Data Comparisons

Heart of America 2025

727 Comments

Heart of America in Kansas City was Jim and my second am-am competition. We dance cha-cha, rhumba, swing. This is our attempt.

You may wonder: were we competing against the other people in this video? Nope. The two other am-am couples who competed in Senior Bronze Am-Am danced C1 so they aren’t in this heat. I see a younger am dancer dancing with her pro and I see a Sr. am gentleman dancing with his pro. You might wonder how I know which leads are ams and which pros? Leads wear the number. If it’s higher than 300 the lead is an am. Otherwise, they are a pro.

The gentleman wearing 367 is the current points leader in the WDSSeries Pro-Am something or other. That’s mostly a participation award. He’s at all the competitions and dances everything.

Lots of things are organized to facilitate “bragging” rights, provided the winners don’t reveal all. There are several “series” you can enter. The “series” that isn’t mostly a participation award is called “Best of the Best” series. You can’t really get those just by entering a lot of competitions. I have never won that. But we did win the am-am championship and I have won other championships. I’ve even won when we were contested. ( You can be placed 2nd out of 1 couple! And the judges will mark you 2 out of 1! It’s not just theoretical. )

Looking at it myself, I need to get “snappier”. I’m not sure how to do that since you aren’t supposed to lift your feet and “jump”! So you can’t get snappier that way. I already knew my styling is deficient. If you watch Mambo, you’ll see we got off time near 5:38. We stopped and restarted in this heat. We danced “on 2” often enough the judges didn’t ding us for that. We danced on time in our other heat.

Open thread.

727 thoughts on “Heart of America 2025”

  1. Congratulations Lucia. I have two left feet and can’t even hum so I’m gonna stay out of this conversation.

  2. I am seeing Twitter wars the last few days. I am asking you geeks out there….. Is this a real issue or is this fake news?
    “Oracle laying off Americans while ramping H-1B hiring.
    This has to stop.”
    Elon Musk is particularly exercised about the issue, he says:
    “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1872860577057448306?s=46&t=ZvqHpxBnQGny72gLoGhKXw

  3. I don’t know about Oracle, but it is not unusual for American tech companies to lay off American workers and replace them with H1-B hires. The program badly needs reform.

  4. Mike,
    The Oracle comment was just one example there have been many in the past few days.
    I was disappointed in Elon Musk being so gross about supporting the program.

  5. The problem with H-1B is that those admitted (especially in programming/IT) are usually not making up for a shortage of qualified US workers. It is more economic advantage for US companies. I have no problem with the admission of truly exceptional people, but that is not always (or even usually) who is being admitted under the program. There are many documented cases of experienced (AKA expensive) US nationals being laid off and replaced with H-1B hires. That was never the o objective of the program. I suspect H-1B needs some reform to stop that kind of abuse.

  9. The Third Ilyushin Il-96-300 is En Route to Anchorage!

    ?? Another Russian Ilyushin Il-96-300 (RA-96018) is flying from Moscow to Anchorage!

    That makes three Il-96s heading to Alaska:
    ???????? RA-96018— the third one already on its way!
    ???????? RA-96019
    ???????? RA-96023

  10. 2:30 PM and USAF activity has picked up in the area of
    Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Alaska.
    Most notable is an AWACs plane and a refueling tanker. I assume this means there are a flight of fighters in the neighborhood, but they are not showing up.
    Image of USAF activity:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1956063569591590994?s=61
    Putin’s two presidential aircraft are still out over the Arctic Ocean.

  11. Finally took six minutes out to watch. Looked great Lucia! Also looked like you had a good time dancing. It’s not unlikely that this is my own viewpoint bias: it seemed to me all of the women looked like they were having more fun than the men. This is not to say I don’t think men enjoy dancing — I used to for sure, way back in my youth when I’d go clubbing all night. But I see that I digress…
    Anyways. Congratz again!

  12. Thanks Mark!
    I’m lucky– Jim wants to dance. I think we beat the other two am-am couples in our category partly because the husbands in those couples are dancing to make their wives happy. And at “bronze” level, there is a lot about what needs to be done that requires a lot of concentration by the leads.

    In pro-Am, the male ams do want to be there just as much as the women! You are only seeing a few couples here.

  13. Lucia,
    “…. the husbands in those couples are dancing to make their wives happy.”

    This does not surprise me.

  14. I am shocked (SHOCKED!!) that the FBI was protecting Hillary Clinton from investigations into her (obvious) pay-to-play schemes as Secretary of State that brought many millions to the coffers of her “Family Foundation”.

    FBI Director Kash Patel has uncovered a bombshell memo written in 2017 chronicling the extensive political obstruction that career agents in three cities faced from their own bosses and the Obama Justice Department during the 2016 election as they probed whether Hillary Clinton engaged in a pay-to-play corruption scheme involving her family foundation.

    The Clintons were almost comically corrupt, but never suffered any real consequences for their corruption. At least the release of such documents will show how the Obama administration protected Hillary… damning both. History will not be kind.

    The pattern is consistent: the Obama administration used the power of office to protect corrupt friends and punish all political enemies. IMHO, Obama was the most dishonest, immoral president in my lifetime.

  18. I don’t wanna make too much from this, but it looks like Putin is building up expectations of this meeting:
    “The Trump administration is making quite an energetic and sincere effort, in my opinion, to stop hostilities, to stop the crisis and to reach an agreement that is of interest to all those involved in this conflict,” Putin said during a meeting of his top officials to prepare for the Alaska summit, according to a readout published by the Kremlin.
    “The process could create long-term conditions of peace both between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole, if we reach an agreement on the area of control over strategic offensive weapons by the next stage,” Putin added.
    https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/zelenskyy-rallies-trump-european-allies-setting-red-lines/story?id=124637288

  21. Trump has been uncharacteristically quiet on his “Truth Social” about this meeting.
    at about 7 AM Eastern time this morning, he posted a cryptic:
    “HIGH STAKES!!!”
    in perhaps a related post, at 10:00 AM:
    “I had a wonderful talk with the highly respected President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The purpose of the call was to thank him for the release of 16 prisoners. We are also discussing the release of 1,300 additional prisoners. Our conversation was a very good one. We discussed many topics, including President Putin’s visit to Alaska. I look forward to meeting President Lukashenko in the future. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
    Edit, link
    https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115033133751064517

  22. Lucia,
    I too watched the entire video and I am thoroughly impressed. Even at the peak of my athletic ability in my youth, I could not carry out those dance routines.
    However, I have a criticism (of course).
    The dancers all seemed to lack intimacy
    To me, in couples dancing, intimacy is paramount.
    It reminded me of the women’s ice-skating competition where they individually do “compulsories”. Each skater does a routine of required maneuvers when they concentrate on technique and passion is missing.

  23. lucia wrote: “My theory is that’s Putin manipulating Trump so that Trump sacrifices our interests.”

    If Putin is trying to do that, he will fail. But I see no reason why he would try.

    Might Putin be trying to manipulate Trump so that he sacrifices Ukraine’s interests? Quite likely. It is even possible that he might succeed to a degree.

  24. At 11:45 AM, a Russian Tu-214PU and a USAF AWACS plane are in near proximity off the West Coast of Alaska.
    Image:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1956386406735151414?s=61
    Grok thinks this about what’s going on:
    “A Russian Special Flight Squadron Tu-214PU, likely an airborne command post, was reported on August 15, 2025, to have taken off from Magadan, Russia, heading toward Anchorage, Alaska. Posts on X suggest this flight may be carrying high-level Russian officials, with speculation that Vladimir Putin could be onboard, though this is unconfirmed. The aircraft, identified as RA-64531 (callsign RSD539), is believed to be involved in supporting potential high-level talks, possibly orbiting to relay communications to Moscow. A U.S. Air Force E-3C AWACS was also reported airborne from Anchorage, likely providing surveillance and command support during this period. No official confirmation links this flight to specific diplomatic events, and such movements are not uncommon, as Russian aircraft frequently operate near Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) without entering U.S. airspace.”
    I am enjoying watching this unfold.

  25. Mike M,
    You see no reason Putin would try to get us to give up our own interests? I’m not saying instead of giving up Ukraine’s, I’m saying in addition too.

    Look:
    The process could create long-term conditions of peace both between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole, if we reach an agreement on the area of control over strategic offensive weapons by the next stage,
    Aren’t “our countries” the US and Russia? And Europe? And “control over strategic offensive weapons?” I think he’s going to try to get us — the US — to give up stuff.

    I don’t know why you would think he wouldn’t try. It’s in his interest to get the entire world to weaken themselves.

  26. The Clintons were true professionals in legal corruption. I doubt they are touchable legally. Example, have someone accidentally scrub the servers and plead ignorance. They knew where the lines were.

    Menendez was an idiot. The Clintons setup “charities” and hit the speech circuit.

    I almost feel sorry for Biden who can’t really do that due to his disability. He’s hard pressed to even sell alleged influence.

  27. Cynical expectations. Putin’s best play is to offer up a cease fire plan along the expected terms (frozen lines, Ukraine gets unofficial protection from NATO, etc.) and then watch Trump force Ukraine and the EU to accept it.

    Once that wedge and drama has been played out to potentially split the coalition then he adds a poison pill to the terms and walks away and continues the war. He loses nothing.

    However Putin should be careful and not be the thousandth person to underestimate Trump. This is not the first thug Trump has had to deal with.

  28. I don’t think what happens in Ukraine is strongly “our interests”. I know other people feel differently. It indirectly affects NATO which is a first level “our interest”. The outcome in a non-NATO conflict is two levels out IMO.

    NATO has a secondary interest in weakening Russia in a “war of opportunity” and it has done so. The EU has a secondary interest, much stronger than the US, in keeping Russia inside its borders.

    If everyone allegedly cared so much than Ukraine would have been in NATO. They are not. It’s an entirely different story than Russia launching missiles into London.

    Russia knows the score here which is why they invaded. If it wasn’t for their inept army and Ukraine’s strong defense it would have been over in a couple months.

    My view is we have no moral imperative to protect Ukraine from Russia due to not having long term alliances here.

  29. lucia,

    Of course Putin would love to see us give up our own interests. And he will no doubt be alert to opportunities. But there is no reason to believe that is his purpose in today’s meeting since the chance of success would be tiny compared to the chance of really ticking Trump off.

  30. Tom Scharf wrote: “They [the Clintons] knew where the lines were.”

    True or not, Hillary clearly crossed a number of lines. Because she knew the cops were on her side.

  31. I skimmed the 76-page judge’s order blocking the Dept of Education’s (DOE) “Dear Colleague” letter on DEI and its demand letter for “certification” of school compliance with the Constitution and Civil Rights Act.

    The judge pointed out (in painful, 76 page, detail) that the Trump Administration ignored every requirement of the Administrative Procedures Act (passed in 1946). That much is clearly true. The judge was obviously pissed by the Trump administration’s attitude….. and she is a Trump appointee!

    I next read the entire Administrative Procedures Act (APA). It specifies a series of hoops any Federal Agency must jump through to issue new regulations. Trump’s Department of Education ignored every hoop.

    The strange thing for me is that the APA was designed to ensure a “fair” process of promulgating “sensible” regulations. It doesn’t really do that. What it does is make the process slow and very difficult…. even if the regulations then issued are foolish or destructive. Whether the regulations are sensible or destructive is never subject to Court review….. only if the right procedures were followed. Existing “guidance” (Biden Administration) from DOE is that racial discrimination in education is perfectly acceptable if the ‘right’ people are being discriminated against.

    The process to undo that absurd (and I think utterly immoral) position will be long and difficult. Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t do long and difficult very well. Trump believes he has a popular mandate for change, and doesn’t want to jump through the many hoops needed to change regulation…. no matter how absurd existing regulations might be.

    A more self disciplined president (like, say, JD Vance) would be a lot better at this sort of thing.

  32. Mike M,
    “Because she knew the cops were on her side.”

    And the prosecutors, and Obama.

    Erasing an incriminating hard drive which was already under subpoena was incredibly blatant lawlessness, for which most people would be sitting in a prison cell. But she knew she was going to be protected by Obama, Lynch, Comey, and every minion below them. The Clintons also surrounded themselves with people who would lie to protect them.

  33. President Trump talking to Brett Baier aboard Air Force One
    “We’re going for a meeting with President Putin in Alaska. And I think it’s going to work out very well. And if it doesn’t, I’m going to head back home real fast.”

  34. SteveF,

    The administration might win those DOE cases on appeal. Obama and Biden routinely used “Dear Colleague” letters to do end runs around the Administrative Procedures Act. Surely such actions can be undone by the same means by which they were implicated. And it would be very strange (not the same as impossible) if a letter saying “show us you are obeying the law” would require some extended bureaucratic procedure.

    Trump certainly does “long and difficult” very well. He built a very successful business career doing that. For crying out loud, the man built skyscrapers in places like New York City and Chicago.

  36. More drama in the skies over Alaska…..
    Another Russian Command and Control plane is approaching the coast of Alaska from the west, two USAF AWACS planes are approaching Anchorage from the west and Air Force One is approaching Anchorage from the east.
    The Russian plane is the number one tracked plane in the entire world with 122,000 people watching it.
    Quite a picture:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1956419913377042941?s=61

  37. “In your face, Vladimir!” said Trump.
    as they walked on the red carpet from their planes, directly overhead was a flyby from a B-2 Stealth Bomber escorted by four F-22 Raptor jet fighters. Russia doesn’t have anything to compete with these aircraft.
    Additionally, the red carpet was flanked by parked F-22 Raptors.
    Video:
    https://x.com/steveguest/status/1956437286641418517?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ
    and:
    https://x.com/vanguardintel/status/1956428239020441975?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ

  38. I think that video may have missed identified the aircraft escorting the stealth bomber, I believe they are F 35s, another aircraft the Russians have no match for.
    The gauntlet of Jets on the ground I think are F-22‘s.
    Someone here may be better at identifying the Jets than I am.

  40. Russell,
    That flyby is hilarious, very, very Trumpy.

    Subtle as always.

    The ones on the ground are F-22’s. Dual engine and the gold canopy. They aren’t there for show. We have F-22’s in Alaska all the time ready for the Russian apocalypse. Maybe around 20 or so.

  42. Tom, could you identify the ones that escorting the B2 stealth bomber? The silhouette looks like F -35s, I think.

  46. I’m puzzled at why Trump wanted to have this meeting if he could foresee, like most of the rest of us, that there was not going to be a positive result. In other words, is what actually happened useful in some way to him?

    Did anyone else notice the dark patch of skin under his chin?

  47. john ferguson,
    Probably actinic keratosis, or an aftermath of removal of actinic keratosis. This is common among elderly, fair complected people who have a history of high sun exposure. Trump has had plenty of sun exposure.

  48. john a ferguson
    “I’m puzzled at why Trump wanted to have this meeting if he could foresee, like most of the rest of us, that there was not going to be a positive result. In other words, is what actually happened useful in some way to him?”
    –
    Foresight is an incredible gift that most of us discover after an event has happened.
    If we actually possessed it there would be no problems in the world.
    –
    Positive results however depend on what we are aiming for, how much we are aiming for and of course whether we have any ammunition.
    –
    I would see any form of dialogue in this situation as a positive result.
    Demonising people does not help bring about positive results.
    Working out where and how a compromise can be attained takes time and effort.
    –
    In answer to your question yes what actually happened is useful to him and hopefully all of us.
    –
    Dialogue is an extremely important positive result,
    One that none of the European nations and the United Nations were unable to unable to attempt or achieve.
    –
    I too would have loved an instant magic peace solution. But we live in a real world.
    I hope thus insight is something one can appreciate now instead of in hindsight.

  49. The meeting sounds like an ‘agree to disagree’ meeting. Maybe a meeting with Zelensky will follow, but maybe not. I think it is unlikely Russia will agree to give up territory they currently control unless the military situation changes substantially. Unfortunately, the killing will continue for a while.

  50. angech,

    ‘One that none of the European nations and the United Nations were unable to unable to attempt or achieve.’

    Putin knowns the Europeans are essentially unable to act without Trump.

    But in addition, neither the Europeans nor the UN are willing to actually negotiate anything. Their unyielding position is that Russia must withdraw completely, including from Crimea, and that precludes any negotiation. At least Trump understands that.

    Biden and his gaggle of ‘foreign policy experts’ (AKA numbskulls) never understood that. Nor did those experts take Russia seriously when they said (many times!), ‘we will never allow Ukraine to join NATO’. The Biden numbskulls then signed a formal agreement promising NATO membership for Ukraine…. 3 months before Russia invaded.

  51. My take is Putin has no negotiating manevering romm. If his venture fails to produce the promised benefits after all of the expense and lives, he seems likely to be thrown out of office the old fashioned Russian way, by sudden death.

    I heard a lecture on Putin’s motivation to recapture Ukraine by guy who had been Proctor and Gambles chief in Russia from mid ’90s to 2003 (+/-}. His take was that Putin was really bugged by the existence of a successful slavic economy on his front doorstep which could be observed by his own citizens and compared to much less successful Rusian economy. Lecturer thought this was much more aggravating than all the Nato presence because Putin was confident that Nato would never start a serious conflict.

    It made sense to me, as does my suggestion of Putin’s fate if he doesn’t somehow prevail in whatever settlement eventually is made.

    We might hasten some sort of deal by offering him our protection. And it couldn’t be the kind Hillary gave the guy from Libya.

  52. John,
    “ We might hasten some sort of deal by offering him our protection.”
    I was thinking the same thing when I posted about Putin seeking asylum a couple of days ago.
    I don’t think there is a post war place for a living Putin in Russia if he has to concede anything.

  53. Russell: ” don’t think there is a post war place for a living Putin in Russia if he has to concede anything.”

    Exactly

    One of P&G Chief’s stories was meeting Putin at some small soiree in 2000 (+/-). He was introduced to Putin although he already knew him from previous events. Putin asked how it was going. Chief said he was having trouble getting a new detergent factory going south of Moscow. Putin asked if there was anything he could do, was shown the document which was causing the problem, took if from Chief and threw it over his shoulder to the floor, while telling Chieft to ignore it.

    Ah, the wonders of autocracies.

  54. Trump on “truth social” a couple hours ago. he lost big. His whole approach these many months has been cease-fire.
    “A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
    https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115037569702889410

  55. John,
    what does someone from the ‘other side’ think of Trump having a stealth bomber and F-35s buzz Putin on the red carpet?

  56. “From the other side”: Well, that’s Trump for you. I thought it was fine.

    There was some discussion here some posts earlier about how Democrats could be unhappy with their representation. As a past (serious) comtributer to some races, I get a torrent of email solicitations almost all of which are idiotic. I’m holding back this year but did respond to one from Eric Holder who is running a group of attorneys who attempt to pu a lid on GOP voting process innovations.

    He wrote what they were doing, why, how it was going, and with a simple budget description what they were going to do with the money, and it wasn’t giving $350k to Al Sharpton = this actually was done in 2024.

    If there is no objection, I’d like to copy the next idiotic fundrasing email I get from the Dems and provide my reaction and you can provide yours. it might help understand why we “mild-progressives” are unhappy with the Democratic party as it now practices.

  58. John, your post:
    “it might help understand why we “mild-progressives” are unhappy with the Democratic party as it now practices.”
    If it wasn’t for Trump and his outsized persona,
    I think the Republican party is closer to your positions than the current nutjob Democrat party leaders are.

  59. john a ferguson wrote: “I’m puzzled at why Trump wanted to have this meeting if he could foresee, like most of the rest of us, that there was not going to be a positive result.”

    I agree with angech’s very sensible comments.

    A negative result was NOT foreseeable. Only the possibility (or, if you prefer, the probability) of a negative result was foreseeable. And Trump clearly said in advance that a negative result was possible. He was willing to risk that for the possibility of success. Most politicians are too timid and selfish to have taken that risk. But Trump is not most politicians. I applaud the effort, even if it failed.

    And we don’t know that the meeting was a complete failure. It sounds like something was agreed to. So maybe it will turn out to be a step toward peace. We shall see.

  60. Mike M.
    I know Democrats who are on the extreme left, but maybe socialist but not communists. And they buy all the pronoun and gender variety stuff. I do support equity for all flavors of sexuality including marriage where in addition to affection and the other usual reasons, SS and pension rules won;t wotk for “friends”

    I’d say majority of our Democrat friends are very middle and it isn’t middle of Democratic party, it’s middle of everyone. They don’t like firing professors for incorrect pronoun use any more than the right.

    Right now, the Desantis Gang would like to outlaw painting streets with political symbology. We have some rainbow intersections and one BLM street her in St Pete. I think it’s fine and it looks like St Pete City Council is going to fight the state on it.
    And then there’s the book banning, although I do iunderstand that there are some pretty provocative books on some of the grade school library shelves. Maybe there’s a better solution that the one we have where a single individual and cause a book to be removed from a school library.

    If Republican party was headed by McCaine, we’d be Republicans again – left in 2008.

  61. This is probably the best explanation for why Putin has remained in power for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Russian_Federation#/media/File:GDP_of_Russia_since_1989.svg (World Bank data)

    Putin may not be responsible for a 6+ fold increase in standard of living since 2000, but I am sure many Russians give him credit for that anyway. The chart doesn’t show 2025, but save for a couple years following 2014, the economic sanctions do not seem to have had too much effect on the growth of purchasing price parity adjusted GDP. To the extent that polling is accurate in Russia, Putin still looks pretty popular: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/

    I rather doubt he is looking for a safe haven outside Russia.

  62. john ferguson,
    “They don’t like firing professors for incorrect pronoun use any more than the right.”

    They why are they not actively, vocally opposing the people who DO insist on firing professors for any deviation from the extreme left? (AKA “wrong-think”) This is not a rhetorical question; if these people exist, then why do we not hear from them?

  64. MikeM

    A negative result was NOT foreseeable.

    And yet, many forsaw it.

    Only the possibility (or, if you prefer, the probability) of a negative result was foreseeable.

    Well… sure. But 99.9% probability is often referred to as “forseeable”.

    So maybe it will turn out to be a step toward peace. We shall see.

    Or maybe it will turn out to be a step toward disaster, catastrophe or escalation.

    It sounds like something was agreed to.

    Perhaps.

    Trump may have had other “reasons” for doing this.

  65. SteveF. Putin’s discomfort with Ukraine economy is P&G guys guess for provokation of invasion. I don’t think that dates to 2003, maybe 2014 or more recent. So you’d need to copmpare how the two economies “looked”. Not as we’ve found with our own, what the reality isbut what people think.

    And I’d add, since when is it realistic to expect the middle of a party to criticize their own extremeists? Do Republcans do it?

  67. john a ferguson wrote: “Putin’s discomfort with Ukraine economy”.

    Why would Ukraine’s economy cause Putin discomfort? As the links provided by SteveF show, Russia’s economy has done much better than Ukraine’s.

  68. john ferguson:
    ” Do Republcans do it?”
    Fair question. I think some do. IMHO, Trump is an insufferable a$$hole, and wish he were far more measured in how he behaves and how he institutes policy changes. Trump is IMHO not a great president, but far better (in policies) than the alternatives. I have been saying pretty much the same since 2017.

    I didn’t hear a lot of Democrats saying Biden was a) obviously corrupt, and b) mentally incompetent to hold office. Not in 2024, and not now, even though most voters could see that.

  69. Quote from search:
    Income inequality: While a rising GDP might suggest overall economic growth, it doesn’t automatically mean that everyone’s financial situation is improving. GDP doesn’t capture the distribution of wealth or how income is divided among the population. A high GDP could coexist with significant income inequality, where a small portion of the population benefits disproportionately from the economic growth.

    I’d add that an economy where many men aredrinking themselves to death may not be a happy one.

  70. john ferguson,
    You wrote:
    I heard a lecture on Putin’s motivation to recapture Ukraine by guy who had been Proctor and Gambles chief in Russia from mid ’90s to 2003 (+/-}. His take was that Putin was really bugged by the existence of a successful slavic economy on his front doorstep which could be observed by his own citizens and compared to much less successful Rusian economy.

    I took from that that the fellow left Russia in 2003 and so likely didn’t have much contact with Putin after 2003. Even after 2003, Russia’s economy grew far faster than Ukraine’s. So I just don’t see any reason why Putin would be worries about a “successful Slavic economy” on his border. Russia’s economy gas grown (relatively) faster than Western Economies (see my last graph posted).

    I take the Russians at their word: they mostly don’t want Ukraine to ever be part of NATO, something they have been saying for decades.

  71. I’m completely for occasionally having discussions with people you disagree with. Iran, Russia, North Korea, Hamas, etc. It makes sure everybody understands the other side’s position and allows an assessment of whether anything has changed. The result that nothing has changed is a useful verified result IMO.

    Otherwise what you get is a bunch of grandstanding maximalist rhetoric directed at your domestic audience that is worthless.

    AFAICT nobody knows what happened. perhaps Trump gave an ultimatum, perhaps he will give Zelensky the same on Monday. Perhaps it’s secret because something useful actually did happen and they don’t want a trial by media (low probability).

    The argument that doing this is “platforming dictators” or whatever is unconvincing.

    A B-2 flyover of Putin was worth it, ha ha.

  72. SteveF
    whether Chief’s observatoin has any validity would depend on the quality of his understanding of Putin which may not be sufficient or as you suggest current enough to draw the conclusion he draws.

  73. This war is existential to Putin’s legacy as you all have mentioned. I agree completely. It makes a settlement very hard.

  74. My Dad gets Democrat solicitations like crazy. I had to stop all the spam for him. They are idiotic and aimed at 8 year olds. The same can be said for Republican texts I got. Tom AI summary: “It’s an emergency!!!! Send money now!!!”.

  75. john ferguson,

    Russia’s income disparity index is slightly worse than Ukraine’s, but slightly better than in the USA (that is, wealth is a little more uniform in Russia than in the USA). The differences are modest. (USA: 42, Russia: 35, Ukraine: 26)

    Putin is popular in Russia for multiple reasons, but it is not because the oligarchs took all the wealth; that is a fabrication. Countries with very high tax rates and generous social benefits (and the EC in particular), have the lowest disparities, as you might expect.

    Russian alcohol abuse predates Putin.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_in_Russia

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality

  76. SteveF,
    Of course alcohol use in Russia is long standing. To simplify the point, Putin could think he has a problem if a significant part of his population (10%?) thinks Ukraine is doing better than Russia.
    I have no idea whether this is realistic.

