TRUE BORN SONS OF LIBERTY

Monday, October 12, 2026

Once a week I splurge (!) on a grilled hamburger, and the price is up 23% since Trump was elected

Yeah I use charcoal, and light it with gasoline, too.

Everyday starts with a cup of coffee, which is up 35% since Trump was elected

It's a BFD with me.

Gasoline is up 44% since early March

Diesel fuel is up 59% since early March

America has a strong dollar trending stronger in 2026 to date

The impact on the gold price has been negligible, down 3.22% year to date.

The trend for the price of WTI for the seven months since early March is basically flat between $94 and $96

Seven months of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

China gold purchases support its price as households and companies import >1,000 tonnes through August and just under 900 tonnes in 2025

Why China is importing a record amount of gold — and what it means for prices

... The PBOC’s main motive is political, according to Carsten Menke, an analyst at Julius Baer Group, pointing to “the weaponization of the U.S. dollar and the related desire to be less dependent on U.S. Treasuries as a reserve asset.” ... Adding to the momentum of the unprecedented buying is Beijing’s plan to build a deeper domestic gold market, prompting it to replenish inventories, said Menke. He estimated that the central bank bought around 190 tonnes this year by end-August, including 110 tonnes that were unreported. ... The world’s fifth-largest gold holder owned 2,387 tonnes as of August, according to the World Gold Council, less than a third of the that held by the U.S. ...

Saturday, October 10, 2026

NOT for their anti-semitism . . .

Trump says Norway has ‘indelible stain’ for not awarding him Nobel Peace Prize

Why does Trump crave honors from the most antisemitic country on the planet?

If you can keep your head . . .

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-- Rudyard Kipling 1910

Friday, October 9, 2026

Sanctions but not really makes Trump no different from NATO buyers of Russian energy, proceeds of which do and will fund the Russian war against Ukraine

Trump’s diesel agreement with Putin accused of contradicting Russia sanctions law

Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets

Oh yeah, poor, poor Abdul, who is constantly addressing the Joos

Will someone please give a thought to the terrorists?

Abby Phillip: If You're Abdul El-Sayed, You Have To Wonder Why You're "Asked Constantly To Address Terrorism"

El-Sayed: Israel and Iran Both "Have Proven Dangerous In Their Own Way"

Thursday, October 8, 2026

Ten minutes to orbit is now cheaper than a 50-day sail to Japan

Donald Trump did that.

😏

Down, down, down he goes, where he stops nobody knows

Trump new low approval 37.6%.

Two cheers for Rahm Emanuel

Washington Needs the Tax-Reform Spirit of '86

Rahm Emanuel, Wall Street Journal

This is really great, as far as it goes. I agree with much of it.

The trouble with it is that it is unimaginative about investment, which is to say Rahm Emanuel looks only at what affects his proposals might have to hobble investment, not at what would turbocharge investment, specifically domestic investment.

He says not one word about how the Reagan Tax Revolution sabotaged the arbitrage which used to exist between higher ordinary income tax rates and lower and longer capital gains tax rates, the arbitrage which fueled domestic investment growth before globalization lured capital away.

Rahm wants to raise revenues by raising the current capital gains tax rate of 20% closer to the current ordinary income tax rate near 28% when what he should be doing is proposing a mechanism to ensure more of that investment is domestic and he doesn't.

He claims to be most interested in restoring the real growth which followed upon the 1986 tax reform, but he ignores the fact that rates of growth have steadily fallen since then.

The gap between real GDP growth to 1984 extrapolated to the present time and the actual real GDP growth since 1984 is today $11 trillion.

That's $11 trillion which could have been taxed to fund the spending which has otherwise put us $40 trillion in the hole.

The long term consequences of the Reagan Revolution have been not just a fiscal disaster, but a growth disaster.

America needs more Democrats like Rahm Emanuel who are t h i n k i n g.

Donald Trump is Marco Rubio's Thumos personified

... he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself. ...

-- Plato, Republic IX

Who picks an acropolis and then digs a bunker?

You can spot the place where Marco was interrupted by the game on TV while he was writing his little speech because in his thumos he left an incomplete sentence behind

Ah, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat:

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." ...