tankers in the tables averages 35 per day on July 28 and July 29 compared with baseline 60.
Baseline tankers alone would be 30 per day, instead they're showing 13 per day average for the two days, 10.7 per day over the seven days.
The claim is that vessels are running dark.
But the Saudis are loading NOTHING at Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf, where there is also oil in the water in satellite photography, and the Houthis droned Saudi oil infrastructure to Yanbu in the Red Sea on Monday.
Meanwhile somebody droned two gas vessels at the Egyptian port of Damietta on The Med on Wednesday, clearly meant to signal that the Suez option's days may be numbered.
The oil business is a confidence game, and the authorities have a vested interest in maintaining it to prevent public panic.
Gasoline is now $4.49/gallon where I live.
2Q2026 Real GDP, first estimate, came in at a measly 1.5% today
The last time a quarterly real gdp figure came in close to 10%, outside the grotesquely distorted pandemic hysteria, was in 2Q1983 at 9.4%.
It's been all down hill since then.
Our T.S. Eliot Hollow Man Economy continues to die, not with a bang but a whimper.
The compound annual growth rates show this:
2Q1947-2Q1984: 3.64%
2Q1984-2Q2017: 2.67%
2Q2017-2Q2026: 2.46%.
The era inaugurated by Trump underperforms the era inaugurated by Reagan by 7.9%, which in its turn underperformed the post-war era by 26.6%.
The Trump era underperforms the post-war by 32.4%.
They have no idea how to make America great again.
They are fools, fops, idiots, and sots, stuffed with chaff, straw, and feathers.
Core pce inflation in 1H2026 was 3.23% year over year and headed The Wong Wei
The green line represents Fed Chair Alan Greenspan's 1987-2006 average at 2.46%.
The current rate is elevated 31% above the Greenspan average.
Core pce inflation has been above 2.46% yoy since March 2021, sixty-two consecutive months.
We are not led by serious people.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Just shut up about Mitch McConnell already
Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein of California was missing in action in the hospital for three months in early 2023.
When she came back to the Senate in May in a wheelchair she acted like she'd never been gone and had been working and voting, but Democrats let the old demented broad keep voting anyway.
She passed away in office in September of that year.
Just in time for wildfire season, husband and wife team at Purdue University cook up wacky theory of instant dinosaur extinction from trapped asteroid blast heat
We are given to believe that there was an intense heat release which killed off most of the big animals globally, but that it lasted just hours, and then nuclear winter followed immediately in the days and weeks to follow to finish off the rest of the planet from cold and starvation.
Unfortunately for the theory temperature at the time of the extinction is unremarkable.
Meanwhile our betters want us to think that Odysseus felt g u i l t y and thought his age was d o o m e d.
None of this is proper summer entertainment, dammit.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
OF COURSE The Grauniad is DELIGHTED with a reinvention of the Odyssey which turns it into an epic ordeal of anguish and postwar disillusion
... arriving back to their prewar state emotionally or spiritually . . . may never happen at all ...
Just like England. Vote Labour.
Middle East tanker transits July 21-27, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 1.1/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 9.9/day
Vessels evidently are running dark to avoid being targeted by the Houthis.
JMIC Update 077:
... Open-source data tracking Bab el Mandeb transits with AIS-on decreased from an approximate daily average of 50 vessels to 20 since July 24th. Coalition naval units are present in the area. ...
Monday, July 27, 2026
G. William Hoagland: Sen. Thune is protecting the prerogatives and independence of the Senate, just as the Constitution requires
... Trump on Friday said he would be “willing” to take up Thune’s offer to work the phones to try securing the votes to pass the election legislation, and offered no new criticism of Thune during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. ...
More.
If Paul Gottfried is going to abopt Marxist categories like Joel Kotkin does, he could at least refrain from conflating the middle class with God's chosen people, the workers and the proletariat, and make up his mind about who's who and what's what
Paul Gottfried never speaks the truth that J. D. Vance is the technocratic class' boy beyond the wildest dreams of Donald Trump for himself.
Vance has no solutions to repair the broken ladder of socio-economic progress. It's his job not to.