  77. Tom

    The argument that doing this is “platforming dictators” or whatever is unconvincing.,

    I’ll definitely grant that. Clearly Putin has a platform.

    People who think they can “deplatform” Putin are clearly delusional. It’s even difficult to “deplatform” much less powerful people. One of the “the Left’s” strategical error was thinking they could win by deplatforming their opponents. It’s very difficult to do that and they failed.

  78. The problem with political symbology on streets is you have to then keep the “KKK lives matter” painted a block away. If you are picking favorites based on viewpoint you will lose in court. The correct answer is to either eliminate it all or perhaps allow it temporarily with people forced to remove it after a couple weeks.

    It’s not a “book ban”, it is selecting what books are placed on a limited resource, library shelves. This happens all the time and I’m not surprised there is a fight over it. I don’t particularly agree with legislative action for it and think it should be decided locally. Political activists went crazy putting this stuff on the shelves of schools and the deserved blowback was overzealous.

    DeSantis is my favorite Florida governor ever.

  79. Tom Scharf,
    ““It’s an emergency!!!! Send money now!!!”

    Yup, that is a perfect summary.

  80. Tom Sharf–
    I’m all for not allowing people to paint messages on streets at all. The only paint should be things like lane markers or driving information.

    I’m also for not allowing beggars at street corners. Banning any and all solicitation or loitering there would be great in my book. I don’t know why it’s not done. (I haven’t googled to find out.)

  81. Tom Scharf,
    “DeSantis is my favorite Florida governor ever.”

    A few years back I told my daughter and son-in-law (both way more liberal than I am) that DeSantis would win re-election in a landslide. They were somewhere between utterly horrified and “that is just not possible”. I always find it odd how many people refuse to believe, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, that their views are in fact held only by a minority.

  82. Russia fossil fuel sales were * $1B per day * before the war started. That papers over a lot of problems most dictators have. That type of money can fund a war time economy.

    The less relevant and more important question is lost opportunity. Russia would have been much better off directing that revenue at something other than a war furnace.

  84. Tom Scharf,
    “Russia would have been much better off directing that revenue at something other than a war furnace.”

    Sure, and so would the USA, Europe, and especially Ukraine. But Putin (and most Russians) think differently. I do not presume to insist my perceptions are right and theirs are wrong for Russia.

  85. john a ferguson wrote: “I’d add that an economy where many men aredrinking themselves to death may not be a happy one.”

    A SOCIETY where many men are drinking themselves to death is not a happy one.

  86. In my view neither side puts much effort into herding their own activist cats. It’s basic tribal loyalty. Only when those activists start materially hurting the tribe overall does the tribe take action. Losing elections would be one of those cases. Even when action is taken it is done by ignoring them and sidelining activists (errr … deplatforming) rather than public excommunication.

  87. Tom
    Once no one wants to listen to someone, they aren’t listened to. But I don’t think that’s what was meant by not giving Putin a platform.

    If the extreme (or even not extreme) people on either side have a big enough audience, t hey have a platform. You aren’t giving it to them so you can’t take it away.

    As for mechanisms these days: People who were “deplatformed” from Twitter managed to have podcasts which their followers found. People who were not hired or silenced at news papers went to Substack. Attempts to deplatform were a business opportunity for those whose voices enough people want to listen to.

    Obviously, no needs to give other people a platform. But you don’t really have the power to take away the platform they build themselves or other people give them.

  88. The NYT’s not so clever framing today of Trump Russia Collusion:
    “With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by his side, President Trump on Friday suggested the two men were bonded by a shared ordeal, or what Mr. Trump called the “Russia hoax.”

    “We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” Mr. Trump said during remarks after his meeting in Alaska with Mr. Putin.

    Mr. Trump was referring to the investigation during his first term into links between Russia and his presidential campaign in 2016. American intelligence agencies concluded that Mr. Putin had ordered an intelligence operation to benefit Mr. Trump. And Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, determined that Russia had carried out a “sweeping and systematic” attack on the 2016 election.”

    Wow, it was never about Trump Russia Collusion I guess, just whether Russia was executing some rather clumsy attempts at political propaganda. Maybe I should go back and fact check those 500,000 media articles to see if that is accurate because for some odd reason I don’t remember it that way. I’ll start with Rachel Maddow.

  89. I liked Bob Graham a lot.
    I had some dealings directly with him when I was a department head at Sarasota County.
    In my mind, he set the tone for the future Republican governors, all of whom have done well. Particularly in times of crisis the Florida governors are outstanding.

  90. Tom,
    “ In my view neither side puts much effort into herding their own activist cats. ”
    I agree, but the left-wing activist cats have taken control of the Democrat party.
    The right-wing activist cats are kept at the fringe by the Republicans.

  91. Well gosh Russell,
    I’d say the right wing activist cats are running the place just now. Taking the government apart with chain saws?
    De-DEIing everything in site. Troops in the street? (although in Washington’s case responsive to real problem as anyone who has rels there knows in detail)
    Invading Canada, Taking over Greenland?
    Until now, I would have thought these ideas pretty fringey.

  92. Invading Canada? Taking over Greenland?

    He never said invade. He offered Canada to be the 51st state. That was purely a joke to troll Trudeau. The second was very nearly a joke. Bad taste? Absolutely. Like I said, Trump should be a lot more measured in statements and implementing policies.

    DEI? Well, a lot of people actually think it should be completely dismantled, since it is contrary to the Civil Rights Act and equal protection under the Constitution. Troops in the streets? To protect ICE agents who are enforcing Federal laws? Sure. Neither States, their citizens, nor their resident illegal aliens get to declare Federal laws null and void or block their enforcement.

    Cutting Federal bureaucracy? Sure, it is a great idea. Trump clearly overstepped in some of his actions to lay off bureaucrats, and the courts are blocking him. The system of checks and balances is working. He will win some and lose some. The good news: no more taxpayer support for gay plays in Equator.

  93. john,
    I think De-DEIing stuff, is actually pretty mainstream. That is, if you define mainstream as “what the vast majority want”. He’s doing it fast and hard which often people don’t do. But it may be the only way to get the De-DEIing to stick. “Use race during admissions and hiring, but just less than you did before.” was really not going to work.

    He’s being draconian too, which I can find unsettling. Axing whole programs at schools is not as mainstream. But the actual “De-DEIing?” That part is, in large part, what got him elected. It’s what swayed a fair apart of the people who swing Dem-GOP from election to election to swallow hard and vote for him.

    His rhetoric is kookie. No doubt. I know a woman from Denmark. The taking over Greenland talk pisses her off. She’s lived here a while so she may be naturalized. I don’t actually know.

    I don’t actually think the taking over greenland or the Canada 51st state is “right wing”. It’s just nutty. I think Trump doesn’t intend to do it– but he’s often unserious in his speech. I find that very annoying in a president. So do lots of people.

  95. apparently the word was DEI
    Standing for
    D Discrimination
    E Exclusion
    I Iniqity
    These are programs that should be rightly banned.

  96. Heart of America, interesting name, almost Neil Simon like sound.
    “Looking at it myself, I need to get “snappier”.
    Could it be a be a bit too focused and controlled?
    Let the hair down, have a smile and give Jim a kiss on the floor.
    Or just let a little Latin happy temperament out.
    Probably lose a lot of points and get 2nd position out of one ( still do not understand that).
    I guess what I am suggesting is to add a little bit more fun to the good routine rather than snappiness, but then again I am not a dancer.

    Thanks ++ for the post heading and video.
    Can see SteveF and JF as good dancers.
    Russell, Nah.
    MB ?!

  97. angech,
    Can’t let the hair down. No. No. That’s not ballroom! Well, some people wear pony tails, but my hair will get snarly.
    Snappy will require better Cuban Motion. Also, to some extent a better lead. I do look snappier with my pro. (That said, Jim’s teacher can look snappy no matter what. So it’snot just the lead.)

    Probably lose a lot of points and get 2nd position out of one ( still do not understand that).

    When you sign up for a specific event, you can’t be sure anyone else will sign up. Sometimes you are the only one competing. The judges can still decree you came in 2nd. And they will if you are bad enough!

    None of the other dancers in our age/level signed up to compete Mambo. They only signed up for Chacha, rhumba, swing, bolero. So we came in first out of 1 in Mambo. The alternative would have been the shameful 2nd out of 1!! Very shameful!

  98. John, Your post:
    “Well gosh Russell, I’d say the right wing activist cats are running the place just now.“
    You said above that this is no longer the Republican Party of John McCain. I think the vast majority of Trump’s policies are mainstream Republican just now. The Republican Party has been moving Conservative for about 15 years, I think it started with the Tea Party movement. Those of us who used to be considered right wing activist cats are now considered middle of the road cats. Trump is still a pompous jerk and his personal style gets in the way of implementing his policies but the policies themselves are mainstream.
    I can’t think of a single Trump policy that I disagree with. I even agree with most of his implementation tactics. I would further argue many of Trump’s policies are not only mainstream Republican but mainstream America.
    I think the Liberal media and the extremely Liberal academia and Democrat Party leaders are constantly spewing TDS left wing nonsense. If one uses them as a barometer of Trump’s policies they are going to see those policies as right wing because the lenses of the media and academia and Democrat leaders are positioned so far left.

  99. angech,
    Your post seeing me as not a good dancer is right on target.
    It’s amazing you can sense these things from halfway around the world by just reading my posts….. It’s to the point of clairvoyance!

  100. I apparently could dance in my youth. It’s what girls would tell me anyway. Perhaps they weren’t being honest, who can say. A significant amount of alcohol was generally involved.
    Shrug. Whatever.
    [Needless to say, no formal style of dance was involved, unless one wants to call ‘gothic industrial’ a dance style. It was more a club music genre I think]

  101. Russell,

    in support of what you’ve written above about Dem denial of plainly visible problems I point to Jamie Raskin (Senator from Maryland) and his defense of the indefensible mess in DC with the statement that crime rate has dropped by some percentage. Anyone who knows the place understands that it is still far worse than almost everywhere else and the constraints on police reactions to individual crimes makes it almost impossible to cure by the usual means.

    it could be that increasing police funding would get some improvement but without better pursuit and arrest guidelines, nothing is likely to improve. And I blame combination of lib confusion about crime and punishment and inadequate funding for where this nutty stuff comes from. similar to San Francisco.

    I don’t have an opinion on whether flooding the place with national guard presumably for some finite period will fix anything. If you can find it read Maureen Doud’s sister.s experience with the theft of her sister’s Buick, NYT

    so there.

  102. angech,

    I was a good dancer at 15, because that is what 15 YO girls seemed to like. You do what you have to do. Now? Not so much.

  103. DEI is one of those 70:30 or 80:20 issues that make Democrats lose many close elections. Another is letting criminals off with little or no consequence for their crimes. A third is support for trans-men in women’s sports. These are obviously losing positions which elected Dems seem terrified to back away from, lest they be attacked by their own base, or primaried out of office.

    So far, no real movement by the party on these kinds of issues, which is very good for Republicans. Kamala, it seems, has an opening run again, since she was on the wrong side of all the 70:30 issues, in lockstep with ‘the base’.

  104. I wonder how much support there really is out there for trans-men in women’s sports. The unfairness seems so obvious.

  105. Recent polling (of which there is very little) indicates ~94% of Republicans oppose participation of trans-males in women’s sports, about 31% of Democrats support that participation, and a modest majority of Dems oppose, with rest offering no opinion. Overall among adults, ~75% oppose and the rest either support or offer no opinion.

    I suspect that 31% is mainly “the base” among Dems.

    I think this is so bizarre a proposition that I am shocked 31% of Dems would support it. This image says it all: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/04/03/21/69438553-11934931-image-m-2_1680555352512.jpg

  106. SteveF,
    I suspect that your 31% figure applies across the Party. It’s where the craziest foks reside and what makes winninng elections difficult for us.

  107. Steve,
    Leah Thomas probably did more to turn the tide against XY-transitioners participating in XX sports than any person around. And yes, that picture is the sort of thing that did it.

    And unfortunately, the (plausible) claim that the fraction of XY-transitioners in sports is very small isn’t helpful to their cause because the fact that the percent on podiums is not. And them appearing on podiums is precisely what you expect if they have an inherent athletic advantage owing to genetics.

    Also: we don’t really know how many XY-transitioners are in Women’s sports because no one is required to report it, monitor it or keep track. But oddly, claims there are very few cuts against the claim that they don’t have an inherent advantage. Because if there are very few and they don’t have an inherent advantage, we wouldn’t be seeing them winning medals or standing on podiums!

    And those who want to emphasize that the % of XY-transitioners in women sports is small — which means women get to play is neither the main or only point. The issue of whether they have a chance to win matters.

  108. Russell Klier wrote: “… no longer the Republican Party of John McCain. I think the vast majority of Trump’s policies are mainstream Republican just now. The Republican Party has been moving Conservative for about 15 years,”

    If you define “mainstream” as what the Establishment wants, then McCain was mainstream. If you define “mainstream” as what most of the American people want, then Trump is mainstream. The party of Bush/Cheney/McCain/Romney was the party of Wall St. K St., and Washington insiders. Trump leads the party of Main St.

    Trump is not about Right vs Left. Trump is about Right vs Wrong, judged by what is good for the American people. His policies are never dictated by ideology and rarely, if ever, influenced by special interests. He is guided by the North Star of what is in the best interest of the nation and its people.

  109. Russell Klier wrote: “Trump is still a pompous jerk and his personal style gets in the way of implementing his policies …
    I can’t think of a single Trump policy that I disagree with. I even agree with most of his implementation tactics.”

    It is a package deal. We do not get to choose to have a politician with Trump’s policies and implementation but with a different personality.

    It might or might not be theoretically possible to have a smooth (or slick) politician who could successfully carry out Trump’s policies and implementation. I very much doubt that it would be possible. The misguided policies of the Establishment have created a situation where we NEED a bull in the China shop. So Trump’s style is likely necessary to implementing his agenda.

    After Trump does the heavy lifting, is might be possible for a smoother individual, like Vance, to take over the job of consolidating what Trump has started.

  110. Footnote to my last post.

    Main St. voters had gotten so used to politicians pretending to be on their side that someone who sounds like a conventional politician probably could never have won them over. Trump’s willingness to horrify the Establishment in style as well as policy has been essential to his success, even as it limits his ability to win popularity contests.

  111. Mike,
    I agree with you. I’d like to add, it is very easy to underestimate the impact of the ‘demonization machine’ that Democrats and their media allies bring into play. It is very easy for us to scoff and sneer at Trump for his foibles and eccentricities when perhaps it would be more appropriate for us to marvel at how gracefully this man is able to bear the entire manifold of concentrated hatred, contempt and rejection that the establishment brings to bear. One would have to be a little tone deaf to be able to endure this. One would have to have too thick a skin to handle every situation delicately. One would have to be a little arrogant and narcissistic to withstand this, and I doubt any of us could walk a mile in his shoes. Indeed, I doubt most of us [would] make it a few yards.

  112. Lucia,
    I had a conversation yesterday with my 17+ YO daughter about trans-men in women’s sports. She is not involved in sports of any kinds, but she understood clearly the unfairness to women…. if only because she knows I am the default jar-opener in the house.

  113. Mark,

    Yes, Trump receives more invective than most, but I think we should remember that EVERY Republican who has run for president in my lifetime has received overwhelmingly negative, hostile news coverage both during the campaign and (if elected) afterward. Seems the MSM think every Republican candidate for president is in cahoots with the devil and consults with Hitler’s ghost on policy: they all want to put black people ‘back in chains’.

    The MSM has managed to discredit itself in the eyes of a huge fraction of voters, and I guess we can thank Trump for that much at least: the MSM’s coverage of Trump has been so blatantly unfair and so over-the-top negative, that most voters just ignore it.

  114. Mark Bofill wrote: “It is very easy for us to scoff and sneer at Trump for his foibles and eccentricities when perhaps it would be more appropriate for us to marvel at how gracefully this man is able to bear the entire manifold of concentrated hatred, contempt and rejection that the establishment brings to bear.”

    That is a terrific point.

  115. I think part of lib confusion on crime is many lib neighborhoods are perfectly fine crime free places, as is my neighborhood. I almost never see a police car in my neighborhood. If we had two break-ins within a month we would probably be demanding SWAT teams on every corner.

    The takeover of the DC police was pure Trump, by now he knows the TDS types will oppose everything he does and they dutifully did so, trying to claim everything is perfectly fine in DC. They keep telling themselves to not take the bait but they do anyway.

    I was listening to a leftish podcast and they started making fun of a planned MMA / WWF event Trump wants to have at the White House. Now I think this is Trump politics at its best because he knows this will happen. The left thought leaders will smugly look down on it. But I would challenge people to look at the crowds during this event and the opera down the street at the Kennedy Center and ask which people are having a good time. The legacy media and academia will reflexively be lecturing us on societal moral decay, the downfall of Rome, and sinful gladiator combat.

  116. john ferguson,

    Reducing the size and power of the federal government is very much a Main St. policy.

    Dismantling DEI is very much a Main St. policy.

    Enforcing our immigration laws is very much a Main St. policy.

    Enhancing public safety is very much a Main St. policy.

    There is nothing fringy about any of that. You might not like the way Trump is going about implementing those policies, but nobody seems to have constructive alternatives to offer. So I see no basis to claim that Trump’s methods are fringy.

    Trump never said anything about invading Canada. He did push the idea that they should join the United States.I don’t know if he was serious, or just trolling Trudeau. Either way, think he kept it up far too long.

    There is much to be said for taking over Greenland, although I think a Compact of Free Association would be much better. The Greenlanders might go for that since it likely would be their best path to the independence desired by the overwhelming majority of Greenlanders. I have no idea if Trump’s remarks helped or hurt the chances of that happening.

  117. The craziest part of men’s bodies in women’s sports was the one sided attempt to tell us there was no real advantage and the science was uncertain, more research was necessary, etc. I have never seen so many carefully worded sentences mindlessly parroted by the media with the intent to mislead. As if people don’t have direct experience with this.

    The issue was whether hormone therapy was enough to drag men down to women’s ability and everyone knew the answer was no. You don’t get less tall, etc. and testosterone isn’t the only thing involved. If they knew the answer then they could just jack up a woman to men’s ability and that doesn’t work either. There are some very pumped up manly looking real women in track and field and they can’t compete with men.

  118. Tom Scharf,
    “The takeover of the DC police was pure Trump..”

    Absolutely. Trump knows how to point out (by policy action) the crazy policies which ‘progressives’ running big cities put in place: refusal to prosecute criminals, wrist-slaps for most crimes, etc.

    Will it make a pinch of difference in those cities? Heck no! Those places will still vote overwhelmingly for the people who promulgate crazy policies. Where it will matter is in places like suburban Philadelphia, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and the like, were most voters reject insane ‘progressive’ policies that are damaging many big cities.

  119. Tom Scharf,
    ” There are some very manly women in track and field and they can’t compete with men.”

    There are dozens of high school boys, some as young as 14, who run faster, every year, at 100 meters than any woman, anywhere, has ever run 100 meters. To suggest there is not a huge advantage in speed and strength for the XY group of humans is nutty…. AKA ‘progressive’. I hope they never change their minds on this.

  120. A lot of Trump may be performative theatrics but his reaction to the assassination attempt convinced me he is actually fearless in many ways.

  122. Tom Scharf,
    As I have become older I have learned it becomes easier to be fearless…. you have a lot less to lose.

  123. MikeM

    Reducing the size and power of the federal government is very much a Main St. policy.

    Dubious.

    Dismantling DEI is very much a Main St. policy.

    True. Defunding university research programs isn’t. It’s not as if he’s merely defunding DEI programs– he’s defunding things like cancer research. Main Street was not crying out for the Feds to defund cancer research or other research related to human health (e.g. heart disease, diabetes, infant mortality, yada, yada, yada.)

    Enforcing our immigration laws is very much a Main St. policy.

    True. But which measures of enforcement are acceptable and which are not matters. As far as public opinion goes, there is such a thing as a bridge too far. Arresting people at places of worship? Lots of people are going to see that as not Main St.

    Enhancing public safety is very much a Main St. policy.

    Sure. But actual troops in the street might not be. I remember seeing troops in the street that in Spain. Creepy.

    You might argue that troops need to be called out in certain places and times. But the idea that troops are used for policing actions on a regular basis? Not Main St.

    Some may support these things. But claiming they are Main St.? Not on traditional Main St. USA.

  124. Mike M,
    “Dismantling DEI is very much a Main St. policy.”

    Indeed it is.

    Not only is DEI rejected by huge majorities of voters as blatantly unfair, and not only is it contrary to both law and the Constitution, it has been in place (under several different names) since Lyndon Johnson was in office…. which is most of my entire lifetime.

    One of the few sensible things mealy-mouth Roberts has ever said: “The way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating based on race.” Stop discriminating based on race. It is not even complicated.

    The country has been there for a long time. The ‘elites’ in charge of policy have not. Let’s hope that changes soon.

  125. BTW, in hindsight, Lyndon Johnson has continuously fallen in my opinion for the last 45 years. I think his policy preferences were toxic and damaged the country. He started the whole racial preferences in policy idea.

  126. Things like the DC and LA national guard exercises are primarily signaling exercises IMO. To the extent this isn’t Trump impulsiveness the guides for radicals see these type of things as a “forced response” maneuver. The opposition is forced to take a stand and the hope is they will choose unwisely.

    Nobody is left wondering which side of the issue people are on. Trump suspects the left supports the wrong side of an 80-20 issue and he is forcing them to show their cards. It can backfire.

  127. I think the tepid reaction to FL / DeSantis going full anti-woke with the levers of government power showed Trump this was going to work nationally. I was a bit surprised there was hardly any protests against this in FL, likely because most on the left aren’t fans of it or at least know it is a bad divisive strategy.

  129. Tom,
    Maybe the national guard in DC is signaling… something. But I’m glad I didn’t decide to dance at “Capital Dancesport” Aug 19-23. I went last year and strolled into the capital to sight see on my dead day. I enjoyed that. I would be creeped out seeing the troops in the streets. I know not everyone will be. But I don’t feel safer when troops are on the street!

  130. Tom,
    “ How Sorority Rush Videos Became the Ultimate Reality TV Show”
    As usual, I was a week ahead of the media on this trend.

  131. Off topics: If somebody told me they were going to 3d print a gearbox that was 97-98 decibels during normal operation without specifically designing for it, Ida been skeptical they would have accomplished it. As it turns out, I found that I have achieved precisely this. [ironic bow] . The unfortunate thing is, I didn’t and don’t want a crazy loud gearbox.

    Oh well. The internet and AI’s are full of advice on how to remedy the problem; we’ll see how it goes.

  132. Hi Mark,
    I found I could get noisy gearboxes by saving on oil. I’m curious, what are you making?

  133. John,

    I’d like to have a robot arm that can actually lift objects weighing a few pounds. I purchased this, but cute as it is it can lift essentially nothing.

    I have AI’s that can see, AI’s that can observe, plan, act, and evaluate. I can write APIs for AI’s to interrogate magnetic encoders and drive motors. I need to give my AI the ability to perform actual physical work.

  134. John,

    You do much PETG printing? So far I am only using PLA, and of course eventually I’m going to have to reprint in something more useful. I haven’t set aside a block of time to take the hit yet.
    Is nylon as much of a pain to work with as I read that it is?

  135. When a reasonably priced AI robot can do the laundry we have moved to a new world. Very hard problem.

  136. Tom,

    I was surprised to learn folding laundry is considered hard. I bumped into a discussion of it the other day on some reddit thread.

    It is as if it is 1990 again, and the internet has not really taken off yet. Exciting times!

  138. Tom,

    Thanks for the video!

    Pretty decent job. I think it mostly struggles because it looks like it only has a couple of fingers per hand? I’m not sure. It might be tactile feedback is both important and lacking, it might be the inexperience / lack of expertise of the robot in handling fabric… it could be lots of things!

  139. Mark Bofill,
    I’m not sure what discussion you ran across.

    Lots of domestic labor isn’t difficult either physically or intellectually. It’s just constantly there and quite boring. Physically intellectually even easier: keeping soap, toothpaste, toilet paper stocked.

    That said, some grumpy internet discussions of the need to do these things also seem to totally overlook ways to reduce the effort of doing these things. (Jim and I have a list app. When some things run out, we try to remember to put it on the list app. It’s shared on both phones. So it then gets picked up the next time someone is at the grocery store.)

    I think some of it gets “debated” about what’s “right”. Folding laundry might fall in there. I think I’ve read Mary Kondo folding tips vs. other ones.

  140. Lucia,

    No I’m sorry, I spoke poorly. I meant for a robot is folding laundry hard to do properly. Apparently it’s not as easy to make one do that well as I’d casually assumed, was the point of that thread.

  141. Mark,
    Ahh! Ok. Yeah, things aren’t standardized, are they? Unlike in a factory where you are folding 6 identically shaped t-shirts to package, you are instead getting a heap of things out of a dryer (or something) having to identify, fold accordign to shape. Oh… and socks.

  142. Yep! 🙂

    I think too much attention is being paid to “bipedal-ness”. I mean, walking like a human is a definite feature and a plus, but. If it adds five or ten thousand dollars to the price of the robot though, I think people are going to discover that a wheeled platform with arms can do the same work much more cheaply so long as the area they operate in is flat.

    I don’t know, like I said. Interesting times!

  143. Zelenskyy is bringing all of Europe’s heavy hitters to his meeting with Trump tomorrow afternoon (no time scheduled yet):
    NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
    Finnish President Alexander Stubb
    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
    French President Emmanuel Macron
    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

  144. Mark,
    Yeah, I’d like a robot to do my laundry. I don’t need bipedalness. That said, I’d like it– or several robots– to get the entire job done. Not just folding! I want it to check and empty pockets, notice stains, pretreat, put in the cycle….. The whole enchilada.

    Still, it doesn’t have to be just one robot. And obviously, having robots stationed at a laundry service might be just fine. If laundry service was cheap and easy enough, I might use it.

    Let’s face it, I sit around in tshirts and stretch pants. MOST my laundry is not difficult. It less trouble for me to toss in the machine and do it myself than create a job of dropping it off at a service. But… remember milk men who dropped off milk? If I could just leave a basket of dirty and it came back, and was pretty cheap. Whooo hooo! 🙂

  145. Yes.

    Really, I don’t mind my household chores. I just like trying to see what the limits are of what I can make computers (and hopefully robots) do.

