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.
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