... our vice-president has taken note of the stagnant wages and job insecurity of American workers
... the United States has had a mixed economy, one that the urbanologist Joel Kotkin characterizes as “democratic capitalism,” since the last century
... the present left does not care about workers at all
... It has been left to the populist right to take up the cause of the proletariat, which, whether or not one agrees with all his proposed policies, Vance is at least trying to do
... Kotkin is understandably concerned that “democratic capitalism” is no longer working and that the wages and living conditions of our working class have declined as a result of outsourcing, cheap foreign labor, and treating workers like expendable commodities. In Kotkin’s view, the technocratic class, with both governmental and vast financial connections, is sitting atop the socio-economic pyramid, and both workers and what used to be America’s thriving middle class have suffered from this imbalance of power
... Shapiro mocks Vance for stating that workers should find “spiritual” satisfaction in their labor ...
Colonel Saito couldn't agree more with J. D. Vance.
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Middle East tanker transits July 19-25, 2026: Strait of Hormuz down to 1.6/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait down to 12.7/day
Normal (2022) Strait of Hormuz tanker transits is at least 70/day, Bab-el-Mandeb 30/day.
 |
| Combined Cargo and Tankers UKMTO JMIC Update 076 |
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Every generation spawns its own Sons of Liberty
... Flock, based in Georgia and valued at $8.4bn, says its cameras scan license plates billions of times each month in about 6,000 communities in nearly every state in the US.
... As anger grows towards law enforcement contracts
with Flock, vigilantes across the country are taking matters into their
own hands by smashing, obstructing or taking down these cameras. Many
are leaning into their creative side: “paint bombing” the devices, planting American flags at the scene after damaging them, 3D printing objects to help obstruct the camera’s view and leaving colorful messages like “hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling fucks”. Some influencers are even creating fake cease-and-desist letters from Flock, capitalizing on the company’s negative public perception.
The Guardian has identified at least 33 instances of people damaging, vandalizing and destroying Flock cameras, across 23 states, that appear to have the explicit message of protesting surveillance.
... Not all anti-Flock activism takes the form of camera destruction. A crowdsourced map created by the grassroots group DeFlock maps out more than 115,000 ALPRs across the country. The organization’s site also allows users to see if their license plates have been searched in Flock’s system, get directions to avoid ALPRs and find upcoming meetings about municipal Flock contracts. ...
The Lost World of food
... Couponing, comparison shopping and cutting back on favorite foods are new habits for Apral Jack and millions of other Americans as they absorb the biggest jump in grocery prices in a half-century. Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in U.S. cities since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures. In the 7 1/2 years before that, prices rose 6.4%. ...
More.
Friday, July 24, 2026
I don't think this dingbat has ever read the Odyssey or even cares what it says
Did Nolan?
Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ Confronts Civilization’s Original Sin
... I was struck by the deeper prophetic truth of the film’s final statement: Someday, the dawn will break, and all will be made new. And like Odysseus, the leader of the house will return—welcoming the humblest beggar, wielding justice like a well-strung bow, and offering mercy to all who lay down their arms before him.
Cunning Odysseus only had slaughter in mind, not mercy, hid the weapons, and slew them all, save two righteous for whom Telemachus his son had interceded:
So, noble Odysseus remained in the hall, planning with Athene’s aid how to kill the Suitors. At once he spoke to Telemachus winged words: ‘We must hide the weapons away, all of them, Telemachus. If the Suitors miss them and question you, deceive them with placatory words, and say: “I’ve moved them out of the smoke from the fire, since they no longer look as they did when Odysseus left them behind and sailed for Troy, but are all grimy where the draught from the hearth has reached them. Zeus, son of Cronos, has filled my heart with an even greater fear, that you might start a quarrel amongst yourselves, and wound each other, and so bring shame on the feast and your cause. Iron itself draws a man towards it.”’ ...
-- Homer, Odyssey XIX
... When the Suitors saw Antinous fall, there was uproar throughout the hall, and they leapt from their seats in fear, running to the walls to find a shield or a stout spear of which there were no sign.
... Leodes ran forward and clasped Odysseus’ knees, and begged with winged words: ‘Odysseus, respect the suppliant at your knees: I ask for mercy. I swear I have never wantonly wronged a woman of your house, in word or deed. Instead I tried to restrain others from doing so. But they would not listen, or keep their hands from evil, and so through foolish wantonness they meet a cruel fate. And I, though I am only their innocent priest, will die with them. It is true one gets no thanks for good deeds.’
Resourceful Odysseus gave him an angry look and said: ‘If you were really their priest you must often have prayed that the day of my joyful return would be long delayed and that my loyal wife would go with you and bear you children. For that you will not escape a sorry death.’
With this he grasped the sword in his strong hand that Agelaus had dropped on the ground nearby as he fell, and struck Leodes hard on the neck, so that while he was still trying to speak his head bit the dust. ...