  146. I think the laundry folding work has a lot of “sensor fusion” going on. Hand eye coordination, tactile feedback, object identification, that whip snap to get it kind of un-clumped, where to pull a clump of cloth to make it lie flat, how much force to use and where to grab to do a fold, that last smoothing move, picking it up properly to place it on a pile, and God forbid it can figure out which clothes belong to which person.

    We bought this el-cheapo folding aid from Amazon and I could not believe how addictive it was. I refolded my entire closet so it is unform and space efficient. Maybe that is just my OCD. There are many like it.
    https://a.co/d/0V43aNW

  148. Hummmm… An agent to do do my laundry.. Sounds great… and like utter rubbish. I am not holding my breath. I will continue to chase after my youngest daughter on this one, even while she hates it.

  150. Steve,

    I don’t know why you think this is rubbish. What strikes you as preposterous about it?

    Even if one doubts the ultimate efficacious of AI to handle sophisticated tasks, laundry (as Lucia has quite properly pointed out) isn’t one of those tasks.

    It doesn’t matter to me if you don’t buy it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you – LLM AI is revolutionary. This stuff is going to change the world, just as the Internet did, maybe even to a greater extent. You can mark my words on that, even if I get the particulars wrong (not impossible that there is some reason laundrybots specifically / in particular aren’t going to catch on, although beats me why that might be).

  151. efficaciousness, I meant.

    By obsessing over my spelling, I failed to notice I typed the wrong word. Sigh.

  152. Today I am leaning more toward this is heading toward a revolutionary change as I use it more.

    It is something like a laundry robot and not a chatbot app that will really drive home that this is something on a different level.

    We shall see, the people who know it best are investing enormous sums of capital and knowledge into it.

  154. Cafe we had lunch at in Haarlem, NL took orders and money by charge card number from our table via an app with a menu reached by scanning a QR on the table with orders delivered by rolling robot with shelves in the form of a vertical cylinder about 18 inches in diameter and 3 1/2 feet tall.
    It was pretty slick, but kitchen was behind a 4 foot counter and staff could see that all was working ok.

    Mark, I print almost entirely PETG because it survives in hot cars. PLA doesn’t. I use PLA for jigs and fixtures for making other things mostly because it finishes nicer than PETG and these things don’t leave the shop and I can design them to be strong enough for whatever I’m doing. I haven’t tried printing nylon although my newer printer is enclosed and should be capable.

  155. Lucia,
    “I don’t have a youngest daughter to do my laundry!!!!!”

    Not my laundry, hers.

  156. John,
    Do you coat your build plate with purple glue stick glue? I think I’m going to try this approach. Do you have any PETG suggestions for a first print?

  157. john

    with orders delivered by rolling robot with shelves in the form of a vertical cylinder about 18 inches in diameter and 3 1/2 feet tall.

    SUPER COOL!!!!

    I”m still going to like some human service in super swanky restaurants. But for most places? Rolling robot with shelves is just fine.

    Even at super swanky…. first time I get a robot who does a number setting the bananas for my bananas foster on fire, I’m going to be super impressed.

  159. From Grok:
    – 1:00 PM EDT: President Trump greets President Zelenskyy.
    – 1:15 PM EDT: Bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
    – 2:15 PM EDT: Trump greets European leaders.
    – 2:30 PM EDT: Family photo with European leaders.
    – 3:00 PM EDT: Multilateral meeting with European leaders and Zelenskyy in the East Room.

    He say no live press conferences are scheduled at this time

  160. some perspective for today’s meeting…
    From Grok:
    Based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates for 2025, the nominal GDP figures for the requested regions and countries are as follows:

    – **United States**: $30,507 billion (or $30.507 trillion)[](https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php)
    – **European Union**: $19,991 billion (or $19.991 trillion)[](https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php)
    – **Ukraine**: $205.742 billion[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29)
    – **Russia**: $2,076 billion (or $2.076 trillion)[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29)

    These figures are nominal GDP estimates in US dollars, calculated at market or government official exchange rates for the year 2025. Note that nominal GDP does not account for differences in purchasing power or cost of living, which can be better reflected through GDP (PPP) metrics if needed.[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29)

  161. Trump loves talking to the press, no live press conferences might mean something is actually happening, or maybe they just don’t want a Zelensky 2.0 media event.

  162. Trump just posted on truth social media:
    I’ve settled 6 Wars in 6 months, one of them a possible Nuclear disaster, and yet I have to read & listen to the Wall Street Journal, and many other who truly don’t have a clue, tell me everything that I am doing wrong on the Russia/Ukraine MESS, that is Sleepy Joe Biden’s war, not mine. I’m only here to stop it, not to prosecute it any further. It would have NEVER happened if I was President. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them. They are “STUPID” people, with no common sense, intelligence, or understanding, and they only make the current R/U disaster more difficult to FIX. Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done — I always do!!! President DJT

  163. Mark,
    i print on a stainless sheet which has something called PEX adhered to it. both the Bambu X-1c and the MakerGear M2. I used to use ordinary Elmer’s glue-sticks but now use a liquid which Bambu sells which is applied using the built-in sponge on the end of the bottle. Works fine. Bottle seems to last forever, too.

    I haven’t found anything tricky about PETG more or less 100% good results except for design mistakes. 3D priniting differs from architecture in that it can be iterative which means the cost of a print is mostly time and getting it right the first time isn’t nearly as critical as it was in architecture.

    a quick print reveals what I didn’t really understand about what I was trying to do.

  164. I asked Grok again to look for live press events today and he found nothing but did add the following:
    “Given the high-profile nature of today’s diplomatic meetings, it’s possible that a last-minute press briefing could be announced, especially following the multilateral meeting with European leaders. The White House often streams such events live on their YouTube channel or C-SPAN, as noted in a general description of press conference coverage. To stay updated, you can check the White House’s live stream at http://www.whitehouse.gov or C-SPAN’s coverage for any unscheduled press events.”

  167. Fox News has a better camera angle. It looks like a red carpet.
    There is a military honor guard too.
    AP it’s not the camera to watch.

  168. Russell Klier quoting Trump on truth social: “I’ve settled 6 Wars in 6 months”.

    I pretty much agree with what Trump posted, but I am a bit puzzled by the above. I count 5:
    India-Pakistan
    Israel-Iran
    Cambodia-Thailand
    Armenia-Azerbaijan
    Congo-Rwanda
    Am I missing one?

    Five is pretty darn impressive, so I don’t see a need to exaggerate But Trump.

  169. john ferguson,
    PEX is cross-linked polyethylene; the individual long chains of polyethylene are chemically lined top each other, either using intense ionizing radiation (eg x-rays or gamma rays) or using a chemical cross-linker. Either way, the polymer becomes resistant to melting/flowing when hot (like normal polyethylene would). It is most commonly used in potable water piping, including both hot and cold water lines.

    It is not easy to make anything really stick to PEX by getting it hot. That is likely why the stainless steel is coated with PEX for 3-D polymer printing.

  170. Mike M,
    He claims: India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia and Thailand, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia. That last one is about flow of water to the Nile, and not really settled.

  171. All of the European dignitaries have arrived.
    The focus, including the military honor guard have shifted to the portico, where we are expecting Zelinsky to be greeted by Trump in the next few minutes
    This is truly an historic event.

  172. Thanks SteveF. I had forgotten the Egypt-Ethiopia thing since, as you say, it is not settled. I think Serbia-Kosovo was from his first term and you missed Armenia-Azerbaijan.

    It is impressive that it is hard to keep track of all the peace deals.

  174. @DefMon3>
    “Both Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery and Rosneft’s Syzran refinery has halted production after Ukrainian strikes destroyed vital parts of the production lines. (13th and 15th August)”
    Ukrainian new long range drones have been scoring a number of hits

  175. Russian forces have suffered nearly a Regiment worth of casualties near Dobropillya between August 4 and August 16. Per Official Statement of the 1st Azov Corps. Azov is a Ukrainian army group so the information should be considered tainted. But more independent sources are saying similar things.
    The Russians produced a breakout that captured Ukrainian territory, and Ukrainian struck back cutting off the salient with a pincer action.
    Ukrainians are listing listing 1400 casualties among the Russians, as well as more than 18 pieces of armor destroyed.
    https://x.com/schizointel/status/1957479458224411020?s=61
    Some incredible hand to hand combat videos are emerging.
    https://x.com/schizointel/status/1957479458224411020?s=61

  176. If you judge by the videos of the anti-Trump demonstrators protesting the law and order effort in DC you would think that all of DC is inhabited by white people and only white people

  177. Headline: “In Russia Crisis, Ukraine Should Be Prepared To Trade Land For Independence”

    No, not a recent headline, but from an article in The Federalist published 3 weeks before Russia invaded in February 2022.

    The author did not work for the Biden Administration. “Mario Loyola, a professor at Florida International University and a visiting fellow at the National Security Institute of George Mason University, is a former defense policy adviser at the Pentagon and in the U.S. Senate.”

  178. Trump just posted on true social:
    I had a very good meeting with distinguished guests, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the United Kingdom, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Friedrich Merz, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, in the White House, which ended in a further meeting in the Oval Office. During the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America. Everyone is very happy about the possibility of PEACE for Russia/Ukraine. At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy. After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

  179. TRUMP:
    “ Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
    boy, talk about the A-Team!

  180. In addition to advancing long range (1,000 miles) drone warfare by leaps and bounds, Ukraine has developed a cruise missile, called The Flamingo.
    They claim it can deliver a 1 ton warhead 1,900 miles down range.
    That puts Western Siberia and all of developed Western Russia in the crosshairs.
    Here is a range map:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1957596864745709576?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ
    it’s scary as hell at launch, video:
    https://youtu.be/GedVOkjPP4A?feature=shared
    “The missile successfully underwent tests several months ago and is now being mass-produced. The Flamingo has seen combat use and is said to have struck targets deep inside Russia.”
    It has a reported a speed of up to 560 mph and navigation based on an inertial system and GPS (INS) – with the addition of a controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA) to prevent GPS-signal jamming.

  181. The possibility exists that Ukraine has received some technical assistance in their long range drone program.

  182. Although I still speculate this will result in not much, it is a win to get Russia and Ukraine in the same room. They might want to frisk Zelensky thoroughly before the meeting.

  183. Tom, your post:
    “The possibility exists that Ukraine has received some technical assistance in their long range drone program.”
    Germany formed a partnership for drone production with Ukraine about six months ago. Germany supplied some technology, but more importantly supplied a lot of money.
    They are even funding mass production.
    https://defense.info/re-shaping-defense-security/2025/07/from-ukraine-to-nato-how-germanys-drone-partnership-could-transform-alliance-defense/

  184. Drone defense is a huge deal now because of mass numbers of low cost drones. The US better up their game and we aren’t known for moving fast.

    The Ukraine war ends quickly if Russia figures out how to stop Ukraine’s front line drones. They have figured out half of it offensively with fiber optics but that is kind of clunky.

    You knows those front line troops have a PTSD freak out every time they hear a whirring of propellers. That is a hard life.

  186. Given the CIA’s history in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation I’m guessing they are also pretty active helping out. The Russians will be disassembling shot down drones and seeing what they are made of and it won’t be silicon from Ukraine foundries nor COTS DJI Chinese commercial drone comm. Barely plausible deniability for the US.

  189. Tom, your comment:
    “Given the CIA’s history in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation I’m guessing they are also pretty active helping out.”
    I assume you were talking about the CIA helping in the Ukraine, drone manufacturing industry.
    I hope you’re right, but I have not seen any indication of this.
    Up till now, I have been concerned that the US military establishment is falling behind in the drone warfare business because of the lack of their presence in Ukraine.
    So perhaps you’re right and we are in the deep background helping out, I certainly hope so, but we are doing a very good job of concealing it if we are.

  190. I would be shocked if the CIA / defense intelligence people aren’t deeply involved with watching what Russia is doing on the ground. It would be highly incompetent of them to ignore this opportunity. I would say this is one of the quid pro quo’s for supplying weapons. Most of them are probably “contractors”.

    Experimental weapons testing, particularly for drone communications and jamming.

  191. Russell,
    The most rediculous DNC requests seem to come in on Iphone messages. This means I’ll have to manually transcribe one of the worst.

    We also get mailers with long ballots which when received in Washington will be forwarded to some notable democrat as a vote for something or other.

    As to tallys of which party has more money.. I think it matters exactly what organization has it and what they can do with it.

    After all, in 2024 we had enogh to give $350k to Al Sharpton.

    I think there is a tremendous amount in potential once the races become “understandable” and on both sides.

    We also got a map the other day of the congressional races around the country and it showed Anna Paulina Luna’s “seat” in play. no lewd observations here? We supported Whitney Fox, who ran against her in 2024. She got clobbered. She was a good candidate who was probably as close to middle of the road as she could be as a Democrat. Luna is nowhere near the middle of the road but seems to have settled down now that she’s in office. No way is this race “in play” and we don’t even have a candidate as I write this.

    Was it Feinmann who suggested it unproductive to beleive your own bs?

    But in the end, this sort of thing is all we dems have.

  192. End the Lunacy! That was the phrase of some Democrat running against Luna. I liked it better when my house was in the Pasco district, now I’m under Luna. I contacted her office for some hurricane relief thing and got no response.

  193. John,
    “Russell, The most rediculous DNC requests seem to come in on Iphone messages. This means I’ll have to manually transcribe one of the worst.”
    on my iPhone 15, I can press and hold a text message that I want to copy and I will get a pop-up option to copy it.
    (my iPad works the same way)

  194. John, your post:
    “Luna is nowhere near the middle of the road but seems to have settled down now that she’s in office.”
    I have said this before, but I think the Republicans do a good job of sidelining their extremist members. I don’t know how they do it.
    And I’m glad the Dems don’t know how either.

  195. john ferguson,

    I think the Feynman quote was: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

    Maybe a good paraphrase is: only a fool believes his own press releases. That applies in science and every other field.

    I think you are right about fundraising; it becomes more important when actual candidates have been selected. In most races the incumbent will be heavily favored, of course, and face only a sacrificial lamb candidate or run unopposed.

    I have a second cousin who, a couple of cycles back, was one of a gaggle of Democrats competing in a primary to run against Elise Stefanik (upstate New York). The fact that Sefanik was for sure going to win by 20+%, no matter the opposing candidate, seemed to not even register. I found it very strange that so many people wanted to run against Stefanik in an obvious lost cause.

    Money will flow to candidates who appear to have a chance to flip a seat, not to lost cause candidates. Since there are relatively few competitive seats, the funding in those races will be very high on both sides.

  196. Hillary looks just terrible. And I think she may be losing all sense of rationality:

    “It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage. My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion. They will send it back to the states.”

    No, they won’t, and for good reason: there has to be recognition of marriages (and contracts, and many other things) across states…… You can’t become ‘unmarried’ by changing address any more than you can void a contract by changing address. The court might (although I think it VERY unlikely) allow a state to prohibit future gay marriages conducted within that state, but never void marriages conducted in other states, nor void marriages from the past.

    It is a near certainty that the Court will simply refuse to hear the case. Would I ever like to be able to wager Clinton on that ruling.

  198. Ignore the earlier post.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/189243388@N06/54732206950/in/photostream/lightbox/

    This is the sort of thing I make by 3D printing. It weighs half of what the original AeroVironment’s Swithblade 300 bird does but as I found out, is uncontrollable below about 40mph which is unattainable on the length of runway I have to work with. Fuselage is printed from lightweight PLA which reduces its denstiy by foaming coming our of the print nozzle.

    The wings and stabilizers fold up on the origina so it can be ejected from a 3 1/2 tube. I figured how to do this with springs and magnets, but haven’t gotten that far until I can at least fly this one as an R/C plane. Launch will probably end up beingo some sort of catapult, but right now not on top of my list.

  200. The actual Constitution doesn’t have a lot to say about abortion or gay marriage regardless of people’s moral judgments.. It has to be squeezed in under some sort of equal rights / equal protection thing.

    I don’t think they should revisit gay marriage although I thought it wasn’t going to win as a federal right last time. In the end it doesn’t really matter because pretty much all states recognized civil unions.

  203. john ferguson,
    I hear there are Eastern European countries looking for drone engineers. 😉

  204. john ferguson,

    What kind of motor does the plane have? If electric, what is the battery size, and how long can the motor run?

  205. Tom Scharf,
    “It has to be squeezed in under some sort of equal rights / equal protection thing.”

    Sure, but Congress made the SC’s job a lot easier when they passed a (bipartisan) law guaranteeing access to marriage for gay people everywhere in the USA. I really doubt the Court will even agree to hear the case.

  207. SteveF,
    Motor with the folding prop shown produces thrust about 10% above gross weight of plane. I’m guessing it will take full power to fly at about 60 mph. Battery is good for about 5 minutes at that power setting.
    I don’t know what AeroVironment’s proportion of battery to energetics is but their plane seems to be flyable for more than 30 minutes at what they call loiter speed which I cannot believe is even as low as 60 given the wings. My wings and airfoils are same in area, but my airfoil is eyeballed and follows available research on what works in small tandem wing planes like this one.
    It’s amazing how much research for this sort of thing is available in the public domain. It’s also really neat that I can print airfoils very precisely although these are so thin, I needed carbon fiber tubes for spars.

    Russell, you were right, I can copy message to note then email note to get it to my linux computers

  208. john ferguson,

    I don’t know a lot about airfoils, but in the photo it looks to me like thicker profiles would provide more lift at lower speeds….. Of course maybe flying fast is what you are looking for.

  209. the wings fold up like a jackknife. that’s why they have to be thin. The aft wings fold forward and the forward wings fold backward covering the aft wings so that the whole thing will fit in a 3.5 inch diameter tube, from which it is ejected by compressed gas to launch. I’m sure AeroVironmentmust had to get it to 40mph to be controllable while the motor comes up to speed to continue the acceleration.
    I’ll link a video of the real thing so you can see.
    I designed the un-folding system but it isn’t installed in the version in the photo. one thing at a time.
    I mostly did this to see if I could. i think AeroVironment used servos to unfold the wings. I used springs for mine, and (blush) think my design is one of the slickest things I’ve ever done.
    When I get time, I’ll do the catapult – probably something like a crossbow but with big rubberbands and as long a ramp as I can reasonably make.

  213. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that President Trump wants the U.S.-Mexico border wall to be painted black so that it would be too hot for migrants to climb over.
    –
    Why is a white fence cooler?
    I mean I think I know but…
    .Heat in equals heat out.
    So radiation energy from the fence is the same.
    I.e. Solar input that reaches it plus IR from the surrounding air.
    Should equal either the reflected solar energy plus emitted IR as well as the straight emitted IR (larger amount from the “black body”
    –
    Is it that the energy measuring device (thermometer) is only measuring one part of the outgoing energy, in other words does it only read the IR energy?
    Is it that the actual surface is at a lower temp for a white body object so objects or thermometers touching it do not get so much IR from the surface ?
    But then shouldn’t a hand get frostbite if no energy is being emitted?
    Is it that wall has a store of infrared including from the rest of the wall that guarantees a prolonged continuation of high IR output at any area of the wall that has dropped in input due to the hand blocking that patch of the wall.?
    Seeing that thermometers do read higher than IR range one should be wrong.
    Seeing no frostbite two is wrong.
    Which leaves three which feels right but unsatisfactory.

  214. I bet some of the smart people here could make some estimates of the temperature rise from painting the steel black.
    I think it’s more symbolic than anything because all you have to do is wait until the sun goes down.

  215. angech,

    The temperature of any surface is set by a balance of energy, including gains and losses via radiation, convection, and conduction.

    Trump is crazy to want the border painted black, of course…… but it is a perfectly Trumpy idea.

    When the sun shines on a reflective surface, the radiant energy is mostly reflected, not absorbed. That could be specular reflection (like polished aluminum) of diffuse reflection (like white paint). When the surface is black, nearly all sunlight is absorbed and converted to heat. That surface establishes a new (elevated) temperature equilibrium when convective heat losses to the air and radiative losses (in the infrared spectrum) balance the heat being gained from sunlight.

    With regard to things just getting cold: there is alway radiative heat loss. The loss to space is greater when the sky is clear and the air dry….. which is why deserts can become quite cold at night, even if warm during the day. There is a limitation on radiative heat loss called (IIRC) Kirkov’s law of radiation: a perfectly reflective surface can’t radiate any heat; if it could, you could just put one in a vacuum and it would endlessly chill itself via radiative loss to absolute zero. BTW, this is why the surfaces of insulation materials are often metalized…. reduces radiative heat loss/gain.

    Painting the border black would make the ground a bit hotter, but wouldn’t inhibit illegal immigration. OTOH, just deporting illegal immigrants quickly and with very few exceptions does stop most illegal immigration. Adding punishment (like brief automatic prison time in places like ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ before certain deportation) will be even more effective. Forget black paint.

  216. angech, If you’re looking it up, the correct spelling is [Gustav] Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation.

    Yes, it’s a silly idea. Not only can one wait until night-time (as mentioned above), one can start at dawn before the ground heats up. Or wait for a cloudy day. Also, given how much trouble people go through in order to cross the border, a little extra heat isn’t going to deter them.

  218. Painting the border fence black makes sense to me. Anything to make it harder to cross would help. I am assuming that the people who climb the fence normally choose to do so in the daytime. If they normally cross at night, then painting the fence would not help.

    The people climbing the fence are not turning themselves in. They are probably doing that in relatively remote areas. I would guess that they would choose to cross in the daytime since that would make it harder to catch them. At night, they either are easily spotted or can’t see where they are going well enough to move quickly.

    No doubt there would be workarounds. But the harder it is for the bad guys to cross, the easier it is for the good guys to catch them.

  219. There was a time when I painted the pole for my birdfeeder with special paint that was slippery to discourage squirrels from climbing up it. It helped. Perhaps the paint will have the same effect of increasing the slipperiness of the surface.

  221. The wall doesn’t matter if the policy is not to immediately expel a migrant without an immigration hearing.

    Trump had a covid ban and a “stay in Mexico while your hearing is pending” policy. Without this they literally get dropped off at border “wall” drop off points by cartels and Border Patrol picks them up like it is a bus stop, they claim asylum, and are released.

    This guy has a whole series of videos visiting the border that are decent.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MPcGL3Tfac

  222. Tom Scharf wrote: “Patrol picks them up like it is a bus stop, they claim asylum, and are released.”

    That was under Biden. Under Trump 100% are detained and/or sent back across the border. None are released into the USA.

  224. Mike M.
    Didn’t Obama also detain and export illegals more or less immediately?

  225. Mike M,
    Right, but the point is that we are allowing whiplash policy changes administration to administration. Asylum policy is being exploited (90%+ are economic immigrants) and if we tighten that up via legislation then future administrations will not have the option for open borders again.

  226. The safety mechanisms can just be removed or bypassed from the artillery shell. The Iraqi’s were burying artillery shells in the road for IED’s. A detonator was just shoved down the nose IIRC.

  227. Mike and Tom,
    I can’t help think about how cheaply the Ukrainians turned a dumb shell into a smart shell. I would guess that drone is maybe $2000 and I see numbers like $20,000 to put a smart control mechanism on a dumb artillery shell..

  228. The Japanese also did this in WWII but the cost was a bit higher.

    That drone is probably $10K? Most drones can’t carry much weight and that shell is 100 lbs. Likely very short range if it can lift it at all, but you know if you leave it sitting hidden in a field waiting for some bad guys to come along … a flying IED.

  229. mark bofill,

    SpaceX has a great deal riding on this test……. they have made no progress in nearly a year.

  230. john a ferguson wrote: “Didn’t Obama also detain and export illegals more or less immediately?”

    Yes, but he also let a lot of them into the country. Not nearly as bad as Biden, but not nearly as good as what Trump is doing.

    Since so few are crossing the border and turning themselves in, the Border Patrol is now free to patrol the border. The result is that catch-and-release is down by 100% and gotaways are down by something like 95%.

    I don’t know if that is having an effect on fentanyl availability.

  231. john ferguson,
    Obama ‘tried’ to limit illegal immigration. But not so much as Trump circa 2017-2020. Better than nothing. Biden just said “you can common-in, you can all stay”.

    OTOH, Trump is actually reducing illegal immigration, by a factor of about 10. That factor will likely increase with time.

    I know that getting rid of most of Biden’s illegal immigrants will be difficult, but I sure hope the deportations are often enough and clear enough to dissuade more people from trying.

  232. I have been hearing a lot of chatter about the Ukrainians using a mesh network on their drones to combat Russian anti-drone forces.
    I asked Grok if it was real:
    “Ukrainian forces have increasingly adopted mesh network technology for their drones, particularly for first-person view (FPV) drones, to enhance battlefield communication and resilience against electronic warfare (EW). Mesh networks allow drones to act as interconnected nodes, relaying data to one another without relying on centralized infrastructure, which is critical in contested environments where jamming and signal disruption are common.”
    Grok had a lot more to say:
    https://x.com/i/grok/share/2SY60Wu2t0SHoSAh4xCjXUU6L

  233. Steve,
    I don’t disagree with you, except that the show’s not over until Musk pulls the plug, or runs out of money. His attitude seems to be ‘We get there when we get there!’

  234. Anyone who has ever walked barefoot on fresh asphalt in the middle of a summer day can tell you why painting the border wall black will constrict the flow of attempts to cross that wall. Black metal or plastic that has been sitting in the sun all day is not fun to touch; just ask anyone who has taken a black rifle to the range and let it sit in the sun — alternatively, ask anyone who had dark vinyl seats in a car that was sitting out in the sun all day.

    Constricting attempts to a 12-16 hour per day timeframe will aid the Border Patrol. It’s not a panacea but nothing is — anything that substantially constrains the attempts to cross in either geography or time helps.

    Crossers can certainly resort to using insulated gloves or other apparatus but measures like that will slow them down and impede the flow.

    Trump is still Trump. He’s far from brilliant no matter what he might say about himself but he generally seems to have good instincts about what the problem is. I think Ben Shapiro used to say he was great at diagnosing a problem although he had problems with coming up with a prescription that worked (or something to that effect).

  235. HaroldW ta
    john a ferguson
    “Didn’t Obama also detain and export illegals more or less immediately?”
    Well it was the law and he was elected fairly.
    I seem to recall pictures of cages for children built by Obama but falsely attributed to Trump.
    Your recollection as well?
    Also Trump running on building a wall.
    Why would he have to build a wall if Obama had done what you said above?
    No one would have gotten in.
    I guess it would be possible to look up both Border crossing levels in Obamas last 6 months and Trumps in the last 2 months for a fair comparison on how many Obama was illegally letting through , after all you can only detain and export illegals if you put the effort into catching them first.
    Which no one on either side wanted to do as it wrecked cheap labour and drug importation but that’s a different kettle of fish.
    –
    Thanks for the comments on problems painting the walls black.( especially ineffectiveness at night).
    I guess Trump did not realise that it would lead to (making the world hotter) climate change!

  236. angech’
    “I guess Trump did not realise that it would lead to (making the world hotter) climate change!”

    Actually, Trump understands absolutely nothing about climate change. That is fine, he is a technical idiot.. The alternative is environmental crazies running the entire world. IMO, not a good alternative. YMMV.

  237. OMG, Stephen Miller:

    …We’re gonna ignore these stupid white hippies. They all need to go home and take a nap, because they’re all over 90 years old…

    Priceless.

  238. Derek H wrote: ” I think Ben Shapiro used to say he [Trump] was great at diagnosing a problem although he had problems with coming up with a prescription that worked (or something to that effect).”

    An eager young socialist thought he had a great idea for solving a societal problem. He took his idea to one of his elders, hoping for support. The older man listened to the idea, said “interesting …”. Then after thinking for a while, he shook his head and said “I’m sorry, but your idea is no good. It might work in practice, but it will never work in theory”.

    Trump is very good at coming up with solutions that work in practice. But he is hopeless at making things work in theory.

  239. mark bofill,
    ” because they’re all over 90 years old…”

    Actually, no. Hillary, in spite seeming to have of one foot in the grave, is only 77 YO. I admit she looks worse than that. Bill keeps himself a bit trimmer by chasing after much younger women… Monica, where are you when Bill needs you?

  241. “California Issues Commercial Driver’s License To Stevie Wonder https://t.co/So6ANXN2Ol”
    “In the state of California, we believe a CDL is a natural human right and everyone who wants one should get one,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We will never let anything, not even blindness, stand in the way of someone fulfilling their dream of being a big rig driver. That’s the America I want to leave for my children.”
    https://x.com/thebabylonbee/status/1958276798447280611?s=61

  242. Stevie would have had to pass a driving and vehicle inspection test to get a CDL in California. ????

  244. It wasn’t California that issued a permanent commercial license to an illegal alien, it was Washington state. California only issued a temporary license to the same illegal alien. These licenses are a direct violation of federal law, which prohibits commercial licenses for people without legal residency.

    The crash (involving reckless driving of an 18-wheeler in Ft Pierce , FL) killed three. The driver is facing triple homicide charges in Florida, and will no doubt be deported when he gets out of prison. But I think this is a case where the DOJ can (and should) bring charges against those officials in Washington state who issued the commercial license. It has been accepted that states can’t override Federal laws since the Civil War. If Democrats want to convince voters they are not the party of crazies, they will support prosecution of those Washington state officials over this.

  246. It’s an anecdotal episode but the FL crash was pretty egregious. The trucker decided to do an illegal u-turn through an interstate median and a following mini-van ended up going under the trailer. There is video here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDgHr8KHOzw

    “The driver, Harjinder Singh, reportedly failed an English Language Proficiency (ELP) test administered after the crash, according to Eclipse DOT. He only answered 2 of 12 verbal questions correctly and identified 1 of 4 highway traffic signs correctly.”

    The part of not recognizing traffic signs is pretty bad. All (competent) truck drivers know you don’t do that on a freeway.

  247. SteveF wrote: “These licenses are a direct violation of federal law, which prohibits commercial licenses for people without legal residency.”

    I think that depends on the details of the law. The Biden administration let the guy stay (overturning an earlier decision) and issued him a work permit. Would that make the guy sufficiently “legal” to get such a license?

  248. Tom Scharf,
    I know that stretch of road (Florida’s Turnpike). There is no way any sane person would try to cross the median in a car, never mind an 18 wheeler. When the State Police use those crossovers, they turn on their (blindingly bright) flashing lights and slow down well in advance, so there is almost no possibility of them provoking a crash. It is a monitored toll road, so showing up at an exit going the wrong way (where you entered the road is always recorded!) is admission of a serious traffic violation.

  249. Tom, that’s a very scary story, and not too far from where we spend the winter. One tries to be alert to all sorts of bad driving, but it doesn’t look like the other vehicle could have avoided the crash.

    Speaking of improper CDLs, Massachusetts had a scandal with applicants bribing State Police in order to obtain CDLs. I don’t think those unqualified drivers caused as horrific a scene as the one you cited, fortunately

  250. NYC’s giant fraud penalties against Trump have been thrown out on appeal for being “excessive”. I kind of figured that was going to happen once things got out of Manhattan. Yet another black eye for the Trump lawfare.

  251. Mike M,
    If that is true, then there may be a loophole. I had only read that he crossed the Mexico border illegally in 2018, and was he was denied a work permit in September 2020. The Biden administration could have reversed that…. if so, then the blood of the victims is on their hands, not the State officials. In any case: there are three dead people because of someone who was not even supposed to be in the USA.

  253. Tom Scharf,
    Leticia James will likely appeal the ruling to the State Supreme Court…. while concurrently fighting mortgage fraud charges against her…. you know, falsifying information on a loan application.

    Coincidentally (?? perhaps) the Wall Street Journal ran a story three days ago about how absurdly long it had taken the appeals court to issue its ruling.

  254. The question would be did Washington State meet its own standards for granting a CDL. I don’t know but would expect you would need to have some level of driving experience and pass a more rigorous exam for a CDL. You have to ID traffic signs for a regular driving test and anybody driving on US roads for a long time knows the protocol for freeways.

    It’s possible there was some fraud in the application or somebody else took the test for him, etc. Even then the question would be whether the state had reasonable precautions in place to prevent that or overlooked red flags. I doubt that line of attack will go very far but we shall see. It does warrant an investigation.

  255. I skimmed the ruling (a 323 page nightmare). The opinions ranged from: “The whole case was, absurd, brought unlawfully, and with malicious intent.” to “Yes, the trial judge was right to try to bankrupt Trump”.

    The only three things a majority of the panel of 5 could agree on: 1) the fine was so excessive as to infringe on the 8th amendment to the US Constitution, and 2) James was right to bring the case because Trump is really a terrible, dishonest person and, 3) Trump’s business activities in New York should be severely restricted.

    Trump will appeal to Federal Courts, where I expect the state court rulings will (finally) get tossed.

  256. The further they get from NYC the more likely the case will be tossed. Trump was definitely politically targeted (Letitia James campaigned on it) but Trump can also be simultaneously guilty. This makes the case complicated. The penalties were excessive but the state has a lot of discretional power.

    They had to to start using pretty strict sentencing guidelines for criminal cases because the variance in sentencing between judges and some criminals were too large and unjustified.

  257. HaroldW,
    Not just Massachusetts. From Washington Times:

    “In June, a Florida law enforcement sting busted a pair of Department of Motor Vehicles employees who were part of an extensive scheme that included selling licenses to outsiders with no legal right to be in the country, no driving test needed.
    Selling CDLs to noncitizens is big business. Federal investigators have broken up similar licensing rings in California and New York involving multiple DMV offices.”

    I don’t know that it is big business, but it sure is illegal.

  258. Link for SteveF’s quote: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/aug/19/editorial-florida-highway-tragedy-exposes-loophole-allowing-illegals/

    Also from that article:

    Sanctuary states are also happy to exploit a loophole that allows the issuance of “non-domiciled” commercial licenses for people who enter the country on a short-term visa. The right to be in the country may be valid for only a few months, but the CDL might not expire for another five or 10 years.

  259. I looked at the maps from the Russia/Ukraine war for the first time in a while.

    Maybe I am mistaken, but It looks to me like the Russians are concentrating on capturing territory that is in the Donesk Oblast, of which they currently control ~75%. They control all of Luhansk, ~80% of Zaporizhzhia, ~75% of Kherson, and all of Crimea. But it is mostly Donesk where the Russians are pushing.

    Maybe Putin is delaying a cease-fire to try to capture all of Donesk.

  260. Tonight, President Trump is scheduled to participate in a ride-along with law enforcement and military personnel in the nation’s capital.

  261. “The Liberal Patriot” (Ruy Teixeira) had a very good post today: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/two-three-many-sister-souljah-moments

    He decries the lack of Clintonesque “sister Souljah” speeches by Dems. He goes through it all fairly and well, until the very end when he says:

    “All that’s lacking is the guts to do it and right now that seems distinctly lacking in Democratic ranks.”

    Which suggests Ruy thinks there are prominent politicians among Dems who harbor strong disagreements with the party line on 80:20 and 70:30 issues, but they just don’t have the courage to say something. I think he is mistaken, they all pretty much believe in the party line: DEI, racial preferences, unrestricted lawless immigration, wrist-slaps for criminals, etc..

    I think Ruy needs to change parties. He would not be leaving the party, just recognizing the party left him,

  262. I am shocked (SHOCKED!!) that just giving poor people money…. up to $1,000 per moth tax free, and with no reductions in other benefit programs… doesn’t make much difference. They tend to work less (negating some of the advantage of free money), and not much else changes.

    https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/giving-people-money-helped-less-than

    Perhaps, just maybe, what causes poverty can’t be changed by just giving people extra money. Could it be that poverty is almost always the result of unwise behavior, not the other way around? Seems so to me.

  263. Steve,

    What you are saying seems like common sense to me. Exact numbers aren’t worth the trouble of nailing down in my view, but I’ve read that something between 30-70% of lottery big winners end up declaring bankruptcy within 5 years. If one doesn’t know how to manage money, well… One isn’t going to do very well with money, obviously.

  264. Mark Bofill,

    I’ve read that something between 30-70% of lottery big winners end up declaring bankruptcy within 5 years. If one doesn’t know how to manage money, well…

    Of course. Most of them think $1Million = infinity. It’s not. If you have that amount after taxes from the initial payout, it’s enough to provide an annual income of roughly $40K/year for to make it safely through 30 years. (If you spend $40K/year, you might still have tons of money after 30 years or it might run out. It’s a crap shoot.)

    Anyone who is fortunate enough to have that chunk from a trust fund is damn lucky. But when you get it from a trust fund, family generally advises you that $1Million != infinity. You still want to have a job that pays benefits.

    I plan to win the lotto. I won’t be bankrupt. But that’s because I know $1Million != infinity.

  265. I remember having to advise my brother that $1 million was NOT lot of money. It could be pissed away in a year.

  266. Lucia,
    “roughly $40K/year for to make it safely through 30 years.”

    The average inflation adjusted return on the S&P 500 over the last 60 years has been over 7% a year. Even after taxes, that should yield north of $50K a year, indefinitely. Of course, the market might not perform as well in the future as over the past. But yes, winning a million dollars would not make anybody wealthy.

    When I finished college, and prices were about 1/7th of today, $1 million did make a person financially secure.

  268. Tom, on your conspiracy theory:
    “Given the CIA’s history in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation I’m guessing they are also pretty active helping out.”
    I have been trying to dig into that, with little success.
    That breakthrough ‘Flamingo’ cruise missile the Ukrainian Fire Point company developed is an order of magnitude ahead of anything they have had before so it certainly is suspicious that they had help. There is a lot of speculation that it is a byproduct of the Milanion Group FP-5 missile.
    From Grok:
    “Conclusion
    The Milanion FP-5 and the Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile are almost certainly the same system or very closely related, with the Flamingo likely being a Ukrainian-produced or adapted version of the FP-5 design. Without official confirmation from Fire Point or Milanion Group, the exact nature of their relationship—whether co-developed, licensed, or rebranded—remains speculative.”
    However I can find no connection between the Milanion Group and the CIA, and neither could Grok. The firm was founded in 2020 and has a confusing history.
    Grok queries about the company history and missile similarities are here:
    https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_3a510852-95d3-41ea-8176-c7a7d753fb43

  269. There have been a couple new revelations about the Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile.
    I have documented these from reliable OSINT sources but I advise caution using news about anything this new and this secret. This might just be PSYOPS to influence negotiations.
    “According to an interview with Chief Technical Officer Iryna Terekh, the “Flamingo” has entered serial production with the current capacity to produce one missile per day, with hopes to build roughly seven-per-day by October and enter mass production by January. “
    https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1958513756826194137
    New launch image and video:
    https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1958805410938278003

  270. Tom Scharf,
    Those median net worth numbers for people over age 65 are sobering to say the least. The mean values are for sure pushed up a lot by a relative handful of people with very high net worth.

  271. Trump to make a major announcement at noon today from the Oval Office, per his public schedule. The subject remains under wraps.

  272. What I never get with net worth discussion for older people is…. they often don’t also include some sort of worth of pensions. Similar things happen in articles that discuss “Can I retire on $1M?” Well… sure. If you have a $100K a year pension. No if you don’t. Meanwhile discussions of public workers pensions are written as if they had no chance to accumulate any assets the way people in the private sector often must owning to 401K’s taking the place of pensions.

  273. Around 5:30PM, Rubio posted the surprise announcement on X:
    “Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers.”
    “The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.”

  274. Gorsuch grows tired of lower courts simply defying Supreme Court rulings. From the case stemming from NIH terminating grants for DEI focused research:

    So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case “squarely controlled” by one of its precedents. All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they under-score a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect “the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.”

    Maybe Gorsuch doesn’t like being bothered so much during his summer vacation.

    The controlling vote in a fractured court by Barrett “split the difference” and allowed the non-payment of earlier DEI grants, but allowed a lower court’s stay of the administration’s “anti DEI guidance” at NIH to stand. The court is obviously split by ideology (and Trump).

  275. lucia is correct that net worth calculations are misleading if they don’t include pensions. I suspect that annuities are also left out of the survey. My net worth has been increasing in retirement.

  276. Lucia,
    Relatively few people still have defined benefit pensions, and very few have generous defined benefit plans. Most people have (if anything) 401k plans. Generally, the value of 401k plans is included in net worth calculations.

    How I learned to not rely on employers:

    The big company I worked for after college “terminated” their long-standing defined benefit pension plan, which was generous and fully funded, after I had been working for ~11 years. The liquidated plan, after settling lawsuits and funding IRA plans for longer term employees (you needed to be there more than 15 years to qualify for a funded IRA), netted the company some $650 million, of which ~7% went to the CEO, who’s employment contract was based on “net profit increases year on year”. He (not surprisingly) ‘retired’ immediately. The replacement CEO sold all the company’s businesses and the company disappeared as an entity within about 3 years.

    31 years later (long-ago class action settlement), I started getting a “defined benefit” pension of $135 per month (pre-tax), which has already diminished in value by about 30% due to inflation.

  278. Mike’s comment:
    “My net worth has been increasing in retirement.”
    This is true for my net worth also and for the past 10 years with my wife and I it was true for our combined net worth.
    Essentially we have been living on our Social security and retirement monthly checks. The investments, mutual funds and stocks, have been compounding the whole time.
    One thing I have been doing for the last three years is keeping my boys involved in the investments, telling them what I think and getting their input. It’s something we all have in common and is a family project.
    The comedian in our group brings up the Menendez brothers every once in a while.

  279. @Russell Klier Convenient timing. You can tell the comedian in your group that Erik Menendez was just denied parole *again* and his brother Lyle is unlikely to have his petition approved today.

  280. Average net worth is distorted by very high earners so the median is the better measurement.

    Pensions are a big deal but mostly just public sector now. Less than 15% of private sector people have pensions. Pensions should be counted in net worth depending on what is the purpose of the calculation. Is it for viability of retirement or passing on assets to heirs?

    Net worth calculations are pretty variable source to source from what I have seen.

    Although I personally think the 401K system is better than pensions I question the financial literacy of a large percentage of our population.

    The retirement calculators from Fidelity and such have a legal obligation to not over estimate future investment returns. For the most part if stock market returns are steady then actual performance will be better than retirement calculators.

  282. Russell,
    That looks more like a missile storage facility than a missile production facility. Perhaps they call putting the wings on “manufacturing”. I’m surprised they even put out pictures, it’s a big time target.

  283. Ironically private pensions are put under a lot of scrutiny for financial viability in the case of bankruptcy. The government has exempted themselves from such troublesome requirements. It’s a scandal.

    And of course some private sector unions such as the Teamsters have carved out exceptions from these requirements. Uncle Guido is running the retirement funds and investing in … things.

  284. SteveF (#251291),

    According to Grok, the accident was at the 171 mile marker. So I pulled up the street view on google maps – OMG! Who in their right mind would even think to turn a semi around there! It is rural area, but still. There is almost no median, so the truck had to turn from the right lane to attempt it. Also, it is in the middle of nowhere! 20 miles from the last exit, and 15 miles before the rest stop plaza. What made him even want to turn there?

  285. I’m interested in feedback on this:

    …If Democrats were honest, they would admit their woke hierarchy has failed. Defunding police unleashed crime. Open borders invited chaos. Spending produced crushing inflation. Pretending men can be women destroyed women, not just women’s sports.

    But they cannot say these things because the Democratic Party has become messianic. It does not pass laws to solve problems. It passes them to award its supporters a halo of moral superiority. Failure is irrelevant; every new radical program delivers the one thing the party truly values: a sense of being better than the rest of us.

    The Times and the Democratic Party, to the vanishing degree they remain separate entities, are wrong. They don’t have a voter-registration crisis. They have an identity crisis. Our saviors can’t admit they cannot save us. The Democratic party is broken because its soul is.

    It’s not exactly the way I’ve been thinking about it, but it’s pretty close. Where I agree is, the Democratic Party hasn’t (and can’t really) back down from the crazy positions. Why is where I differ, but maybe I’ve got it wrong and the article has it right.
    What do y’all think?

  286. Those type of u-turn accidents would be eliminated by robo-drivers. A certain class of accidents would be added (confused robots) but the net crash rate would likely be reduced.

    I’ve driven by a couple truckers recently who were texting / looking at a phone. Not confidence inspiring. Overall though I would say that truckers are way better behaved than your average redneck / teenager.

  287. I would say the major failure is that Democrats have recently (decade+) prioritized performative displays of good intentions over the hard work of good results. The system is incentivized to reward this behavior.

    These incentives are the same for both sides I just think the Democrats have gotten more lazy in this respect.

    How hard is it to improve urban schools where just getting people to show up is now difficult? Very, very hard and a generational effort. You can’t fix this in a four year term, but you sure can promise to.

    $1B / mile for a subway? Try fixing that Mamdani with your ideology. But you can promise to artificially restrain the market by freezing rents and pay for it with tax the rich fairy dust.

    However the Democrats (and Republicans) do respond to the biggest feedback of all, losing power. You can’t reward your benefactors when you have no power. Almost nobody is running on defunding the police or open borders today.

    So, in a way, the system is working properly. We allow experiments in governing and we shut them down with the blunt force of elections when they fail. There are a class of long term problems (national debt) and embedded rent seekers (unions) that are still problems.

    Beware anyone telling you they will be benevolent governors. Everyone who goes to DC turns into a monster.

  288. That article might be saying the same thing as me but with different emphasis. Why are democrats Democrats? Is it about virtue and moral superiority or philosophy and belief? Maybe there is significant overlap between these two ideas in this instance, is what I’m starting to think.

    [Edit Cross post, thanks Tom. I wasn’t ignoring your comment, I just hadn’t seen it when I started typing this]

  289. Steve (Maybe Putin is delaying a cease-fire to try to capture all of Donesk )

    I still hold that Russia will not except a cease-fire that will immediately turn into a Korean style situation.

    Russia will accept nothing less than a complete surrender from Ukraine to forestall such a situation.

  290. NYT’s interviews CBS’s ex boss on the Trump settlement:

    “The Redstones… worried that Mr. Trump’s lawyers could cherry-pick raw footage and internal communications and do more damage to CBS News’s reputation than any settlement would. Ms. Redstone said CBS personnel had told her that in October 2023, when Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” interviewed President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president had seemed drowsy and had to be prodded to answer. She and [her son Tyler Korff] worried that CBS might be accused of editing the interview to conceal Mr. Biden’s failings.
    “This case was never as black-and-white as people assumed,” Ms. Redstone said.”

  291. “But they cannot say these things because the Democratic Party has become messianic. It does not pass laws to solve problems. It passes them to award its supporters a halo of moral superiority. ”

    He is only just noticing? That has been obvious for a long time.

    The Left characterizes their positions as moral imperatives. Supporting DEI is morally correct, opposing it is wicked. Ditto for trans rights, climate change, renewables, recycling, abortion, Trump, etc. They do that to bully people into compliance. But it also means that they can not retreat from their insane positions.

    The real questions are why the Democrat Party kowtows to the Left and why Democrat voters put up with it. Understanding those questions is a prerequisite to understanding how and when the Party might separate itself from the Left and/or how and when Democrat voters might separate themselves from the Party. I think that at least one of those two things must eventually happen. But then, I am a hopeless optimist.

  292. SteveF wrote: “Net worth generally does include 401k and annuity values.”

    I had a defined contribution pension that has been converted to an annuity. If someone were to call me up on the phone taking a survey, I would have no idea how to put a value on that. And the guy on the other end of the phone would probably not know either. I am guessing it would not be included.

  293. mark,

    I think that former Democrat Elon Musk hit the nail on the head as to why many people vote Democrat: They perceive it as the “nice” party. The moral scolds of the Left exploit that. Restricting immigration? Not nice. Refusing to let confused “trans” kids pretend they are a different sex? Not nice. Trump? Not nice. And on and on.

    Then the Left makes it clear that if you are “not nice”, you will be punished.

    It is going to end badly, either for the Democrat Party or for the Republic. I am rooting for the former.

  294. Thanks Mike. I tend to scramble the ideas ‘democrat’ and ‘leftist’ together as if they were the same thing; it’s good of you to remind me that this isn’t really correct, among other things.

  295. Ed Forbes wrote: “Russia will accept nothing less than a complete surrender from Ukraine”.

    I am inclined to agree. So there will be no peace until either that happens or we impose sufficiently strong sanctions to bring Russia to its knees. I am not sure if the latter is possible.

  296. “BREAKING – CHICAGO IS NEXT: It’s official, President Trump will SURGE federal resources and/or National Guard to the blue crime-infested city of CHICAGO after the mission in DC is complete”
    “African American ladies, beautiful ladies, they’re saying, PLEASE President Trump, come to Chicago.”
    “I did great with the black vote, and they want something to happen.”

  297. Mark,
    “What do y’all think?l”
    I have been trying to figure out why the Democrats keep taking strong positions that are opposed to the position of many of the voters. I think it’s more than just TDS because they have been doing it for quite a while.
    It looks like they are doing it again, they are choosing street thugs and illegal aliens over safe streets in DC.
    It seems the Black people are most affected by the street violence in DC and they are supportive of the President but the Democrats all over the country are demonstrating loudly against it.
    I can’t figure it out.

  298. Ed,
    I agree with you. These peace talks are dead.
    I think Russia is still playing Trump.
    I think they are concerned about the secondary tariffs and see this back-and-forth with Ukraine as a stalling tactic.

  299. I am skeptical of the wisdom and constitutionality of surging federal resources to a city or state without the cooperation of the local or state government involved. DC is, of course, different since it is a federal city.

  300. Mike,
    I agree. I think I am opposed to Trump‘s idea of using the federal government to police Chicago. The federal government has some authority granted to it over the matters in DC.
    But for the rest of the country, the authority for local law enforcement is not granted to the federal government and therefore they have no right to be there.

  301. Russell,

    I think the Dems have painted themselves into a corner. To embrace the positions of the Left is to embrace unpopular craziness. To reject those positions is to alienate many of the party activists, donors, and primary voters. So they need to ignore the Left and focus instead on something they think all Democrats can agree on: Opposition to Trump. Trump knows that, so he keep staking out positions that it is foolish to oppose. And the Dems seem to feel they have no choice but to oppose those positions.

  302. Russell,

    The Feds certainly have the right to be anywhere in the country for the purpose of enforcing federal law. And they can assist in local law enforcement when asked; it was done in Albuquerque in 2022. And the National Guard can be used to maintain order and assist law enforcement, when called out by the governor. That has also been done in Albuquerque.

    There are specified circumstances where the President can call out the National Guard in States. Trump recently did that in LA. It is always controversial and should be done only with great circumspection.

    If Trump tries to cram such actions down the throat of Chicago, he risks putting himself on the wrong side of an 80-20 issue.

  303. Russell,

    I do not think that the peace talks are dead. I think they are probably doomed, but I am happy to see Trump continue to do CPR as long as there is a small chance of survival. It is right that he does that before bringing down the hammer on Russia, because once he brings down the hammer, there is almost surely no going back.

    I just hope that Trump actually has a sledgehammer in his back pocket.

  305. DeSantis: “The deportations will continue until morale improves”

    Government communications have changed forever.

  306. MikeM

    I think he is testing the waters, and maybe trying to pressure those cities to ask for help.

    Brandon Johnson is not going to ask for help.

  307. Hopefully Trump is just trying to get high crime cities to reflexively take anti-law enforcement positions. I doubt general purpose law enforcement by the National Guard will end well politically. There will eventually be some incidents.

    Reported crime statistics in DC should be available pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see what they look like after a month. Particularly car jackings and other broken windows type crimes.

  308. Tom,
    In cities, anything remotely like “troops” is also creepy. It’s one thing to resort to troops during real emergencies– floods, earth quakes and honest to goodness riots– but using them for policing is creepy.

  309. There are endless bodycam videos on YouTube of citizens behaving badly, openly disrespecting law enforcement, mental health breakdowns, domestic violence, etc. It takes a certain mentality to deal with that and young lightly trained and armed National Guard troops are going to eventually blow up when faced with that.

    Trump probably wants to go old school crack some heads for compliance. We have definitely gone too far with all the open shoplifting but we also don’t want to go back to Kent State either. Let the locals deal with it. I’m pretty confused on why some neighborhoods don’t want more law enforcement if that is in fact the case.

  310. Tom Scharf wrote: “I doubt general purpose law enforcement by the National Guard will end well politically”.

    Irrelevant, since nobody is suggesting doing that.

    So far, crime stats in DC are greatly improved. The question is whether that will last, especially after the surge is over.

  311. Mike M.

    Irrelevant, since nobody is suggesting doing that.

    Well, you posted something about Chicago being next in August 22, 2025 at 12:48 pm. So what is Trump’s suggestion vis-a-vis Chicago? Is he saying they are next to get a free pizza and ice cream for everyone day? Don’t think so.