-- Odyssey XXII
That's a rate of 33.3k per month, which after four years will mean 1.6 million deportations in a country with at least 11 million illegal aliens
Promise the moon and deliver a pizza.
ICE nears 600,000 deportations since Trump took office
... The new ICE data is the first update the agency has published since April. ...
Trump's Pentagon plays games with Iran War deaths, apparently didn't get the memo that hostilities formally resumed on July 7th
Or is the reasoning, which clearly isn't Trump's, that the four new deaths belong to Iran War II, not Iran War I?
Pentagon lowers official Iran war death toll, omitting four killed this month
... Three military officials told the Times that the four service members killed this past weekend — three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq — were struck from the list because their deaths came after President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire in April. All of the deaths listed on Thursday U.S. time on the website, which said it was updated as of Wednesday, occurred in March. ... Trump himself has used the higher figure for the death toll. At an event on Thursday, he said, “I had a very sad day yesterday. I went to Dover, four great American patriots killed. That’s 18 … and one is too many, but it’s 18.”
Trump sends Congress formal notice that Iran conflict has resumed
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has sent Congress formal notification that hostilities against Iran resumed on July 7, a letter his administration sees as opening a new 60-day window to use the military in the region without congressional approval. ...
Thursday, July 23, 2026
John Thune tells the White House to get off its dead ass and make some phone calls
That's the spirit, John.
Thune responds to Leavitt quip that Trump’s patience with him ‘running out’ over SAVE America Act
...“Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right? It’s 50 around here,” Thune shot back when asked about Leavitt’s statement to reporters at a press briefing earlier Thursday.
“Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats,” the senator added, appearing somewhat irritated by the critical comment. “And if there are Republicans they think are gettable, get on the phone.”
...“As I’ve said before, you got to get to 50, and I can’t count to 50 right now on a budget resolution”...
The fix for Social Security is easy, lawmakers just don't have the balls to do it
Raise the tax rate two points, split between employer and employee, and raise the full retirement age from 67 to 69. Phase both in same as was done starting in the 1980s. That process concluded, by the way, only just this year.
It was going on all along and you never even noticed.
Doing this again will make Social Security solvent until 2100.
AARP to Congress: ‘We strongly object to fast-tracking Social Security changes’
Middle East tanker transits July 16-22, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 2.0/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 14.6/day
BAM transits fell in JMIC Update 075 to 10.0/day since the Houthi Rebels announced on July 20 a blockade of Saudi shipping through the chokepoint. SE traffic fell to 4.0/day.
A product tanker is at anchor in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia after it was attacked by the Houthis on July 22.
Professional observers report some tankers abandoning their runs SE and turning back NW while Chinese VLCCs apparently are being green-lighted through despite loading with Saudi oil at Yanbu.
VLCCs fully laden cannot transit the Suez Canal due to size constraints and must partially off-load before transiting and then re-load on the Mediterranean side of the canal.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Middle East tanker transits July 14-20, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 3.4/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 17.3/day
From JMIC Update 074:
... According to regional reporting, Iran has instructed the Houthis to stand ready to close the Red Sea oil route should the United States strike Iranian power infrastructure. Sources close to the group stated that the Houthis have completed preparations to attack shipping, including the deployment of missiles and drones positioned near Bab el-Mandeb. ...
Since it's not about Homer let me fix that for ya
Somebody should make a movie about the actual Odyssey, instead of a movie about the West's Achilles heel, its introspective conscience since the defeat of Athens in 404 BC, the volume on which was turned up to 11 by Christianity.
Nothing defines the West like its failure of nerve.
Idiot Doug Bandow isn't paying attention to what Bernie & Co. actually stand for
... Nevertheless, no one of note is advocating the wholesale federal takeover of private property, including businesses and other enterprises. ...
First, Do No Harm: AI Under Democracy
... AI was built on our data and our labor; we should own a piece of it. Senator Bernie Sanders’s American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would transfer 50% equity from the largest AI companies into public hands. I support that effort and propose to take it one step further because Americans deserve a seat at the table. ...
Mad King Ludwig: To stop Iran from getting The Bomb we have to let Saudi Arabia get The Bomb
Saudis Reach Deal With U.S. That Could Let Them Enrich Nuclear Fuel
... Prince Mohammed has vowed he would build nuclear weapons if Iran does so, even insisting in one interview he would do so “without a doubt.”