  312. I think it might be about preventing escalation? It is an idea that occurs to me anyway. A small number of cops, even federal officers, invite a surge of protestors and a leavening of career rioters. Bringing in the National Guard from the get-go may help extinguish such notions before they even get started. But I don’t know, I’m totally making this up exactly as if I were an LLM. Well, most LLMs are trained to dislike Trump too much to give an opinion like this, but you get the idea…

  314. Mark,
    Having city streets look like we’ve just been taken over a junta looks creepy. And LLM can come up with whatever excuse about avoiding “escalation”– but I suspect juntas want to avoid “escallation” too.

    Having military personal and equipment milling around to “protect” — even against possible hypothetical unforeseen outbreaks of violence? Does not make me feel safe. It’s creepy.

  315. Lucia,

    I understand the sentiment. I don’t fear the National Guard very much. I don’t think those guys would obey orders that were creepy beyond a certain point. YMMV, but I get where you are coming from.

    Trump does stuff I’d prefer he didn’t. I’m not a big fan of the idea of the Federal government being a stakeholder in private corporations either, the way he wants to do with Intel. Maybe I can’t escape my laissez nous faire convictions and it really is a good idea, but I still don’t like it.

    I’m confident I’d have liked Kamala Harris’s doings even less on the whole.

    Shrug.

  316. Well Disney finally put out a decent non-woke film. Oops, sorry, that is China’s $2B world wide grossing animated film Ne Zha 2.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETlOSBR92Fs

    Hollywood / Pixar / Disney can definitely use a little competition IMO. This thing is world class animation and storyline according to reviews.

  317. The US has very serious strategic national security interests in cutting edge silicon foundries. Paying TSMC to build foundries in the US is a better plan than buying a stake in floundering Intel. As it sits today if China took over Taiwan tomorrow we are in a world of hurt.

    Intel needs to get their act together and I see no signs of that happening imminently.

  318. @Tom Scharf:

    “DeSantis: “The deportations will continue until morale improves””

    But morale IS improving (in some sectors) BECAUSE the deportations are continuing.

  319. Mark,
    I don’t fear the National Guard. But they are troops, not police. And having troops milling around is creepy.

    I remember troops milling around in Spain when I was there on vacation. Creepy. Sorry, but creepy.

  320. I don’t really know what distinction you are making there. Creepy means inspiring fear or unease, I think anyway. Unease, fine. They make me feel uneasy as well.

    Cats can be creepy too, you know. Well—, they can be sneaky. I don’t know if my cats have ever made me feel uneasy. But I always want to think they can be creepy because they are good at creeping up on things. But I guess that isn’t really what creepy means.

  321. mark,
    Creep shows? I asked google the difference– to see if it’s just me. Here’s what the AI wrote, and it strikes me as being what I mean

    Being frightened is a clear and immediate response to a recognized threat, triggering a physical fight-or-flight response, while being creeped out stems from an ambiguous or uncertain situation, evoking feelings of unease, discomfort, and being unsettled, rather than a direct physical danger. Creepiness arises when something is perceived as “off-kilter” or potentially a threat, but without enough clarity to trigger full-blown fear.

    Seeing the standing troops milling about doesn’t give me a flight-or-flight response. But I feel unsettled. It “weirds me out”. It makes me think things like: why are they here? Something must be wrong… What if they did suddenly go postal?

    In contrast, fright would be more like: “OMG. I’m going home now. Danger will robinson, danger danger!”

  323. lucia wrote: “This looks creepy by the way”.

    I don’t see why. There are a lot of definitely not creepy pictures at that link. Is there a specific one you find creepy?

    On a quick scan, I did not spot any visible weapons in those pictures. I think I would find it very unsettling to see people carrying weapons at the ready in a civilian setting.

    So far as I know, the National Guard is not doing the job of sworn law enforcement officers in DC. No doubt they would intervene if a crime were going down in front of them, but every citizen has the right to do that.

  324. To me it’s kind of like seeing troops in airports after 9/11. What are you guys expecting, a firefight to break out in the terminal?

    Show of force, performative.

    There will be far less carjackings if a soldier is on every corner. What happens after they leave is up for debate.

  325. I was attending the university of Pittsburgh when the riots of the 1960s broke out in the city. The university is integrated with the Oakland community of the city.
    We pretty much were taken over by the National Guard. They were staging their motorized units in Pitt stadium. I had to walk by sorority row to get to my classes and they had snipers on the roofs of the sorority houses.
    Creepy is a good word to describe it.
    I had another run in with the National Guard here in Sarasota. After one of the hurricane evacuations, they were guarding the access bridge to Lido key and I stopped for some water on my way back from doing some recon on the key.
    I got to talking to one of the officers, and I mentioned that our sheriff deputies were having trouble keeping people off the keys, but his men didn’t seem to have any trouble and I said do you know why that is and he said:
    “ when they get mouthy with us, we just say remember Kent State?”
    pictures of the National Guard in Pitt Stadium, 1968
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1959006395246027064?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ

  327. I WILL say that I would be genuinely afraid of walking around on some sections of some cities after dark. Maybe the unease trade off is reasonable if it removes the cause of fearing for personal safety.

  328. John,
    Yes, I told the officer I thought that was inappropriate way to respond to the public. Kent State is in eastern Ohio and it is fairly close to Pitt, so I may have been overly sensitive.

  329. MikeM,
    “f someone were to call me up on the phone taking a survey, I would have no idea how to put a value on that. ”

    Sure, but it is not actually difficult to assign a current value to that. Of course, people could mislead pollsters (honestly or otherwise), but I think the greater point is that there are a lot of people with little in terms of personal assets.

  330. Tom Scharf,
    ” Paying TSMC to build foundries in the US is a better plan than buying a stake in floundering Intel. As it sits today if China took over Taiwan tomorrow we are in a world of hurt.”

    For sure, and Intel is clearly not a leader in this technology. OK, I understand that we need to have the capability of producing advanced integrated circuits. But I don’t get the adoration for Intel.

    There are lots of ways to fix this, and subsidizing TSMC to build current-class fabs in the USA seems (by far) the most efficient way forward. I have been to their fabs, and everyone is fast and super-dedicated. TSMC does not want to be under the thumb of Beijing…. give TSMC good reason to move here, and be done with it.

  331. Lucia,
    “And having troops milling around is creepy.”

    Most of those troops are good-ol-boys from rural areas, and about as dangerous as you and I. I am not at all worried about them.

    Creepy is the woke left censoring on-line comments.

  332. Tom Scharf,
    “There are endless bodycam videos on YouTube of citizens behaving badly, openly disrespecting law enforcement, mental health breakdowns, domestic violence, etc. It takes a certain mentality to deal with that and young lightly trained and armed National Guard troops are going to eventually blow up when faced with that.”

    Not seeing it. These are not politically motivated loonies, just normal kids. Yes, it will be a shock for them to encounter the lunatic left. No, they won’t behave badly; that is not how normal people react to provocation.

  333. MikeM

    I don’t see why. There are a lot of definitely not creepy pictures at that link. Is there a specific one you find creepy?

    All of them creep me out. You are not required to be creeped out nor are you required to understand. That said: If you are trying to anticipate political reaction to that, you might want to be aware that creeps some people out. Because they are creeped out whether or not you understand “why”.

    A similar issue: people getting “the ick” when dating. Someone gets “the ick”, they get “the ick”.

  334. SteveF

    Creepy is the woke left censoring on-line comments.

    Not sure I’d call that “creepy”. It’s certainly very objectionable. I need to find the correct adjective.

  335. Lucia,

    Am I to understand that you find National Guardsmen milling about in public in cities in their official digs moderately revolting (a source of moderate revulsion)? [I ask because of the graphic]

    This isn’t my take at all. I feel unease, because it’s not impossible that armed soldiers in the streets could be a prelude to a declaration of martial law and the suspension of our liberty. It’s not impossible, merely very unlikely, and this unlikely possibility is enough to generate a sense of unease in me.

    But revulsion, nope. I’m with Steve on that, these are just the guys. I’ve worked with and around such men for years.

  336. It didn’t seem to be what you were saying just previously

    But I feel unsettled. It “weirds me out”. It makes me think things like: why are they here? Something must be wrong… What if they did suddenly go postal?

    So maybe you just posted it (the graphic) because it was interesting? It is interesting. I’ve been stuck on it all evening.

  337. mark

    Am I to understand that you find National Guardsmen milling about in public in cities in their official digs moderately revolting (a source of moderate revulsion)?

    Yep. Though were it not for the graphic, I would say “repellent”. It makes me prefer not to be where they are milling on duty. I have no problem with off duty guardsmen or troops.

    that armed soldiers in the streets could be a prelude to a declaration of martial law and the suspension of our liberty.

    Sure. And I find that idea repellent. I don’t actually expect them to suddenly do it– so it’s not “fear” in the “fight or flight sense”, but it’s a bit…. gag!

    I used to share the ride on public transportation with off duty sailors going back and forth to Great Lakes Naval base. Chatted yada, yada. They were nice young men. But they weren’t on duty. Had the same men been sitting there in an “official” capacity, I’d find it creepy.

    these are just the guys.

    Yes. The individual guys are just fine. I’d chat with them if they were just on the bus with me– or at the museum etc. But a bunch of them assigned in an official capacity to be there? Why? Gag. Creep. Unsettled? Whatever word you like. Doesn’t make me feel good by any means.

  339. Mark,
    I posted it because it’s interesting. I don’t necessarily think it’s perfect. But it’s trying to capture some differences in feelings captured by different words. Afraid? Creeped out? The ick? We have lots of words that overlap in some ways. But they are also different.

  340. I understand you now, thanks Lucia.

    [Edit: Mike, yeah. Military doesn’t bother me either. Dare I say it might be a guy predisposition to some extent? I suspect so.]

  342. MikeM

    So the existence of the military creeps some people out.

    No. And I didn’t remotely say that or suggest it in any way.

  343. Ok. I am certainly not interested in / trying to offending you Lucia. I’m not quite sure we view this the same way, but it doesn’t particularly matter to me. It’s not as if I think it makes you deficient in some way, or me either. And then again, maybe we do view this pretty much the same way and just use different phraseology to describe it.

    I mean, I do feel a little safer around U.S. active duty soldiers. Not overwhelmingly so, but slightly. It might be my lack of imagination that I refuse to conceive of how they can be a threat, because we all know history is chock full of examples of how this can be so, just as it is full of examples of how they can be the salvation of a population.

    I don’t really know. I’m moving on, I don’t know why I’ve spent as much time as I did on this item.

    Thanks.

  344. “……declaration of martial law and the suspension of our liberty.”

    Most of the people who join the Army (or national guard) are not going to go along with anything like that. OK, some knuckle-head like Walz would be concerning, but he is the knuckle-head lefty exception, not the norm. Besides, there are 300+ million rifles owned by individuals, and lots of those owners are very good shots. “7 Days in May” is just not in the range of plausible.

  345. Steve,

    Yes. The more I think about it, the more strongly I suspect we may be being naive, but it remains true that I think most of those guys would disobey in such a situation.

    The problem would be, we are assuming Trump would more or less be an idiot about it and give blatant and obviously illegal commands. He wouldn’t. I’m not commenting on whether or not he is this evil, I am merely noting that he is not this stupid. There would be reasonable pretext or grounds for the Guardsmen to believe they were doing the right thing.

    At least I suspect this would be the case. Gloomy subject. I’m going to do something more productive and catch up with this thread later.

  346. lucia,

    OK. I will just leave it as a mystery as to what bothers you about those pictures.

  347. MikeM,

    leave it as a mystery as to what bothers you

    Mystery? I’m a bit surprised if you really find it a “mystery”.

    Very early in the thread, I said this:

    But the idea that troops are used for policing actions on a regular basis? Not Main St

    Tom,
    In cities, anything remotely like “troops” is also creepy. It’s one thing to resort to troops during real emergencies– floods, earth quakes and honest to goodness riots– but using them for policing is creepy.

    I think I’ve said what I find creepy.

    In those photos:
    * troops aren’t rescuing people in a real emergency.
    * they aren’t there to quell an ongoing riot.
    * they aren’t repelling invading armies.

    They are filling a policing function. Even if they aren’t arresting, the underlying reason is, presumably, “maintaining law and order”– on ordinary days. That’s a policing function– and this is not an emergency breakdown of order.

    I have no objection to you not being creeped out by the same things that creep me out. But I don’t think I’ve been remotely mysterious about what creeps me out. It is not the mere existence of the military, nor is it the individuals who make up the military.

    Hey, if Continental Congress didn’t like the idea of large standing armies, I think I’m allowed to be creeped out by troops being used for policying functions.

  351. lucia,

    It seems we have a miscommunication.

    Your link has pictures of National Guard troops fighting fires, rescuing people, training, preparing to deploy oversees, meeting with oversees counterparts, receiving awards for service. There are a couple pictures of such troops on the streets of DC. There are a fair number of others related to that deployment but not actually on the streets and so not really different from any number of other pictures that one might take of those troops.

    I saw nothing wrong with those pictures and asked if there were certain ones that bothered you so that I could look more closely at those. You said “all of them”. So I thought you meant all of them.

  352. ON July 14, Trump gave Russia 50 days, so I guess that would be Sept. 2. It seems that the current deadline is Sept. 3, unless it isn’t. I am all for giving peace every possible chance, but I am getting impatient with Trump’s patience.

  353. MikeM
    I don’t know what you see on your screen. But on my screen, the links where I wrote “This looks creepy by the way” does NOT not show “troops fighting fires, rescuing people, training, preparing to deploy oversees, meeting with oversees counterparts, receiving awards for service”.

    By “this” I meant precisely what shows on the screen looks creepy. That is “front page” of the tweet. H

    Here’s what my screen shows. It’s ONLY pictures of the guard looking liking like they are making their presence felt on the street. Vehicles included.


    Does that display differently on your screen?

    You said “all of them”. So I thought you meant all of them.

    I meant all the ones showing on the screen at my blog and showing in the specific tweet I linked. Not all images posted anywhere and everywhere in the internet!

    If yes, it would be interesting to see how that comment shows on your screen.

    FWIW: I can’t seem to click directly to the post. But if I click “copy”, and paste the link I get here:
    https://x.com/DCGuard1802/status/1958955949642924215

    The three images show are the only images on that x.com tweet. I have no idea where the pictures you describe are– but that’s not on my screen here. And by “this” I meant what was shown on that tweet, and is displayed here.

    If x.com shows different things to different people, I’d be interested in knowing that so in future, I can take screenshots instead of “embedding”.

  354. If x.com shows different things to different people, I’d be interested in knowing …

    Eff! So would I. That’d be a useful thing to be aware of for sure.

  355. mark,
    I don’t know what MikeM clicked. The hashtags in the tweet each seem to go to a link. Maybe he clicked one of those?

    But my comment was about the images shown in the tweet I linked, in the three things that tweeter linked.

    Oddly, the link “Read more on X” takes me …. to the log in page. I log in and it still takes me to the log in page. But the “copy link” does send me to a link that shows the tweet I intended to link.

    I’ve clicked all the hashtags now. I have no idea what images Mike M saw.
    #partnerships doesn’t have the images he discusses. (It’s not even national guards. Right now I’m getting three other links to follow, the first tweet is of a bunch of men standing on a podium in front of a slide in -possibly– chinese.)

    #presenceandtrust sends me to the specific link I posted with the picttures I find creepy.

    @USNationalGuard sends me to the US national guards profile page and has tons of images.

    Maybe that’s the one he picked click to? But it’s a link inside the tweet. It’s not the tweet I linked. It’s also clearly not the image I posted to display here.

  356. Maybe that’s the one he picked click to? But it’s a link inside the tweet. It’s not the tweet I linked. It’s also clearly not the image I posted to display here.

    Likely this was the case, just operator error. Happens to me all the time.

  357. Report from Politico: an organization that calls itself The Third Way (apparently slightly more centrist Democrats) suggests Democrats stop using these words, since they offend too many voters:

    privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.

    I guess the theory is that if they just talked more like normal people the unhinged left would recover voters they lost. IMHO, they are delusional.

    ‘Progressives’ use those expressions because they believe bizarre things that most people do not. Choosing their words more carefully is not going to make their preferred policies, based on bizarre beliefs, any less nutty, nor any less offensive to most voters.

    I find it almost comical the contortions the ‘progressive’ left will go through to avoid actually abandoning unpopular policies. The wilderness will be their home for a while more.

  359. Mark bofill,
    I definitely don’t have a problem with every picture in every tweet on the National Guards page. It’s ones like the specific tweet I linked.

    When I brought up what I found creepy I was responding to Mike M’s comment that Trump hinting or intimating that Chicago was next, and he seemed to mean, next for doing what he’s doing in DC.

    MikeM’s later comment was

    Tom Scharf wrote: “I doubt general purpose law enforcement by the National Guard will end well politically”.

    Irrelevant, since nobody is suggesting doing that.

    So far, crime stats in DC are greatly improved. The question is whether that will last, especially after the surge is over.

    I’m really not sure what purpose MikeM imagines Trump has for the National Guard Troops. CBS quotes Trump as saying

    “I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in D.C., and they’re going to be allowed to do their job properly,” Mr. Trump said at a White House news conference Monday.

    The Army has activated the D.C. National Guard to “assist law enforcement in the nation’s capital,” it said in a statement and added that of the approximately 800 soldiers activated, 100 to 200 would be supporting law enforcement at any given time on an “array of tasks from administrative, logistics and physical presence.”

    That’s not fire fighting. It’s not helping flood victims. It’s not diffusing bombs. It’s not repelling the invading Canadian army. If “assist law enforcement” is not policing qua policing, it’s pretty darn close.

    If Trump is intimating that for Chicago or other cities, it looks like he’s intimating policing. And the photos I liked looked like policing or at least policing-adjacent.

    For what it’s worth: a city with streets and tourist destinations being occupied by “peace keeping troops” gives me the creeps too. That a city I will avoid visiting. Their presence repels me from visiting. Creepy.

    I’m glad I didn’t schedule dancing in Capital Dancesport last weekend. I would have found the fact of national guards present at tourist destinations during daylight creepy. I went to those a year ago. I did not feel remotely in danger.

  360. Oh. Now in lucia’s post, I see the images. Before there was just a twitter widget that contained the link I clicked on. The result depends on the history of what I have done with my tacking and script blockers. So far as I know, this was the first time it mattered.

    I can see how somebody could be bothered by the images lucia intended.

    Note: I clicked on the ONLY link that I saw. Or that I see now that I have reset my permissions.

  361. If the Dems really want a way back from the wilderness, it is straightforward:

    1) Stop all preferences in hiring, admissions, and promotions based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or national origin.

    2) Stop supporting illegal immigration, and stop protecting illegal aliens already present.

    3) Stop protecting criminals from the consequences of their crimes.

    4) Stop trying to control what people can say…… and think.

    5) Stop saying certain disturbed men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.

    I know that each of these is a non-starter, and this is far from a complete list. But even these limited steps would help Dems to regain power.

  363. Today’s humorous bodycam video.

    “You are not going to arrest me”
    “You must turn off your body camera if I request it”
    “You are being detained because you are not leaving”
    “She’s a f***ing lawyer so she knows” (Response: “Well that’s bullsh– lawyers stuff so that’s not true)
    “I’m an AG, I’m an AG, I’m an AG, I’m an AG” (Response: “Good for you, I don’t give a s—“),
    “You are going to regret this”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnIyPG2EsA

    I’ve seen a bunch of videos on trespassing complaints. The business wants somebody to leave because they are causing a disturbance (almost always intoxicated) and they refuse. This is exactly how it goes every time. You refuse to leave, you get arrested.

    She was placed on unpaid leave pending an investigation by the RI AG office.

    This is yet another example of why bodycams are a cop’s friend almost all the time. With the video the behavior is indefensible no matter who you are.

  364. MikeM,
    That explains how you didn’t grasp what I intended! There are several links in the html if I look at what I copy paste with “embed post”. I definitely though… “How can he be seeing fire fighting?!!” But the national guards main page at x.com may update regularly. If so, there could be different things there pretty frequently.

  365. MikeM,
    I missed you told me the link. Yes, that’s to the top of the National Guards x.com page. It shows tons of stuff, most not creepy. The overwhelming majority of National Guard activity is not creepy and the troops themselves are not creeps.

  366. Tom
    Yeah…

    “You must turn off your body camera if I request it”

    Google AI answer to “does a police officer need to turn off a body cam if requested by a citizen in rhode island”?

    Overview.
    ” No, a Rhode Island police officer is not required to turn off their body camera upon a citizen’s request, especially if the request comes from a suspect. The Rhode Island Police Chief’s Association clarified that while an officer can turn off a camera to speak with a victim or witness, they are not allowed to do so at the request of a suspect”

    Sounds like she’s a “suspect”. Suspected of trespass. Not armed robbery– but still, “suspect”. The possible victim appears to be the restaurant. If google AI is correct the officer is not allowed to turn off the web cam!

    “I’m an AG, I’m an AG, I’m an AG, I’m an AG”

    The text in the post indicates she is a “special assistant attorney general”.

    They should have just left the way the husband suggested. He suggest it several times. How drunk are the women? What do they think they will gain? This video is truly a marvel of stupidity.

    “Get your feet in the car!!”

    She’s now on unpaid leave.

  367. I can almost guarantee she is a progressive Democrat. 😉

    So the husband goes and bails them out. I would love to have heard the conversation on the way home.

  368. The kind of surprising thing is that the two women didn’t seem all that drunk….. not falling-over-slurring-words drunk anyway. I would like to know what prompted the restaurant staff to call the police.

  369. The law is pretty clear, if a private business asks you to leave, you need to leave. The cops are not going to adjudicate who is right about a dispute, the business doesn’t have to state a reason. The “lawyer” in question should know that. The cops sometimes explain this.

    People get pissed, refuse to leave, resist the officers forcing them to leave, end up in jail with silly trespassing and resisting arrest charges. People can’t seem to understand the cops have a lot of discretion here and the attitude is not helpful.

    Charges like this are dropped or reduced pretty often, maybe not this time because she made it a high profile event.

  370. SteveF

    I would like to know what prompted the restaurant staff to call the police.

    Me too.

    But seriously, if you are sane and just want to have an enjoyable evening:

    1. Restaurant won’t sit you. You leave.
    2. Restaurant ask you to leave their premises– which includes the sidewalk. You leave.
    3. Restaurant says they are phoning the police. You leave.
    4. Police arrive after being called by restaurant. You leave.
    5. Police tell you to leave. You leave.
    6. Police say the word “trespassing”. You leave.

    These women were evidently in their 30s. One does have a law degree. They must have at least two brain cells in their head.

    Maybe you had some sort of “right” to stay. Then maybe if you really think they are unreasonable to ask you to leaven, you turn your camera on early in this process- say near (1). Get the restaurant on record for why the ask you to leave. Then you leave. Then, the next morning when you’ve sobered up, you look at it. If they are clearly unreasonable, and you don’t look like tooooo much of an idiot, you put your video on the intertubes.

    The husband did his level best under the circumstances. His wife is probably pissed at him.

  371. Tom S,
    Early on the cop says he’s not arresting her, he’s just detaining. Maybe that turned into an arrest? And charges? (I think it did. I’m not going to look for the time stamp when it did.)

    I think even if charges are dropped, she will lose her job. She’s embarrassed the AG’s office. Also, the police are going to be pissed off and the AG probably kinda, sorta, likes the police.

  372. I think that police are not allowed to turn off their body cameras if an interaction is confrontational or likely to become confrontational, as was obviously the case in the RI incident. Recording such interactions is the purpose of the body cameras.

  373. MikeM,
    My interpretation of what Google AI said: The policeman would not be allowed to turn his body camera off at her request. She is– or became a “suspect”. Even if she doesn’t think what she did is wrong, she appears to have been trespassing or suspected of trespassing.

    He’s allowed to turn it off if a victim requests– but that’s up to him. In this case, the restaurant is the victim. She may feel she’s a victim. But of what? Being asked to leave? Not get seated? As SteveF wrote, it would be interesting to see what happened before this! That’s not a victim of a crime.

    That police officer did a great job. Husband was good too.

  374. https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/08/19/ri-assistant-ag-caught-in-tirade-worked-as-a-suffolk-ada-shes-embarrassed-herself/

    ” Attorney General Peter Neronha said Special Assistant AG Devon Flanagan Hogan will face a “strong sanction” ….

    “Look, she’s put me in a bad position,” Neronha said on Providence’s WPRO, “she’s embarrassed herself, humiliated herself, treated the Newport Police Department horribly.”

    This is all we know about why the restaurant phoned:

    Newport Police officers responded to the restaurant at about 9:51 p.m. last Thursday for a report of an “unwanted party,” according to an incident report, which indicated alcohol was involved.

    The AG

    “She knows better,” the AG said. “I’ve got 110 lawyers. She embarrassed all of them, in a sense.”

  375. If you are cuffed and locked in the back seat of a police car, it is a safe bet you have been arrested. The assistant AG at least stopped short of resisting arrest. The other lady? Not so much.

    Tom Scharf, thanks for bringing a bit of levity. Lots of humor value there.

  376. It could have been something as simple as the restaurant staff deciding at least one of them had too much to drink. Potential liability (including personal liability) for serving an inebriated person would be good cause to ask someone to leave.

  377. To go back to an earlier comment: What makes a surface get hot when exposed to sunlight is having high absorptivity in the solar spectrum and low emissivity in the thermal IR. Polished aluminum heats up because its emissivity in the thermal IR is lower than its absorptivity in the visible and near IR.

    Back in the day I remember reading about a coating for solar water heaters called TiNOX that had 95% absorptivity in the solar spectrum and less than 5% emissivity in the thermal IR. The claim was that it could produce more hot water from a given level of insolation than normal black coatings. There was even a table on line somewhere that had the relative absorptivity/emissivity of various surfaces.

    If you wanted a hot wall, you would need a wall with high heat capacity coated with something like TiNOX so it wouldn’t cool off as much at night. Maybe. Probably way too expensive.

  378. His Worship now seems to be going after wind-turbines and solar panels.

    As far as the wind-turbines goes, he must be unaware that the traditional method is with the assistance of a latino on a donkey.

  379. John,

    My brains are melting!!

    [Edit: I know, I know. The jokes write themselves. How could I tell, what brains; so on so forth.]

  381. Apparently, Trump posted ‘The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!’ regarding this, so. Tough break for guys like me with melted brains I guess.
    Well, there’s still AI for me to fall back on…

  382. The real AG said he sat down with the suspect and they both watched the video together. Good move.

    Detained is not arrested but it certainly leads to an arrest many times. For example in a domestic situation the “wrong” person might get detained because it is necessary to separate the combatants and sort things out. They then uncuff and release the detained person later.

    Technically detainment is for the cop’s safety a lot of the time. If a cop tells you they are detaining you it is absolutely a very strong warning that you may need to upgrade your attitude. You are being put in timeout. For God’s sake don’t resist them putting on cuffs. This has worked out well exactly never.

    The young lady ripped the cuffs off like she was proud, I guarantee they got put on a lot tighter on try number two.

    I’ve seen them detain disruptive bystanders for effective crowd control and as a warning to others. These types get released a lot. Other times people go ballistic in the back of the car kicking and screaming if it’s a bad mental health day.

  383. Tom,

    For God’s sake don’t resist them putting on cuffs. This has worked out well exactly never.

    Absolutely. The time to fight is the courtroom, not during the arrest. The only thing about the arrest is to consent to absolutely nothing and if possible make it demonstrable later that you consented to absolutely nothing. But act as if the cops have every right on earth to arbitrarily detain you for awhile, because.. they pretty much do.

    [Edit: It’s crazy that an assistant AG didn’t understand this. She probably did on some level of awareness that wasn’t in control of her behavior at the time.]

  386. Thanks Mark. One of my favorite musicals, which I have seen several times.

    On a more serious (but humorous) note: I believe the true cause for high electric rates is revealed by plotting average residential rates for each state against % Democrat votes in the 2024 presidential election. The correlation looks strong.

  388. “the left-leaning policy think tank Third Way published a memo titled “Was It Something I Said?” the group admits Democrats have alienated Americans with “superior, haughty, and arrogant language.”this elitist language is a primary barrier in their quest to stop President Trump and MAGA.
    To rectify this, Third Way included a list of 45 words Democrats should avoid to avoid repelling voters. “
    –
    I would add another word to that list
    “Unprecedented”
    My brain goes into a spin whenever I hear that word as it almost immediately triggers an image of an outraged Democrat.
    –
    I do not think I have ever read JF use any of the words in the list.
    –
    So happy to see Bolton the b………..r in trouble.
    It’s almost u………..:d

  389. So Third Way wants Dems to stop using the words associated with their loony ideas. Nothing, it seems, about ditching the loony ideas. So basically they are saying that Dems need to do a better job of deceiving people about what they stand for.

  390. “The husband did his level best under the circumstances. His wife is probably pissed at him.”
    I thought the husband was the most fun player in the whole video.
    He was talking in code:
    “I’m right here” he kept repeating to his wife,
    but he was actually telling the cops:
    “ I’m way back here so I’m not interfering with you cops”
    “ I don’t care what you do with her”
    “ I wish I had stayed home watching the television”
    I think the wife understood his code clearly. He’s in for some frosty times.
    If he were my mate, I’d buy him a beer and toast him next time I saw him.

  391. Canada caved……
    “On August 22, 2025, Prime Minister Carney announced that Canada would remove retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods compliant with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) starting September 1, 2025. This move was described as a “goodwill gesture” to align with U.S. exemptions for CUSMA-compliant goods and to restart stalled trade negotiations.” Grok
    I am surprised they held out so long. We are their biggest export market and they need us.

  392. Texas representatives Al Green and Jasmine Crockett both losing their seats in Congress:
    “The Houston-area district, currently occupied by Democratic Rep. Al Green, is being redrawn by GOP lawmakers to favor Republicans and cover almost entirely new territory.”
    https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/21/briscoe-cain-congress-texas-9th-congressional-district/
    “Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett now faces new political challenges after the state legislature approved a congressional map.”
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/crockett-seat-shakeup-gop-map-210039368.html

    Texas state governance is second only to Florida state governance.

  393. john ferguson
    AUGUST 23, 2025 AT 1:25 PM
    “His Worship now seems to be going after wind-turbines and solar panels”

    Good for Trump !

    Every time I pay my California summer monthly $800 elect bill on my downsized 1100sf house, I thank god that Trump was elected and is pulling both the CO2 Endangerment rule and California smog waver.

    I am sick to death of paying $4.50/gal gas and $0.50kh electric rates. California Windmills and solar requirements are a direct cause for these criminal rates.

    With 20% of California oil refinerie production scheduled to close due to California race to kill oil production in the state, California is staring at $8 gal gas at the end of this year due to market shortages.

    It will be interesting to see if political survival trumps bowing to the climate crazies. If not, California voters will become a tad rebellious.

  394. angech,

    See my comments on Third Way Words up thread.

    EdForbes,
    $4.50 gas? That is a bargain in CA. Every time I visit I pay over $5. But yes, everything CA does is designed to make all energy much more expensive.

    California voters are not going to rebel. Consider moving to a more sensible state.

  395. Your 1,100 Sq Ft will probably bring2.6 million; you can buy a very nice place in Florida and pocket $2 million. 😉

    My electricity is $0.14 per KWH; gasoline was $2.89 yesterday a mile from my house.

  396. Douglas Hunter,

    It is a garbage lawsuit and will get tossed from court. Dozens of similar lawsuits across the USA have been dismissed. This and all others will as well. Legal rubbish.

    The Guardian accurately presents the views of the unhinged climate activists in the UK. Except in crazy places like California, voters in the USA reject this nonsense. One of the many reasons an ‘unconventional’ politician like Trump got elected a second time; Biden gave them a glimpse of what a progressive, climate alarmed, future would look like.

  397. Tom Scharf,
    “Other times people go ballistic in the back of the car kicking and screaming if it’s a bad mental health day.”

    I’m pretty sure for those folks it is just one of many such days, only a few of which are observed by others.

    My advice: keep in mind that most cops are perfectly normal people, but some are serious head cases….. with night sticks, tasers, and guns. Don’t be stupid.

  398. What? Oh. I couldn’t read the article. I was too busy looking for a haven from the floods and boulders that constantly keep me on the move.

  400. “I was too busy looking for a haven from the floods and boulders that constantly keep me on the move.”

    LOL.

    Here in Florida, I have to keep fleeing the constant cat 5 hurricanes and keep an eye on the rapidly rising sea level that might swamp my house when it reaches +3 meters. Odd how Obama’s low-lying seaside mansion on the Vineyard is not under threat.

  401. john ferguson,

    Yes, it is mostly the subsidies. With offshore wind there is also facilitated permitting in Federal waters, which would never be granted for any other kind of project. Trump has stopped that too. Elections have consequences.

  402. Starship launch 7:30 EST.

    Never a dull moment. Let’s hope they get to re-entry this time around.

  403. The Revolution Wind project in Rhode island that has a stop work order:
    Gemini: “The final capital cost is estimated to be $4 billion, up from an initial estimate of $1.5 billion in 2023.
    Ocean Wind 1 and 2 (New Jersey): In 2023, developer Ørsted—also a partner in Revolution Wind—canceled these projects due to soaring costs”

    That’s a lot of increase in a short time. It’s like a NASA rocket. A second phase was already rejected by RI earlier because of costs.

  404. I suspect Federal Courts will reverse Trump on the wind projects already under construction. Trump is probably trying to make off-shore wind look like a risky investment. Of course, with Federal subsidies removed (20% of costs?) starting next year, these projects are likely not viable.

    My electric rates on Cape Cod are…. ahem…. a little on the high side, and projected to rise much more. Massachusetts has closed so much generation capacity that they now have to import about half of all power from other states and Canada, at exorbitant rates, due to a combination of high power cost and high transmission costs. Actual rates (with all the state add-ons) are now about $0.40 per KWH, not the $0.29 often claimed.

  405. Live Broadcast Details:
    – SpaceX Official Stream: SpaceX will provide a live webcast starting at 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 UTC), approximately 30 minutes before launch. You can watch it via:
    – SpaceX’s official X account (@SpaceX)
    – SpaceX’s Flight 10 mission page
    – X TV app
    – Space.com (simulcasting SpaceX’s feed)
    – NASASpaceflight YouTube Stream: For extended coverage with prelaunch commentary, NASASpaceflight will begin streaming at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 UTC) on their YouTube channel. This is recommended for in-depth analysis and additional camera angles.
    – Other Options: Channels like Everyday Astronaut and LabPadre may offer additional coverage or post-flight breakdowns, though LabPadre has faced criticism for unrelated controversies.
    – Note: SpaceX no longer broadcasts Starship launches live on YouTube directly, so rely on their X account or partnered platforms like Space.com.

  406. Mike M.
    “So Third Way wants Dems to stop using the words associated with their loony ideas. Nothing, it seems, about ditching the loony ideas. So basically they are saying that Dems need to do a better job of deceiving people about what they stand for.”
    –
    Perfect summary of what Steve F put up

  407. I think they are saying the faculty lounge condescension and arrogance isn’t working. Curious that all the brain power in the faculty lounge hasn’t quite figured that out for themselves.

    I have no idea what the current euphemism is for an illegal today. Person with expanded borders?

    It’s good advice. Democrats aren’t going to become Republicans. Will they take it? I doubt it. The faculty lounge is too immersed in their own social circle battles. The Democrats / legacy media don’t need to follow and adhere to this psychosis though.

    They are taking their queues from Trump whether they admit it or not. Trump talks like a normal person, even if it is in his crazy way.

  409. “The faculty lounge is too immersed in their own social circle battles.” They consistently show very poor judgement on most policy issues. A well known comment from long ago about the Harvard faculty and names drawn randomly from the Boston telephone directory accurately identified the problem.


  410. William F. Buckley    :

    I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise.

  413. HaroldW,
    Thanks. I assumed everybody already knew the Buckley quote; I could be wrong about that.

  414. A retort when he first said this (1960 +/-)was
    “Of course he’d think that. The majority of the first 2000 listings in the Boston phone book is Irish Catholic.”

    But he didn’t specify which city in his first outing with this idea which he repeated a number of times over the years with gradually improving syntax.
    .
    And, he said it about Harvard, not Yale

  415. john ferguson,
    Oddly enough, my dad’s family was Irish Catholic. I never held that against them,

  416. I guess the unstated premise is that you want smart educated people to run the government. Granted.

    Wise, experienced, and local might be better. I don’t know exactly when academia assumed they would be superior governors, specifically those who spend all their time in the academia bubble and living in the alternate planet of College Town. I don’t remember this being a thing when I was young.

    It’s like really good engineers assuming they would be good managers.

    All the techno social jargon is supposed to convey expertise such as a medical doctor lobbing medical terms at you they know you don’t understand. This is an attempt to intimidate and set barriers to entry for governing.

    Ultimately though even the rubes with a high school education understand many social problems perfectly fine and have very good radars for when they are being talked down to. “If you disagree with us you are a racist”, what a blunder. All the two dollars words in existence aren’t going to sell defund the police, affirmative action, men in women’s sports, and open borders.

  418. Tom: “I don’t know exactly when academia assumed they would be superior governors…”

    Goes back to Plato’s philosopher-kings, I’d say.

  419. WSJ: How a Historic Immigration Drop Is Changing the Job Market
    https://www.wsj.com/economy/immigration-workers-labor-market-b277548f?st=axhZt5&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    “From 2010-19, a net 917,000 people entered the country annually, on average, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That leapt to 3.3 million in 2023 and an estimated 2.7 million in 2024, one of the biggest such surges in American history.
    …
    Stan Veuger and Tara Watson estimated net migration will drop to negative 205,000 this year, give or take roughly a quarter-million. They attribute that to a combination of minimal illegal immigration and a surge in out-migration to between 675,000 and 1.02 million above typical rates”

    Regardless of one’s views on immigration this has been way more effective than I thought it would be and in a very short time.

  420. HaroldW,

    That was my thought too. Most times I think they should have made Socrates’ whole school drink hemlock and not just him. It probably wouldn’t have helped, though.

  421. Tom Scharf,
    ” I don’t know exactly when academia assumed they would be superior governors, specifically those who spend all their time in the academia bubble and living in the alternate planet of College Town. ”

    I venture it was before the mid-1960’s when prestigious colleges and universities all adopted racial preferences bandwagon. Certainly that was the case by the late 1960’s early 1970’s. Kennedy and Johnson both leaned heavily of academics for policy advice…. bringing about the kind of catastrophic outcomes (like the war in Vietnam) you might expect.

    Certainly by ~1960 Bill Buckley was very wary.

  422. Maybe the better question is why did people start listening to them?

    The model of academia studying social issues and governing outcomes and then * suggesting * alternative policy has given way to the perception that the activist left has captured the social sciences, ignores governing outcomes, and then dictates policy changes based on largely wishful thinking and corrupt academic studies.

  423. Tom Scharf,
    “Regardless of one’s views on immigration this has been way more effective than I thought it would be and in a very short time.”

    I don’t think it is very surprising.

    Biden: “Come-on in! Just declare you are asking for asylum when you arrive. We’ll give you a cell phone and take you to a sanctuary city where you will be safe from deportation and receive lots of government benefits.”

    Trump: “Don’t even think about entering illegally. If you do, we will immediately deport you, or make you wait in Mexico for a couple years for a court hearing if you claim asylum… and your asylum claim will be denied. If you manage to sneak in, we will arrest you and toss you in prison, surrounded by alligators, until you can be deported…. maybe to some hell-hole prison outside the States.”

    Incentives work: encourage illegal behavior and you will get plenty. Discourage illegal behavior, and you will get much less.

  425. The idea that government could be better run by disinterested “experts” than by representatives of the people goes back at least to the Progressives of the early 20th century. Epitomized by Woodrow Wilson. Of course, academics liked that idea and figured that they were the best qualified experts.

    Weren’t there lots of academics in FDR’s administration?

  426. Mike M,
    You may be right. Wilson and company did think of themselves pretty highly. (Wilson had been president of Princeton after all, where he made sure blacks wouldn’t be admitted!)

    Of course the fact that he was an unmitigated racists doesn’t make him seem all that smart.

  428. In my view the failure of thinking here is that experts are benevolent and uncorruptible. I an unconvinced that the educated and credentialed are less susceptible to the incentives for corruption, in fact they may be much better at hiding it.

  429. “I an unconvinced that the educated and credentialed are less susceptible to the incentives for corruption”

    Case in point: the Clintons.

    I suspect they just think wonderful, benevolent leaders like them ought to be wealthy as a reward for their selfless government service. The blatant pay-for-play was obviously not corrupt from their POV….. they deserve vast wealth.

    And yes, they used fig leaves much more effectively than Biden.

  430. Tom Scharf wrote: “In my view the failure of thinking here is that experts are benevolent and uncorruptible”.

    The real failure is the assumption that experts are competent.

    1970’s stagflation? Brought to us by experts.

    The Afghanistan disaster? Brought to us by experts.

    The Iraq mess? Brought to us by experts.

    The 2008 financial meltdown? Brought to us by experts.

    All the Covid insanity? Brought to us by experts.

    High inflation? Brought to us by experts.

    The Ukraine war? Brought to us by experts.

    I am sure I am missing some.

  431. Undermining our economy with “free trade”? Brought to us by experts.

    Becoming dependent on China for critical goods? Brought to us by experts.

  432. Mike M,
    “Undermining our economy with “free trade”? Brought to us by experts.”

    Not sure ‘undermining’ is the best description. Unrestricted free trade advantaged some people in the USA, but clearly disadvantaged some as well. The advantaged included those pushing for ever more open trade (of course!), while the disadvantaged were many middle-class blue-collar workers who lost their jobs…. and the towns and cities dependent on those people holding jobs. I have no doubt many would argue that in total the effects were positive, even if some people (and regions) suffered economically.

  433. SteveF wrote: ” Unrestricted free trade advantaged some people in the USA”.

    When did that happen? I must have missed it. OK, I guess that is a rhetorical question since “unrestricted free trade” never happened.

    A thousand page “free trade” deal has nothing to do with free trade, at least not in any honest sense. They just set up the rules by which the US sold out its citizens.

  434. Although I agree experts have many bad outcomes at their doorstep it is unclear in many instances what an alternate timeline with different decision making would look like. Some nominally “bad” outcomes may be optimal.

    The 2008 financial crisis is a good example of a self induced crisis.

    Inflation was transitory? Here they will never admit that they knowingly lied to us because inflation and a bad economy can be self perpetuating depending on consumer attitudes. So they try to manipulate public opinion.

    The decision making here has a lot of uncertainty at the time the decisions were made. They always underplay this uncertainty in order to sell it, it’s called “leadership” ha ha. This justifiably undermines their credibility.

    I await hearing this someday: “We don’t really know if this is the right decision but we are making it anyway”.

  435. “We don’t really know if this is the right decision but we are making it anyway”.

    That was me Monday last week. The one I made was right. Now I am calm.

  436. I just watched a 1944 US Army Air Force documentary.
    It was Hollywood produced, but it had no actors, airmen played their actual rules. It is filmed as a bombing mission is planned and carried out over Germany. All aspects of the mission are filmed as they happened… weather reconnaissance, target vectoring (sliderules!), aircraft preparation, air crew briefing, the whole mission.
    The geometry of the 3D flight formation to maximize defense against the Luftwaffe was eye opening.
    I recommended it highly, with a word of caution that it’s a full length movie so get some popcorn.
    “Originally produced by the U.S. Army Air Forces, “Target for To-day” is not a Hollywood movie; it is a real-life documentation of a daylight precision bombing raid. There are no actors here—only the actual servicemen, from the generals planning the mission to the young aircrews facing enemy fighters and flak-filled skies. This film was created to show the American public the immense complexity, scale, and human cost of the strategic bombing campaign in Europe.”
    “Witness a complete WWII strategic bombing mission over Germany, from the initial briefing to the perilous return, in this fully restored and colorized version of the 1944 classic documentary, “Target for To-day.” This film documents the incredible bravery of the US 8th Air Force crews who flew the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator deep into enemy territory.”
    B&W version:
    https://youtu.be/yYOf7rumdxM?si=DdJSLy-bYo3YWrpl
    Digitally enhanced and colorized version:
    https://youtu.be/RPDIvlXYpXE?si=eYwHWO9uvkQ8h1sx

  437. mikeM,
    Prior to Trump causing half the country to lose its collective mind, even CBS could see that more free trade had both winners and losers. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-wins-and-loses-from-global-trade/)

    After Trump won election in 2016, in large measure based on the negative effects of more open international trade (and the widespread hollowing out of multiple industries), Trump derangement syndrome made that kind of analysis just about verboten in the MSM.

  438. Will Trump, Zelensky, and Putin meet in Budapest?
    Who knows. A meeting will matter only if both sides really want the fighting to stop. I doubt they do.

    More interestingly, will Starship fly tonight?
    I give it a coin toss at best.

  439. We have a Department of War (again)
    President Trump: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that…Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be.”
    President Trump amuses me, every day

  440. SteveF – thanks for your reply/response August 24, 2025 at 5:20 am.

    Confirms my thoughts about what most sensible US folk think about this “Legal rubbish”.

  441. Starship, at 7:20 PM, EDT, T-38 minutes. There are weather concerns for launch time.

  442. Musk is wearing his “Nuke Mars” shirt today. Terraform Mars using nuclear explosions.

    I bet the environmentalists won’t like that. Think of all the damage to a completely dead planet. I’m guessing lefty environmentalists won’t be getting many rides to Mars on a Starship.

  443. As soon as I quit paying attention they will remove the hold and launch. I just know it.
    Nope! Another scrub.

  446. The assistant attorney general for Rhode Island was placed on 6 months of unpaid leave.

  447. Tom Scharf,
    She got off easy! It must be super hard to fire people.

    It’s August. Maybe she can enroll in some college and take some fun courses. Or maybe she can get a job as a barista to make ends meet. If she was a saver, maybe she can use her savings and take a cruise.

  448. Lucia,

    Maybe she was truly and deeply sorry for embarrassing the whole department.

    Maybe not. Maybe it is a ‘progressive’ DA who thinks it helps establish rapport with criminals to have someone on staff who disses cops just doing their jobs.

  450. Cracker Barrel is currently In the throes of the Woke death spiral.
    If you aren’t aware, the Right has pounced because of recent logo changes and store remodeling. The Cracker Barrel controversy has driven a sharp stock decline, with a 15% drop in share price and a loss of up to $143 million in market value.
    Yesterday the DEI CEO issued a non-apology apology and said we hear you but we ain’t changing our rebrand.
    RIP
    Yesterday’s press release:
    https://www.crackerbarrel.com/allthemore
    EDIT, the non-apology apology is causing as big a backlash on social media as the original controversy caused.

  451. Yeah. Shame. The food was good. I get the sense that the rebranders are perfectly happy for the business to be destroyed.

    It’s not like I can’t get my southern food at a bunch of other places, so no biggie. Some of the mom and pop operations are better anyway.

    Shrug.

  452. Mark,
    I spent a lot of my career traveling the interstates and Cracker Barrel was always one of my favorite stops. It’s (was) my kind of food.

  453. Russell,
    I don’t really see how Cracker Barrel simplyfing their logo is “woke’. Yes, they removed the cracker and the barrel. But people want simple logos these days because they want to make an app. App icons on phones are small. You can’t have much on there.

    Redecorating? Was that previous decoration anti-woke? I’m not seeing it.

    I get others are reacting this way because they liked the cracker on the cracker barrel logo. But… oh well. The stock value has dropped. Also: oh well.

    But maybe ad companies should have done more research? Tried to see if some demographic would think they were going “woke”? It’s probably something ad people should consider.

    My Dad liked cracker barrel. It was like a southern Denny’s with a kitchy souvenier shop attached. I don’t think I’ve gone since he died. Though I might have if it was along the highway on my drive. Food was reliable. Maybe a little slow compared to other places, but ok. I would never have gone out of my way to eat there without Dad.

    I told Jim I suspect the souvenier shops don’t sell as well as they used to. So many people buy their cr*p on line these days.

    We’ll see how this works long term. Doesn’t really make much difference to me.

  454. The Cracker Barrel saga is a bit excessive IMO, at least they still call themselves “crackers”. It’s just a not-so-great rebrand that looks like it was designed by a committee of bored people. I suspect Cracker Barrel is seeing the same thing that happened to TGIF Fridays, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc. and decided they needed to do something to get the young’uns to show up.

    I love southern comfort food and have eaten there a zillion times when traveling. It was a bit distressing when everything in their store was made in China.

  455. American Eagle outfitters by contrast has stock prices of $12.34 vs 10.52 before the Sydney Sweeney ad, and a $300 million cap rise.

  456. 6 months of no pay / no job is pretty much a polite invitation to resign. Her future there is likely done so she will probably move on. People have bad days so unless she has other issues we don’t know about then the punishment sounds about right as public sector lawyering isn’t a big draw for the best and brightest. She certainly could have been fired though but who knows what the union contract actually says about that.

  457. The jury is still out.

    “American Eagle stores experienced a nearly 9% year-over-year decline in foot traffic during the week of August 3-9, 2025”

    Companies are re-discovering it is best to stay out of politics. That isn’t easy with social media mobs running around looking for something to pour gas on. It’s hard to be edgy and safe at the same time.

  458. Lucia, your comment:
    “I would never have gone out of my way to eat there without Dad.”
    My reason is similar, I spent a lot of time on the highway for work and Cracker Barrel was always reliable. We road warriors were also partial to Waffle House for the same reason. I chose Waffle House for night trips because the coffee was better.

  459. Lucia,

    Redecorating? Was that previous decoration anti-woke? I’m not seeing it.

    Well, it looked old fashion Southern. To some, ‘old fashioned Southern’ and ‘racist’ are synonymous. I think that’s what the thinking was. I’m sure I’ve read this sentiment expressed many times and ways here and there over time across the internet.
    Shrug.
    [Edit: Yeah, I eat there because it happens to not be out of the way for me. But I also eat at Walton’s, Blue Plate, Rollo’s cafe, so on and so forth.]

  460. Never let a crisis go to waste: Trump declares Cracker Barrel should bring back old logo

    Cracker Barrel did have a shotgun over the mantle.

    What is kind of weird is that companies feel compelled to not back down in these kind of situations. Keeping the logo would be the right move today.

  461. Tom,

    As you correctly noted, Cracker Barrel had been in decline for years anyway, along with many other restaurant chains. Times is hard. I think they were doomed no matter what they did.

  462. I don’t think online AI’s are remotely infallible, but I do think they are good at summing views expressed online. Here is what Gemini has to say about it:

    While “old fashioned Southern” is not strictly synonymous with “racist,” the two are often deeply intertwined, and the term can be used as a euphemism for racist beliefs and practices. The meaning of “old fashioned Southern” is complex and can refer to a range of cultural markers, some of which are not inherently racist. However, the historical and cultural context of the “Old South” is inseparable from the institution of slavery and a societal structure built on white supremacy.

    The faculty lounge would say the logo was ‘problematic’ I’m sure.

  463. Russell,
    I’ve eaten at Waffle Houses once or twice. If they are along the way, they are fine. I don’t specifically look for them. I do now enjoy Chik Fil’ a. I probably go twice a year? Also, when it’s convenient. (It was right outside the eye surgery center when Jim had surgery. That’s our most recent visit.)

    McDonalds, Wendies and burger king are faster.

    On most road trips, Jim and I pack a cooler and eat at the rest stops along the high way. It’s quicker. If the weather is nice, you get to be in the fresh air and can stretch your legs. All around better.

    I’m not an aficionado of grits or biscuits in gravy. In the south, every restaurant has both. I don’t seek them out up north. But Dad liked them, and they had other things. So I went when I visited him. He liked to go out to lunch on those occasions; he liked to sit and be waited on. It was a nice price point and experience.

  464. You know…. Cracker Barrel could have just said “We want a simpler text only logo because we want it to match the teensie beensie icon for our new App. Uncle Hershel and his Barrel are still on our menu and in our stores!”

  465. Tom,
    “ Keeping the logo would be the right move today.”
    I agree, but the Twitter mob is seeking more. They are demanding a pound of flesh.
    They want the CEO to be fired.

  466. The kind of fired Fed governor Lisa Cook is accused of renting out a condo she got a loan for as a primary residence and not reporting the income. Her statements so far don’t even include a denial. Can’t the media actually investigate? Knock on the door of the alleged residence and see who lives there and ask if they rent, etc? Isn’t this in public records? This seems to be a case of they don’t want to know the answers.

    Cook: “I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve, and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts”.

    We are still waiting.