... Mr. Trump’s concessions to the Saudis on the terms of the nuclear deal are significant. When the United States entered into a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which went into force in 2009, there were far more restrictive conditions. The U.A.E. agreed to the stringent inspections, signing what is called an “additional protocol” with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And it agreed to forgo the right to produce its own fuel, cutting off the possibility that it would have the infrastructure to produce a weapon.
That agreement became known as the “gold standard” for nuclear nonproliferation. And while the administration plans to argue that it will have other restrictions in place — including joint partnerships with the Saudis that will allow Washington to keep a close eye on the kingdom’s program — the fact remains that Mr. Trump has retreated from the restrictions negotiated by the Bush and Obama administrations.
While the bulk of the negotiations with the U.A.E. took place while President George W. Bush was in office, it was finished by President Barack Obama and went into effect in 2009. ...
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Updated temperature graphs for Grand Rapids, MI
Trend for lowest minimum temperature is still down, despite 30 years of moderating lows.
Trend for highest maximum temperature is still down.
Trend for average temperature is up about 1.0 degree F in 125+ years. The graph is probably the best one for showing the colder years of the mid-20th century flanked by the warmer periods before and after.
Trend for cooling degree days is basically flat.
Trend for heating degree days is down, about 450 HDD or 6.5% over 120 years. Again, the last 30 years have been trending milder.
As always, click on the graphs to enlarge.
Monday, July 20, 2026
In the first story ICE murdered a U.S. citizen in March 2025, a woman's son, in the second story a drunk illegal alien murdered a U.S. citizen in late 2024, a man's daughter
In both cases our incompetent government is ultimately to blame, Joe, but only in your case will someone pay any price.
The Wall Street Journal is worried about GOP voters staying home if the Save America Act fails lol
Can't you just hear the WSJ after the GOP loses in November?
"It wasn't a Blue Wave, Republicans just didn't vote".
Sunday, July 19, 2026
James Harrison, 81, retires from a life of weekly blood plasma donations which have helped to save millions of babies of women in Australia with Rh- blood
... Harrison’s remarkable gift of giving started when he had major chest surgery when he was just 14, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service said.
Blood donations saved his life, so he pledged to become a blood donor.
A few years later, doctors discovered his blood contained the antibody which could be used to create Anti-D injections, so he switched over to making blood plasma donations to help as many people as possible.
Doctors aren’t exactly sure why Harrison has this rare blood type, but they think it might be from the transfusions he received when he was 14, after his surgery. He’s one of no more than 50 people in Australia known to have the antibodies, the blood service says.
“Every bag of blood is precious, but James’ blood is particularly extraordinary. His blood is actually used to make a life-saving medication, given to moms whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies. Every batch of Anti-D that has ever been made in Australia has come from James’ blood.” Falkenmire said. “And more than 17% of women in Australia are at risk, so James has helped save a lot of lives.”
... “It becomes quite humbling when they say, ‘oh you’ve done this or you’ve done that or you’re a hero,’” Harrison said. “It’s something I can do. It’s one of my talents, probably my only talent, is that I can be a blood donor.” ...
Recent absentee ballot rejection rates according to Ballotpedia are lower than expected
Recent absentee ballot rejection rates according to Ballotpedia:
2024: 1.2%
2022: 1.5%
2020: 0.8%
2018: 1.4%
2016: 1.0%.
The New York Times indicated in October 2012 that rejection rates for absentee ballots are typically closer to 2.0%, double what they are for in-person voting. The closest we recently got to 2.0% was in 2022, but still lower than 2.0% by half a point, and the massive mail-in vote in 2020 arguably should have produced a rejection rate higher than 2.0%. Instead we got the lowest rejection rate yet, 0.8%.
That doesn't make any sense.
Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises
... Nationwide, the use of absentee ballots and other forms of voting by mail has more than tripled since 1980 and now accounts for almost 20 percent of all votes.
Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.
“The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.” ...
Limited government cannot exist without social conservatism
People who won't limit themselves, who in the name of freedom will not restrain themselves, cannot produce limited government, just as gay people cannot produce the next generation.
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Northeastern Liberal Republicanism is new again?
Can wage and price controls be far behind?
How about a bigger, better EPA, renewed affirmative action, a larger welfare state, more Keynesian deficit spending, and detente with Putin, Xi, and that little squirt from North Korea?
Young Conservatives Have Unlikely New Icon: Richard Nixon...
Friday, July 17, 2026
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)