    CNN: “A CNN review of mortgage documents shows that Cook did take out mortgages for two properties, both of which were listed as her principal residence. However, it’s not known why she did so or if she did so intentionally.
    …
    He added that Cook may have simply erred by designating both homes as her primary residence, noting that the complexity of the mortgage process is often used as a defense in such cases.”

    Yes, a Fed board governor doesn’t understand the mortgage process.

    That’s the kind of grace never granted to a person on the right by CNN, ha ha. It’s no coincidence Trump is jumping on mortgage fraud here, the media is in a box just like they were after Biden’s secret documents were found.

  467. I had no idea so many people lied on their mortgage applications. I deserve reparations.

  468. The Cracker Barrel saga seems to be about much more than the logo. It turns out that their corporate headquarters culture has been extremely woke for quite a while. Most people would never notice that, but the people who did notice seized on the rebrand to publicize that.

    To make it worse, they also started to remodel their restaurants. I think I only ate in Cracker Barrel once and was not very impressed. But what I remember most is this: When you were in a Cracker Barrel, you knew you were in a Cracker Barrel. It was stupid of them to turn their backs on that sort of branding.

    It sounds like another case of MBA types deciding they needed to broaden their appeal while taking their loyal customers for granted. Like New Coke. No doubt, the menu would have been next. It is not surprising that their loyal customers are screaming.

  469. The issue with Cracker Barrel was not that they changed their logo. The logo change came after half a dozen years of very “woke” corporate policies…. DEI hiring….at all levels, including individual stores, painting some of their rocking chairs the LGBQLMNOP rainbow colors, etc. All that co-incident with a precipitous decline in stock price. When what you are doing isn’t helping, the best thing to do is STOP, and think about why it isn’t working.

    Incredibly enough, most Cracker Barrel patrons (which my wife describes as ‘after-Sunday-church-you-go-to-Cracker Barrel types’) may not all like be waited on by someone with bright blue and pink hair and uncertain gender.

    15-20 years ago my father-in-law loved the place, and I was even hood-winked into eating there a few times. Not my favorite kind of food, but to each his own. IMO, Lucia is right: Cracker Barrel has always been too slow for the quality of food they sell.

  471. Tom Scharf,
    “I had no idea so many people lied on their mortgage applications.”

    2% of $300,000, $400,000 or more, each year is a temptation for the dishonest.

    I have two houses. The ‘non-resident’ mortgage (I bought it almost 20 years ago) did in fact cost 2% per year extra. I never lied on a loan application about residency (or anything else!!). But then, I have never considered myself ‘entitled’ to special consideration like some appear to believe they are.

  472. Grok:
    The latest available information indicates that SpaceX is targeting **Tuesday, August 26, 2025**, for the Starship Flight 10 test mission, with liftoff scheduled at **7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT)** from their Starbase facility in South Texas. The launch was postponed from Sunday, August 24, due to a ground systems issue, and Monday, August 25, due to bad weather. A 60-minute launch window opens at 7:30 p.m. EDT, and a backup opportunity is available on Wednesday, August 27, if needed.

  473. Again this year, I am signed up for ESPN+ for college football season. They broadcast an enormous number of games, including small school games that are broadcast almost nowhere else.
    This week’s schedule:
    https://www.espn.com/watch/collections/44763/ncaa-football-on-espn+-live-upcoming

    It’s only $12 a month, assuming you have a basic streaming service with the normal broadcast channels. This year I am getting it free as a perk with my ‘Kroger Boost’ subscription.
    Something new this year ESPN Unlimited Plan is $30 per month and is a standalone service, not requiring a basic streaming service first.

    Also, this year they have expanded the ‘SkyCam’ coverage.
    If you remember, I described it last year, it’s a simulcast with the regular football broadcast; this uses dedicated cameras behind and above the quarterbacks. It has no announcers. The sound is a re-broadcast of the stadium sound.
    It’s a game changer. Both my boys prefer it to the standard broadcast also.
    ‘Hail to PITT’ and ‘Go Gators’

  474. Did I ever mention that most journalists seem to be idiots?

    “Trump vs. Pritzker: A political feud that could trigger a major national crisis – CNN”

    The only ‘crisis’ is in the heads of idiotic ‘progressive’ reporters at CNN. Federal law supersedes state law; this isn’t even complicated.

  475. something else with ESPN+…
    This week they are broadcasting every match at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. My daughter-in-law is following the Philippine phenomenon, a young lady named Eala. She’s coming up from Venice tomorrow to watch her second round match.

  476. I offered to share some of the more idiotic solicitations I get as messages on my Iphone. I thought this one was pretty hard to beat. It commenced with an image of the painting of Jane Fonda holding a sunflower. and then went on.

    Jane Fonda here with a huge announcement (if you’re an art lover like me, you won’t want to miss this):

    Shepard Fairey — the visionary artist behind some of the most iconic images of resistance — created a beautiful poster to honor my lifetime of activism.

    I knew it belonged with the people who made that legacy possible, which is why I’m giving 5 lucky supporters the chance to win a piece of history signed by both Shepard and me.

    We’ll even cover the cost of shipping, so all you have to do is chip in any amount today to be automatically entered: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jfcp-sms-art-meets-activism-contest-august-2025?refcode=text_t_jpc_fr_gan_082225&refcode2w=jvTMXw

    We’re so grateful to have you on our team! Best of luck!

    xx Jane

    You can guess how I got on the list targeted by this epistle.

  477. Sh** on Pitt, ha ha. We will see you on 9/13.

    Unfortunately with the trade portal I barely know who is on our team year to year.

  478. Tom,
    we used to go to Morgantown to drink 3-2 beer when we were 18 and the chant then was…
    “ BEAT THE HELL OUT OF PITT”

  483. The amazing thig is that someone like John Bolton could be taken seriously after everything he supports, without exception, has turned to international shit. He is exactly the kind of ‘expert’ (on the left or on the right) who should be ignored to protect the public’s interest. Evil and stupid.

  484. Actually, I think Bolton and Blinken should join hands and descent to Hell together with all the other ‘experts’, like Victoria Nuland, who caused half a million deaths in Ukraine (Russian and Ukrainian) for no good cause.

    The devil, should he exist, is licking his chops. Bad people who did terrible things.

  485. To be as clear as possible: I think US foreign policy for many years was not just wrong… it was evil. I hope Trump fixes this.

  486. US foreign policy toward Ukraine: mostly evil, destructive, and stupid.

    I doubt the Trump administration can easily fix that; but they can try.

  491. They finally opened the pod bay doors correctly and got the simulated Starlink satellites out. Forward progress!

    They did lose an engine on launch but also got through the simulated booster engine failure on landing.

  492. We get to watch them relight a Raptor engine in a minute or two.
    [Woohoo! Looked good!]

  494. I think something just went wrong. What was all that explosive shredding of that flap? all of a sudden?

  495. The engine skirt definitely had a failure there. Not sure the engines will survive. Looks like it took part of a flap with it.

    Overall I would say it is holding up better than previously … so far. The flap / ship joint it still a big problem area.

  497. Good work! Exciting as always. Raptor relight. Payload deploy.

    Ship was still a bit beat-up by the landing but it made it. Not quite reusable yet to say the least.

    I salute SpaceX broadcasting this live. Entertainment factor 10.

  498. Cracker Barrel Says It’s Going Back to Its Old Logo. The future of civilization has been restored.

  502. How times have changed. Coca Cola was able to inspire similar excitement by chemistry alone. No woke at all.

  504. John,
    One of my sons was exceedingly annoyed by ‘New Coke’.
    He was in his early teens and started a one person campaign to get it changed back. To this day, he thinks he is the one who saved Coke. I actually liked the new version.
    (or maybe I did it to annoy him)

  509. Russell,
    The merch for sale is not the colors of the pride rainbow. So I don’t consider that pride merch.

    The other one– yeah, one time two years ago, one Cracker Barrell, had one chair painted. It wasn’t for sale.

  510. I told you this was going to happen…
    The angry mob wants their pound of flesh, from Tucker Carlson:
    “I will not eat at Cracker Barrel again until the Woke CEO resigns!
    IF you agree with me, Give me a THUMBS-UP”

    Game On

  511. Well, I don’t care about that for sure. Tucker the anti-Semite, he went off the deep end some time ago as far as I am concerned.

    [But it’s nice to hear that Cracker Barrel isn’t going to become a Metro Diner clone.]

  514. Did Tucker previously eat at Cracker Barrel? Regularly? I didn’t and will likely to continue to not eat there. I googled. There appears to be a Cracker Barrel in Naperville. I was previously totally unaware of its existence.

    I am unware of the existence of tons of chain restaurants. Where is the nearest Wendys? McDonalds? Dairy Queen? Denny’s? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure not very far. I even like Dairy Queen, and if it was close would be tempted to get some “Blizzards” during the summer. This assumes they still sell Blizzards.

    The next closest Cracker Barrel seems to be Romeoville. That’s much to far to drive for something as not remotely special as Cracker Barrel!

  515. Social media is bizarre.

    I’m finding it difficult to decide which to care less about: the Cracker Barrel logo kerfuffle, or the Swift-Kelce engagement.

    I’ll just set the interest level on both to zero, and call it a tie.

  516. Coke rhymes with Woke, just saying.

    A woke or anti-woke mob not satisfied? Shocking! It’s like it is really only about getting attention and not logo design.

    The Trump video was funny though.

  517. “…he went off the deep end some time ago as far as I am concerned.”

    The tip-off for me was believing in alien spaceships.

  518. Extreme event attribution is very dodgy and I would say intentionally corrupt since its inception. They take unverifiable climate models that are already known to produce more likely extreme events and then say “that model says all those real events are more likely now”. It’s circular.

    It’s all they have when the historical record isn’t supporting their narrative. I think everyone pretty much ignores this stuff now but journalists on the climate beat have to churn out something for a living. What a gloomy job.

    I did a non-linear model of future storm damage to Tampa based on the last few years and my estimates say I should be getting a hurricane every week in about a decade. I used real data, math, and algorithms so it is true. Science.

  523. I developed the recipe for those French sandwich loaves using baker’s percentages [hydration 0.75]:
    RUSTIC FRENCH SANDWICH LOAF
    Yeast, tsp. 0.4
    Flour,g 540
    Salt, tsp 1.5
    Sugar, tsp 1.5
    Water, g 405
    Two 1 lb. loaf pans
    I use a no-knead, cold ferment, overnight in the fridge.

  529. “(DC Mayor) Bowser said that in the 20 days since the federal takeover, there has been an 87% drop in carjackings compared with the same period last year.
    …
    Several members of the City Council rebuked Bowser’s conciliatory remarks, chiding her for characterizing the surge of federal law enforcement as helpful despite many Democrats’ warnings that Trump is using scare tactics to exert his presidential authority over the city.

    “We should not, as the District of Columbia, be giving people the impression that this is a good thing, that we are OK with it, that it is helping the city. It is not doing any of those things,” at-large Council member Robert White Jr., a Democrat, said in a video on X. “I am not OK with this. The average resident is not OK with this. D.C. residents, D.C. voters, are not OK with this.””
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/bowser-trump-police-takeover-lower-dc-crime-national-guard-ice-rcna227582

    Sometimes reactive partisanship is crazy. You know people are consumed by the politics instead of results.

  530. Trump keeps setting traps for the Democrats and they keep falling into them. Democrats and the media across the country are expressing outrage that Donald Trump is being very successful at controlling crime in DC. It’s another instance where Trump is on the side of 80% of the voters and the Democrats and the media are vociferously opposing him. He’s gifted.

  531. Two more refineries became towering infernos last night, @NOELreports:
    “Another night, more refineries hit. Ukrainian drones struck two major Russian oil facilities—Afipsky and Kuybyshevskiy—triggering large fires, according to Russian media. Video footage shows large fires and smoke plumes.”
    Videos:
    https://x.com/noelreports/status/1960945373867843988?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ
    And:
    https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1960870664619118767?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ
    Ukraine has been going after Russian refineries for several weeks. There is quite a bit of video evidence that they have been successful. Ukrainians claimed to have knocked out 20% of Russia’s refining capacity in the past month. there is anecdotal evidence with mile long lines of cars waiting to buy gas and reduction in exports.
    One of the things that makes this campaign more effective is they are going in with many drones. Bystanders posted videos of 17 drones attacking one refinery.

  533. Seems the Democratic National Committee is populated by leftist crazies:
    https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/27/as-good-as-it-gets-dnc-moves-to-sell-crazy-to-a-over-stocked-nation/#more-235171

    Pack the supreme court (or just dissolve it!), eliminate the filibuster, electoral college, etc. The bizarre thing is that what they want is either 1) unconstitutional or 2) certain to damage the country. I rather suspect the second is really their motivation: they hate the constitution and structure of government in the USA.

    I sure hope these crazies don’t gain power any time soon.

  535. Well… I think blaming the kids’ deaths on the “trans” aspect or doctors affirming it is a bit much. Lots of cis men have shot up children. Matt Walsh makes his living being provocative. There is no down side to him making silly connections.

  536. lucia,

    The Minnesota shooting was at least the second recent mass murder of children by trans-identifying individuals. That is enormous for such a small fraction of the population, if you ignore the important issue of small sample size. Even so, it still might be statistically significant.

  537. Trans (men and women) are way overrepresented in school shootings in recent times. Mental illness is the defining characteristic and trans needs to stop being treated with kid gloves as if it’s nothing unusual and needs to be protected. It’s quite possible the guy wouldn’t have got as far as he did if his “identity” didn’t lend him a cloak of unquestioning social blindness.

  538. Look: I think transpeople have mental issues.

    But I think specifically linking mass murder to any particular group is idiotic. (Well, unless the group is mentally ill.) This attempt at linking happens after every mass murder with people trying to decree that the true loonies are conservatives, liberals, now trans, what have you.

    Don’t allow this person to transition? They’d probably still be mentally ill. And likely killing kids.

  539. Lucia, your post:
    “Don’t allow this person to transition? They’d probably still be mentally ill. And likely killing kids.”
    yes, they would still be mentally ill because they are not being treated by medical professionals or society as if they are mentally ill. They are being treated with chemicals and surgery to reinforce their illusions. The liberal approach is to treat these people as normal and reinforce their mental illness. That’s what has to change.

  540. Russell,
    Lots of mentally ill people are treated like they are not mentally ill. This is not exclusive to trans. Also, even when treated, lots of mentally ill people remain mentally ill.

    There is a lot to be said about the trans issue and how we treat it. There is also a lot to be said about the mentally ill. Or guns. Or lots of things.

    But it’s idiotic to act as if this trans issue is resulting in a greater number of kids at risk from shooters or people from mass murderers.

  541. This is the money quote:

    Don’t allow this person to transition? They’d probably still be mentally ill. And likely killing kids.

    The crazy is a cause and the desire to transition an effect. The killing kids is an effect. The crazy remains the cause. Whether or not they transition, they remain crazy and therefore dangerous.
    In other words, the transition and transgender elements are superfluous to the cause of the shootings.

  542. yes, they would still be mentally ill because they are not being treated by medical professionals or society as if they are mentally ill. They are being treated with chemicals and surgery to reinforce their illusions.

    I don’t disagree that gender affirming care doesn’t help at all. I don’t think that getting rid of gender affirming care magically enables us to solve crazy.

  543. The person left a manifesto you can easily find on social media. It is 90% mentally deranged violent individual and 10% left wing Nazi. “6 million (Jews) wasn’t enough”, “Kill Trump Now”, etc. He doesn’t verbalize trans activism.

    It is true that a very similar incident occurred in Nashville in 2023 (trans shoots up their former Catholic school) and the legacy media handled it the same way. They excessively downplayed the possible trans activism motive to the point of not reporting it even as a possibility. It was immediately dismissed similar to a lab leak. This doesn’t happen when the shooter is your typical white male lunatic, especially when they attack another identity group. To this day they still frame the Orlando Pulse shooting as an attack on the gay community when there is no evidence that was the motive.

    The Minneapolis Mayor went out of his way to push back on people attacking the trans community but AFAICT he never expressed anything specifically about the Catholic community that were just literally violently attacked. It is very much a possibility the Catholics were targeted here, but * maybe * not because of trans stances.

  544. ESPN+ will broadcast 17 college football games live tonight starting at 5:30 PM Eastern.
    There are three games I have a personal interest in:
    USF vs Boise State, Cincinnati vs Nebraska, UCF vs Jacksonville State.
    I’m too old for this, it’s wearing me out already.

  545. Tom, your post:
    “They excessively downplayed the possible trans activism motive to the point of not reporting it even as a possibility. It was immediately dismissed similar to a lab leak.”
    Tom Bevan from RCP has three posts this morning on the media hiding the trans connection to this shooting:
    https://x.com/tombevanrcp/status/1961005122852376613?s=61
    https://x.com/tombevanrcp/status/1961037577911181739?s=61
    https://x.com/tombevanrcp/status/1961016746837463321?s=61

  546. All things equal, this is just another episode of crazy person does crazy things, and in the US that means going out in a blast-a-thon too many times.

    There is little data but so far it is only reported this guy changed his name and identified as female but may have went no further than that.

    If he was on hormone therapy or other transition treatments then that should be investigated. Hormone therapy and such may not be a good idea for already mentally unstable people. Roid rage is a real thing but that is usually connected to testosterone going in the other direction. Even bringing up this subject is culturally toxic so it will likely go nowhere.

  547. The USA (sadly) has decided to accommodate metal illness rather than insisting on people being treated. The results speak for themselves: widespread homeless encampments, people crapping on the street, lots of random violence, plus things like assaults, shootings, knifings, and people pushed onto subway tracks.

    This is has become a big problem because 1) most laws that were used to insist on treatment for the mentally ill have either not been enforced or have been rescinded, and 2) drug use by people on the edge of sanity (like heavy marijuana use by those suffering schizophrenia).

    I can understand that many people objected to forcing mentally ill people into treatment; the intensions were good. But today those over the age of 18, even suffering severe mental illness, are almost never forced into treatment. They and their families suffer; it is a tragedy which didn’t need to happen. The road to Hell is often paved with good intensions.

  548. Is nihilistic despair a form of insanity? Might it drive insanity? Because nihilistic despair can arise from one’s philosophical, metaphysical, or religious convictions (or the lack thereof). It is interesting because nihilism isn’t the same categorical thing as irrationality. One can be a rational nihilist I believe.

  549. mark,
    It wouldn’t surprise me if certain believe systems make a person more prone to mental instability. And if mentally unstable, falling further. Also: associations with some people can make things better or worse.

    Also: there is such a thing as Munchhausen’s Syndrome. I sometimes wonder whether some mental illness is kinda sorta chosen. I know it’s a heresy to say this though. And of course, there is also Munchhausen’s by proxy. So…

  550. mark,
    I should add: actual despair is pretty adjacent to depression. Then there is academic despair. You haven’t really fallen in it but dabble in talking in the notion.

  551. Thanks Lucia, I think the same thing, even though it’s probably not PC to do so. I think some people embrace the crazy and run with it, and I also think one can believe things that exacerbate the problem. I certainly agree that the company you keep has an effect. I think sanity is socially determined if not socially constructed, which is to say, I think sanity is a real objective thing, but I think it’s heavily abstract, complicated, and full of irregular exception clauses, and it requires a whole society of people to observe the full boundaries and shape of it. But I definitely think we take our cues about sanity from the people around us.

  552. Russell,
    NYT today is pretty straight up unlike a couple other places:

    “As a 17-year-old, she filed a court document to change her first name, to Robin from Robert. It was also signed by her mother. The document noted that Ms. Westman “identified as female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

    On social media, some conservative activists have seized on the shooter’s gender identity to broadly portray transgender people as violent or mentally ill. The police did not provide any motive for the attack, but Ms. Westman’s extensive social media history was a contradictory catalog of anger and grievance.
    …
    A sticker in the diary displays L.G.B.T.Q. and transgender flags with a gun and the slogan “Defend Equality.””

    The “Defend Equality” sticker with an assault rifle was one piece of a lot of crazy, but is relevant when the target is Catholics.

    NBC only reported “changed their name” yesterday and made no mention of anything else specifically and intentionally avoiding the gender identity change. I’d like to have heard how that internal discussion went, not a profile in courage.

    The NYT’s knows they can no longer do gatekeeping on these type of facts so they go with the “conservatives pounce” narrative.

    At a minimum they should report it, perhaps detail that the link is being investigated like all other aspects, and there is currently no evidence that was the motive.

    It just hurts their credibility. Everyone will find out the shooter is trans and everyone will wonder why it isn’t even being reported as a possible motive. Yes, there is a virus lab right where the pandemic started, so what?

    To be clear, still likely just a crazy person.

  553. Tom,
    I agree the news media should report that they are transgender when known. Also all the other stuff– all reportable. I also think the Minneapolis mayor is a bit over the top in using this as an opportunity to decree those criticizing trans have ” lost their sense of common humanity””. Or at least…. did he think the same of those criticizing conservatives or making similar generalizations against other groups when other mass murders happen? Or white males? I somehow doubt it. But if he did, then I take back any criticism.

    Also… well…given Matt Walsh, I can give the mayor of Minneapolis a bit of a pass.

    Of course people shouldn’t spew hate towards other groups when one individual who might fit in that group does something horrible. But that should go for all groups.

    I think these linkages between one shooter and a whole group are incorrect. These murders weren’t done by the trans community.

    But I don’t think those making negative observations about trans issues in the wake of this have “lost their common sense of humanity”.

  554. Tom Scharf,
    “As a 17-year-old, she filed a court document to change her first name, to Robin from Robert.”

    The NYT is evil.

    The guy was born a male, became mentally ill, shot a bunch of people, and then killed himself… penis and all. The NYT (print addition) remains useful only for cleaning fish. The electronic version has zero use.

  555. SteveF,

    penis and all

    Did (s)he still have one? I suspect they haven’t reported on that. They never do give details on the precise degree of “transition”. I did read (s)he says (s)he regreted transitioning.

  556. mark bofill wrote: “In other words, the transition and transgender elements are superfluous to the cause of the shootings.”

    We don’t know that. It might or might not be true. Walsh is wrong to assume it is the cause. It is also wrong to assume it is irrelevant.

    If there are a relatively large number of mass shootings by trans people, then it is legitimate to point that out and raise the possibility that there is a link. The treatment is a possible link. Lack of treatment is a possible link. The fundamental psychological problem is a possible link. Maybe getting people the proper mental health care is a solution. Maybe it isn’t.

    It is wrong to suggest that all trans identifying people are a threat to society. It is obviously true that most such people never engage in violence.

  557. lucia,
    Of course the MSM would never report on that, but he had a growing beard, so I suspect yes, he was still ‘operational’.

  558. Thanks Mike. I was working my way over to thinking that.

    Sometimes people kill others and they aren’t even crazy.

  559. lucia,
    No matter what the guy might have cut off (or likely not cut off) he was still an XY (AKA male) human. The NYT is still evil.

  560. But it’s not unreasonable to think that this guy was nuts. Killing strangers and suiciding doesn’t need to be definitive in order to still be reasonable first order approximation evidence that the killer was cray.

  561. WOOHOO, great idea!
    President Trump posted on Truth two hours ago:
    “The Republican Party is doing really well. Millions of people have joined us in our quest to MAKE AMERICA, GREAT AGAIN. We won every aspect of the Presidential Election and, based on the great success we are having, are poised to WIN BIG IN THE MIDTERMS. We have raised far more money than the Democrats, and are having a great time fixing all of the Country Destroying mistakes made by the Biden Administration, and watching the USA heal and prosper. The results are incredible, a record pace!!! In that light, I am thinking of recommending a National Convention to the Republican Party, just prior to the Midterms. It has never been done before. STAY TUNED!!! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”
    He has his opponent reeling on the ropes, now for the knockout punch.

  562. MikeM

    If there are a relatively large number of mass shootings by trans people,

    Link to study?

    it is legitimate to point that out and raise the possibility that there is a link

    Sure. But that’s not what Matt Walsh did.
    This is what Matt Walsh tweeted

    “Every trans person is dangerously delusional. They are all mentally sick and doctors should be legally barred from affirming their mental illness in any way. Adult or child. Everyone knows it. Now innocent children are dying because so many people were too cowardly to speak up.”

    Suggesting that’s just pointing out and raising a possibility of a link is rather… uhmmm… Motte and Bailey.

  563. There is a social element to the trans craze, and that social element is heavily into victim ideology, which morphs into hate for the “abuser” and a desire for “justice”. See Andy Ngo’s reports on Trantifa, for example.

  564. mark bofill,
    “But it’s not unreasonable to think that this guy was nuts.”

    Of course. People can kill other people and not be at all insane (soldiers like may dad in WWII, people acting in self defense, law enforcement people shooting a shooter), or could kill because they are sociopaths (desperately need to get rid of my spouse, want to receive my parent’s estate, etc).

    But anyone who starts shooting strangers (or kids!) is certainly insane, and even more so if they kill themselves in the process, as many (most?) do.

    Insanity is not nearly as rare as we might hope, and the lack of treatment for people displaying all the symptoms of insanity only makes the situation worse.

    It is a difficult problem, but one society needs to address, including making sure people like airline pilots have not lost their minds and decided killing themselves and 300 others is a good idea.

  565. SteveF,
    I asked because I’m wondering about about h(is)er physical state and also whether anyone has seen that reported. I assumed it hadn’t been.
    I do think whether trans or not, the mass murderers are overwhelmingly XY.

  566. Steve,
    Bear in mind that I don’t disagree with you in this particular case. But generalizing:

    But anyone who starts shooting strangers (or kids!) is certainly insane, and even more so if they kill themselves in the process, as many (most?) do.

    I don’t know that I’d call terrorists insane. I don’t know that I’d call suicide bombers insane. The distinction between freedom fighter / revolutionary and terrorist can sometimes boil down to nothing more than a question of whether or not we agree that a specific cause is valid. I wouldn’t necessarily say revolutionaries are insane, even those who commit atrocities.

    It’s not inconceivable that we might decide to call them (suicide bombers, terrorists, revolutionaries) that (crazy), but it’d take some discussion and be open to argument I think. I don’t think the matter is as cut and dried as you seem to be implying.

  567. mark bofill,

    Agreed. Many acting on political motivations (like Arab suicide bombers) may not be the same as your run-of-the-mill crazies who just go shoot kids at a school, in that they may not be completely disconnected from reality. Were the 9/11 terrorists insane? I am sure some would argue that they were not (lots of virgins awaiting them in Heaven you know!), although I would suggest even among the ‘very faithful’ there are very few who would do what they did (what if the 20 virgins aren’t really there waiting?!?).

    But all that is a little beside the point. Is some guy who says he wants to be a girl, and shoots up a church, actually insane? I’d say he is, no question, and he desperately needed mental health treatment a long time ago..

  568. Lucia,
    “I do think whether trans or not, the mass murderers are overwhelmingly XY.”
    The transgender percent of the population is extremely small, I don’t think there’s a definitive study but one number I saw is0.01%. The last two school shooters were both transgender.
    I may be going out on the limb, but I think they are over represented in this category.

  569. Russel,

    I don’t think there’s a definitive study but one number I saw is0.01%.

    I’ve seen 1% for adults and higher for young people.

    This is google AI overview

    In the United States, about 1% of people ages 13 and older identify as transgender, with higher percentages among young adults and youth. Estimates vary by study and age group, but more recent data suggest that over 1% of U.S. adults and a larger proportion of young adults identify as transgender or nonbinary.

    Is 1% correct? I don’t know. But Google AI’s 1% is two orders of magnitude higher than the number you think you saw.

  570. I’m still willing to bet they’re over represented in the derangedshooter category

  571. This guys says that 4 out of 4000 mass shooters since 2018 were trans: https://www.newsweek.com/robin-westman-latest-transgender-mass-shooter-spark-national-debate-2120683
    So 0.1%. Note that he dismisses 3 other claimed cases.

    I have no idea how common trans people are. There is a claim of 1% on the internet, but it is not clear where that comes from. I am disinclined to believe it. Associated with that is a claim of a MUCH higher incidence among teenagers.

    I find Russel’s number of 0.01% more believable. But it is not like I can back that up.

  572. New York Post reports that Robert was tired of being trans and wishes he never “brainwashed” himself into doing it.

    I’ll clarify my position. There are transgenders, and there are radical leftists appropriating a trans identity for social ingroup benefits. Robert was never transgender, but he was driven to madness by radical leftism. Identifying as transgender is part of that.

  573. What appears to be common is many shooters (men) latch on to the most anti-social movements they can find. They seem to be very angry first, and a radical member of movement X second. They very much want to be hated and seek

    If loving clowns was designated particularly evil by society we would probably have a lot of shooters dressed as clowns.

  574. MikeM,

    The guy is counting gang-bangers who shoot 3, 4, 5, 6 at a time with a pistol. Completely unrelated to insane people (gay, straight, or otherwise) walking into a school, church, synagogue, or shopping mall and killing a bunch of people they do not know. Gang bangers do not leave a manifesto.

    The dishonesty in the MSM is breathtaking and destructive.

    Nearly all gun related deaths are caused by pistols in the hands of young men. They are not killing people they do not know. They are killing people they DO know and want to kill. Restricting magazine size on rifles is never going to meaningfully impact gun fatalities, but every crazy who shoots people leads to the same tired demands for restricting rifles, magazines, bullets, etc..

    Did I ever mention how much I hate the MSM for their dishonesty?

  575. From last night, Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery attack, Samara region of Russia, POV (53.0936242, 50.1627390)
    I downloaded the Google aerial photo from before the attack and the NASA FIMS satellite map after the attack:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1961145529770914200
    [ I know I have too much time on my hands!]
    A lot of local people filmed the fire on their cameras and posted it on social media
    Onsite fire and drone attack videos:
    https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1960910454064054351
    https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1960911476912230491

  576. “This guys says that 4 out of 4000 mass shooters since 2018 were trans”

    Firstly, there is no reason to believe such a politically motivated list is accurate. Secondly, the topic is school shootings, particularly, just random mass murder of school kids.

    “Note that he dismisses 3 other claimed cases.”

    Quelle surprise. One side of the equation has ridiculously broad, whilst the other has incredibly narrow, entry criteria.

  577. SteveF,

    Nearly all gun related deaths are caused by pistols in the hands of young men. They are not killing people they do not know. They are killing people they DO know and want to kill. Restricting magazine size on rifles is never going to meaningfully impact gun fatalities, but every crazy who shoots people leads to the same tired demands for restricting rifles, magazines, bullets, etc..

    Exactly correct, and thank you for noticing and commenting on it.

  578. I asked Grok how many school shootings with two or more killed since 2018:

    There have been 12 school shootings in U.S. K-12 schools since 2018 with at least 2 people killed.

    Here is the list:

    January 23, 2018: Marshall County High School, Benton, Kentucky – 2 killed, 18 injured. A student opened fire in the school lobby, killing two classmates.

    February 14, 2018: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida – 17 killed, 17 injured. A former student armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed 14 students and 3 staff members.

    March 20, 2018: Great Mills High School, Great Mills, Maryland – 2 killed, 1 injured. A student shot a classmate and then himself after being confronted by a school resource officer.

    May 18, 2018: Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe, Texas – 10 killed, 13 injured. A student used a shotgun and revolver to kill 8 students and 2 teachers.

    November 14, 2019: Saugus High School, Santa Clarita, California – 3 killed, 3 injured. A student shot five classmates, killing two, before attempting suicide (he died the next day).

    November 30, 2021: Oxford High School, Oxford, Michigan – 4 killed, 7 injured. A student opened fire on classmates and staff, killing four students.

    May 24, 2022: Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas – 21 killed, 17 injured. A gunman killed 19 students and 2 teachers after entering the school.

    October 24, 2022: Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, St. Louis, Missouri – 2 killed, 7 injured. A former student killed a student and a teacher.

    March 27, 2023: The Covenant School, Nashville, Tennessee – 6 killed, 1 injured. A former student killed 3 students and 3 staff members.

    September 4, 2024: Apalachee High School, Winder, Georgia – 4 killed, 9 injured. A student killed 2 students and 2 teachers.

    December 16, 2024: Abundant Life Christian School, Madison, Wisconsin – 2 killed, 6 injured. A student killed a teacher and a classmate before dying of a self-inflicted wound.

    August 27, 2025: Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis, Minnesota – 2 killed, 17 injured. A shooter fired into a student worship service, killing two students.

  579. Dave JR,
    “There have been 12 school shootings..”

    What?!? Not 1,000 school shootings? Grok must be mistaken. /sarc

    The MSM is profoundly dishonest, and should be ignored. What I am sometimes uncertain of: are they just so utterly stupid that they can’t understand the obvious factual data (on this and 100 other issues) or are they so dishonest (and so stupid) that they believe they can pass off garbage with nobody noticing. Amazing.

  580. If Lucia didn’t think it was important to protect her blog participants from what I have to say, she’d allow me to explain that they don’t have a sample size sufficient to support their musings.

  581. MikeM

    I find Russel’s number of 0.01% more believable. But it is not like I can back that up.

    Nah. I know way to many openly trans people for it to be that low.

  582. Lucia,

    I think even getting an accurate number would not be easy, since a survey might include most anyone who is not cis-gender-normal. I mean, who gets counted? The ‘male(ish)’ member of a lesbian couple? The ‘female(ish)’ member of a gay couple? Only men who try to pass as women all the time and women who try to pass as men all the time? Surgically modified? Not surgically modified?

    It doesn’t sound like there is good data on this.

  583. I do know of one guy (a marketing manager) who left for a two week vacation as a man and returned to work dressed as a woman….. there were a lot of jaw drops at the first meeting.

  584. SteveF,
    I think getting an accurate number for % trans is definitely not easy. I’m just saying that based on the numbers I run across — and ran across tutoring– it’s bigger than 0.01%. It’s also definitely less than 5%– for sure.

    Also: you have to be sure the rules for deeming someone trans is the same when applied to the murderer as to the underlying count. Are they trans if they changed their name, never changed their body, and now regret and think of themselves as detransitioned? Whatever is the correct answer has to apply the same in both instances.

  585. I asked Grok about mass shootings in the U.S.
    Full reply

    It found various definitions, and gave the following summary:

    Summary
    GVA (broad definition, 4+ shot): ~3,413 mass shootings (2018–July 31, 2025).
    Mother Jones (3+ killed, public): ~20–30 mass shootings (2018–2025, estimated).
    Statista (3+ killed, public): ~25–35 mass shootings (2018–September 2024).
    The Violence Project (4+ killed, public): ~20–40 mass shootings (2018–2025, estimated).
    Everytown (4+ killed): ~95–114 mass shootings (2018–2025, estimated).

  586. Lucia,
    Crazy is as crazy does……. the Minneapolis shooter was definitely crazy, no matter his confused sexual orientation. The total number of similar crazy shootings is probably not high enough to say with any certainty if there is a clear connection with sexual confusion.

  587. SteveF,
    And the question with that marketing manager: When would we start counting him as trans? Presumably, the first possible moment is when (s)he claimed (s)he was. The last would presumably be when (s)he got the big chop (assuming (s)he got that.)

  588. HaroldW,
    Those on the left always seem to report wildly high numbers. Got to conficate those guns you know.

  589. Lucia,

    No Idea when to count a guy wearing a dress as ‘trans’. I sure don’t want to know any more details. Too much ikkk factor.

    😉

  590. SteveF

    Those on the left always seem to report wildly high numbers.

    Of Trans? Honestly, the reported numbers seem cherry picked according to message. When people want to talk about how we shouldn’t worry about trans XY in women’s sports they like to say the number in women’s sports is so teensie beensie it can’t possible displace women!

    I don’t know what the percent in the population is. 1% is not implausible based on teens I run into and some people who are obviously trans in social dance. There are also going to be the less obviously trans– people who manages to actually blend in. On the other hand, I couldn’t say 0.1% is implausible. I’d say 5% and 0.01% are both implausible.

  592. lucia,

    The people who claim that 1% of the population is trans say that the number is something like 5-10% for teens.

    I am guessing that the number of trans identifying teens is much higher in affluent suburbs than in the inner city or in rural areas.

  593. MikeM
    I’m sure the number for teens can vary dramatically depending on how you diagnose someone “is” trans. I sincerely doubt it’s 10% in any meaningful sense.

    Lots of these sociology things ask questions in lots of different ways and end up “diagnosing” things that don’t make any sense.

    But no matter what they claim for kids, I think 1% is plausible. That doesn’t mean it’s right– it’s plausible and in the ball park. 0.01%. Nope. Not plausible. Too low.

  594. lucia,

    If the incidence among affluent suburban teens is an order of magnitude larger than the general population and if the incidence among the teens you tutor is 0.1-1.0%, then incidence in the general population would be 0.01-0.1%. Then Russell’s number would not be out of the question.

  595. MikeM
    And if the influence among affluent suburban teens is an order of magnitude lower? Look, it appears you are just speculating wildly in the direction you “want” the number to be.

    I’m pretty sure Russel gave no basis for his number. I don’t know where Google AI got it’s 1% number– I didn’t like the link to the source. But it’s probably based on something.

  596. The ~1% (or 0.95%) is based on at least two surveys. One is a pulse survey by the US Census.

    Someone called the Williams institute at UCLA lawschool also gets about 1%.
    https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/#:~:text=Over%202.8%20million%20adults%20(aged,707%2C100)%20are%20transgender%20nonbinary%20adults.

    They get about 3% youth are transgender.
    Their pages have fancy graphics. I couldn’t quickly find the survey instruments and didn’t delve.

  598. Lucia’s post:
    “ 1% is not implausible based on teens I run into and some people who are obviously trans in social dance”
    I think part of the problem is that our own experiences are based on where we hang out. I have seen in person only one trans person in my life. It was an art student at the progressive New College of Sarasota. She was trying to grow a beard and looked hideous.
    If you hang out in a dance studio, you’re gonna see a lot more openly trans people than if you hang out in the church hall after mass for the potluck breakfasts. Civil Engineering offices and construction sites are other places I wouldn’t expect you to find any trans people. 0.01% may be too high for those venues.

    I have been trying to find the reference where I saw that .01% but I have had no luck, sorry,

  599. lucia,

    Yep, my numbers are speculation. So are everybody’s numbers so far as I can tell. From what I have seen, there was one “survey” by the Census people that yielded the 1% number only after “analysis” by the Williams Institute. So it sounds like they got their number only after massaging the actual data gathered. I did not dig into it and have no plans to do so.

  600. Liberal Democrats and their media allies are denigrating people who are praying for the victims in the Catholic Church shooting. They came out in one voice everywhere so it must have been the talking point distributed by the DNC.
    They also are saying again that gun control is the only answer.
    I think gun control is part of the answer, Gun control I would support is that trans people cannot own a gun because they are too mentally unstable.
    EDIT: It’s actually comical that non-believers think that we can be influenced by their thoughts on prayer.

    “Liberal figures lambast ‘prayers’ in wake of Minnesota church shooting”
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/liberal-figures-lambast-prayers-wake-minnesota-church-shooting

  601. There were approximately 204 mass shootings in the USA since 1970. Five were by transgenders. Keep on truckin’ on the road to fascism.

  603. Russell,
    Of course our own experience was where we hang out. But it’s not just dance where arguably the number might be higher. I’ve run across them in engineering. There was an obviously trans coworker in my building at PNNL way back in the 90s. There was one who did support work at Iowa State. My mom’s high school friend had a son who transitioned (was john became Laura)– all so back in the 90s. Jim worked with two different trans colleagues on DHS funded projects. And these were obvious trans.

    I’ve also always encountered people who were at a minimum cross dressers in bathroom. (6’2″, adams apple, etc.)

    I definitely know younger transitioners. The ones I’m aware of for longer periods oscillate back and forth to “fluid”. But I tutored kids who I was sure were trans– not a lot. And I didn’t ask, “Hey, are you trans?” But they made sure to put their ‘pronouns’ on their Zoom. And lemme tell you…. They were trans.

    The frequency is increasing– but that might be time more than change in where I hang out.

  604. Russell,

    Liberal Democrats and their media allies are denigrating people who are praying for the victims in the Catholic Church

    Really? I need a link for this. I’m atheist so I don’t pray. But denigrating people who do so? After a tragedy? That’s ridiculous.

  605. Ok.. the Mineapolis mayor here is not denigrating thoughts and prayers. He’s saying you should be able to go to church and praying without getting shot. That’s not denigrating prayer.

    https://www.foxnews.com/media/liberal-figures-lambast-prayers-wake-minnesota-church-shooting

    Fox news calling that “lambasting” prayer requires tortured understanding of what he’s saying and what the other person on TV is saying.

    Fox news should be ashamed of themselves for distorting that.

  607. DaveJR,
    Did the all the stuff the youtube video person claim happen really happen? That’s a screen shot of something. All information that could be traceable at Reddit is obliterated. And if I search at reddit. No subreddit. No user? There doesn’t seem to be any “r/trans army”

    I know reddit might have banned groups or users.
    If those entries were real it could at least have been archived somewhere.

    FWIW: 6 months ago, r/trangender mentions a “trans army” web page.
    The top reaction is ”

    u/Frosty_Ad_8575 avatar
    Frosty_Ad_8575
    • 6mo ago

    “The Christian post”. And looks like a false flag op to justify rounding us up. For safety.
    “

    https://www.reddit.com/r/transgender/comments/1j9ys1t/online_trans_army_recruiting_members_and/

  608. Russell,
    Linking an article that contains no lambasting a second time doesn’t turn the the contents into lambasting! Did you actually watch the video in your link? Real Q. If yes. I don’t know how you can think that’s “lambasting”!

    Fox should be ashamed of themselves for that headline.

    The page is now linked three times: Once by you. Once when I repeated it so people could go see it’s not lambasting. And once more by you as a response. It contains zero lambasting or denigrating of prayer.
    And no, pointing out “prayer is not enough to protect kids from bullets” is not “denigrating prayer” or “lambasting”. Sorry: But if you see a kid starving, and you have food, you don’t say “You are in my thoughts and prayers.” You give him the prayers. Catholic Charities no it. They don’t claim pointing out that Gods work is often truly our own is “lambasting” prayer!

  609. You’re missing the subtext, Lucia. Democrats complain that instead of banning guns, republicans only offer thoughts and prayers for the victims. He is pointing out the “irony” of being shot while praying. The CNN host knows exactly what he is referring to, which is why she says:

    “Forget about thoughts and prayers. These kids were literally praying.”

  610. Lucia,
    An atheist’s opinion on prayer is about as meaningful as an anorexic’s opinion on the Schofield scale.
    I choose to ignore it.

  611. DaveJR

    You’re missing the subtext, Lucia.

    I’m not “missing subtext”. I watched the video Russel linked. That’s not the subtext in that video. If you have instances of Democrats saying it, link it. (Videos or tweets of someone accusing them of saying it is not evidence. Sorry.)

    But even if that is the subtext, that’s not “lambasting prayer”. Criticizing refusing to do anything other than prayer isn’t criticizing prayer itself. And if you are suggesting prayer alone, the response isn’t to lie and mischaracterize what the other person said. It’s to say what else you are suggesting>

    Some here have suggested something: banning the mentally ill from having guns. And also, banning transgender from having it. If you are for that– just say “I’m not saying we should stop at praying. I’m saying do ‘X’.” It’s easy enough to do.

  612. Russel,
    An atheist’s opinion on prayer is about as meaningful as an anorexic’s opinion on the Schofield scale.
    I ahven’t given you an atheists opinion on prayer. I’ve observed what the Mayor     actually said in that video. He did not “lambaste” or “denigrate” prayer.

  613. Lucia,
    The mayor was advocating for the need to take guns away from people. To paraphrase: “Prayers didn’t help these kids, they were actually praying. We need gun control.”

    That is why his statement generated so much push-back.

    I don’t think he was denigrating prayer. He was advocating for gun control. But the “prayers won’t help you against crazy gunmen” message was offensive to some, for sure.

    For me, the offensive part was him not recognizing that these episodes are mainly due to untreated mental health problems, not gun control problems.

  616. Russell,
    The original video speaks for itself. That you can find all sorts of people twisting the words and meaning doesn’t change the fact that the mayor did not lambasted or denigrate prayer.

    Politics being what it is, people twist other people’s words all the time. Currently, Republicans are doing that with respect to the Mayors actual words. That several or even many are doing it doesn’t make it not twisting. And it doesn’t make it not shameful.

    Linking accusations by Republicans isn’t evidence of what the Mayor or any other Dem said. It’s just evidence that the Republicans are engaged in collectively twisting words — for their own political purposes.

  617. I think some perspective is called for. At least two insane airline pilots in the last decade killed 400+ people (and themselves), and there have been earlier instances. Crazy people should not be flying planes. Crazy people should not have guns. But should air travel be banned because some pilots go insane? I don’t think so. Should guns be taken from the public because some crazy people buy them? I don’t think so. There are reasonable steps to reduce the chance of crazies buying (and using) guns, but that is NOT what most gun control advocates want.

  618. Quotes from the Fox News article:

    “Don’t give us your f—— thoughts and prayers. ”

    “The kids were praying when they died. How’d that work out, you obsequious coward? Now, f— off,”

    “Thoughts and prayers, I’m so beyond that nonsense. The lie of that,”

    Yep. Denigrating and lambasting prayer.

    Some of the other quotes in the Fox article were not denigrating prayer and some were borderline.

    Addition: I don’t see any objectionable quotes from Frey. But it does seem like he turned a vigil for the victims into a political rally.

  619. Talking about what the Mayor specifically said or did not say is sort of like the earlier discussion we had a couple threads back where we discussed what Butker had to say about issues. If Butker and the Mayor made arguments that were not representative of the arguments people are interested in, focusing on them specifically just generates noise and confusion. It seems like the headlines contributed to this; the Mayor became symbolic of an argument that the Mayor’s actual words don’t appear to directly support.

  620. Regarding the trans percentages, I think we are scrambling together different things here. We are told by some (IMO) charlatans in the medical professions that children must be allowed to transition or they are at heightened risk of committing suicide because of their gender dysphoria distress. Fine, let’s say that is so. This is much different from people who cross dress because they have elected to indulge in a fetish, or bisexual persons who enjoy roleplaying different genders, etc. In other words, not everyone we bump into who looks like they have some personal involvement in modern transgender life fit in the same categorical bucket. Some are there because of their openness to new experience and by choice. Some are there because they suffer from gender dysphoria. Some are there superficially because of social contagion or adolescent identity issues. [In the context of mental health and mass shooting, I think all of these buckets deserve separate consideration.]

  621. I’m going to fall back into my ‘victim’ mode.
    Catholic school children were attacked by an armed male while attending mass in a Catholic Church. The deranged shooter had written hate towards children and Catholics.
    Then, multiple members of the godless left used this as an opportunity to pile on and take shots at Christian prayer.
    It’s a direct attack by non-believers on Catholics.
    I find it offensive.

  622. Earlier, I wrote: “I don’t see any objectionable quotes from Frey.” I am reconsidering that after reading this:
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/minnesota-bishop-rebukes-dem-mayor-dismissing-prayer-following-deadly-catholic-school-attack#&_intcmp=fnhpbt1,hp1bt

    Minnesota Bishop Robert?Barron sharply criticized Minneapolis Mayor Jacob?Frey for dismissing calls for prayer following Wednesday’s deadly Catholic school shooting, calling the mayor’s remarks “completely asinine.”
    “Catholics don’t think that prayer magically protects them from all suffering. After all, Jesus prayed fervently from the cross on which he was dying,” Barron told Fox News Digital.

    and


    Barron, an influential Catholic leader who leads the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, argued that critics misunderstand the role of prayer.
    “Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God, which strikes me as altogether appropriate precisely at times of great pain,” he said. “And prayer by no means stands in contrast to decisive moral action. Martin Luther King was a man of deep prayer, who also effected a social revolution in our country. This is not an either/or proposition.”

    And from J.D. Vance:

    “We pray because our hearts are broken. We pray because we know God listens. We pray because we know that God works in mysterious ways, and can inspire us to further action,” Vance wrote. “Why do you feel the need to attack other people for praying when kids were just killed praying?”

  623. mark makes good points as to likely category errors in classifying people as trans.

    As to the comments on prayer by Frey and others, I think they involve a deliberate category error designed to imply that people who offer prayers are simply deflecting and don’t actually care. I can see where that is offensive to those who pray.

  624. I think this quote is on point:
    “What is Prayer?
    Prayer is a conversation with God. When we pray, we reach out to God with our needs, our struggles, our joy, and our gratitude. Regular prayer is the best way to strengthen our relationship with God, and there are many different ways to express your prayer.”
    The godless left attacking prayer is the godless left attacking our communication with our God.
    I am not telling them they have to believe I am telling them they cannot tell me not to believe.

  625. Some trans people are better at simulating the opposite sex. I suggest we walk by many more we don’t recognize than those we do. I have no idea but if somebody is transitioning they might very well choose to move in order to get a fresh start and avoid all the drama. So anecdotal data is likely useless.

    I only know of one story from a friend where a neighbor’s kid announced they needed to be called by a new female name.

  626. “We don’t want your thoughts and prayers” is right up there with defund the police. It’s a political statement supporting gun control that is very poorly and offensively framed. There is no obvious connection between Catholics and 2nd amendment supporters.

  627. “prayer is not enough to protect kids from bullets” is “denigrating prayer” IMO. It is intentionally dismissive of empathy from the right because their tribe supports the 2nd amendment. Frey said a whole bunch of words that also don’t protect kids from bullets that are intended to display performative empathy.

  628. SteveF (#251616),
    Were the 9/11 terrorists insane? I am sure some would argue that they were not (lots of virgins awaiting them in Heaven you know!), although I would suggest even among the ‘very faithful’ there are very few who would do what they did (what if the 20 virgins aren’t really there waiting?!?).

    80 years ago, approximately 3800 Kamikaze pilots did just that. were they insane, or just part of a society that the norm was honor above life itself.

    Sure, WWII was during a declared war that threatened the very heart of Japan, but it is pretty clear the radical jihadists also consider themselves at war. I expect if you asked the ‘run-of-the-mill’ Hamas fighter if they were ‘given the honor’ of going on a suicide mission, they’d do it.

    The issue with suicide bombing/kamikaze attacks is that they really aren’t that effective in winning wars. They often have adverse effects that the attackers didn’t count on.

  629. Tom, your comment:
    “It’s a political statement supporting gun control that is very poorly and offensively framed.”
    Yes, the liberals keep falling all over themselves.
    I really think TDS has scrambled their brains.
    This is another example of the liberals trying to make a political point, but just making political enemies instead.

  630. Joshua

    If Lucia didn’t think it was important to protect her blog participants from what I have to say, she’d allow me to explain ….

    If you did not behave like an intentional troll, I’d let you comment. You are still banned. I just want people to see that you are still here leaving me your messages.

  631. Tom,
    I agree that statement is very poorly stated. It’s obviously backfired on them. But they aren’t saying we don’t want prayers. They are saying it’s not enough. Admittedly…. if you know the political cycle, it was bound to be twisted. But still… I think it is.

    Also: they don’t actually say what else they want done in that statement either. So, they too are guilty of not saying what they want done. (Likely they don’t because they know where that conversation goes.)

  633. Lucia,

    Thanks for protecting us from intentionally disruptive commenting / trolling. It is appreciated, by me at least!

  634. First – I would like to propose that all teens are confused – show me a teen and I will show you a confused teen. Some are more confused than others, but being a teen is by definition being someone who is going through changes to themselves and their societal place and trying to deal with them. This is why we have juvenile sentencing – teens do stupid stuff (and a lot of that stupid stuff is because they’re working thru things and testing boundaries).

    I feel that the number of teen trans is increasing – mainly because being trans is more acceptable now than ever to be seen as one. A confused teen – especially about their sexuality – can now say they’re in the wrong body and people will not only listen, they will accept this as truth. But these are still teens and still confused. The apparent recanting of the killer’s transition shows that we cannot just blindly accept what a teen believes. That said, we also know nothing about why the killer decided years ago to transition… and we probably never will.

    The one thing for certain is that a trans person is in a state of internal conflict. Whether they admit it or not, there is a disconnect between their mental state and biological reality that will always be there (even after surgeries). Some have no trouble juggling this conflict, but others can’t. It seems that the killer in this case couldn’t resolve this conflict.

    There also is another category of teen trans – and that is the rebellious. I am sure there are teen trans (and adult trans too) that are ‘trans’ just so they can rebel against society. These, I feel, are the trans that go online and expose their hate. They use it as armor to burn down the norms of society. The killer in this case seemed to have gone from ‘confused’ as a teen to ‘rebel’ as a young adult. It could be that transitioning didn’t solve the mental dilemma he was experiencing and that this solution that everyone told him would fix things failed, and that created the anger and the actions we saw this week.

    If nothing else, we should ask these questions.

  635. There’s the phrase “saying the quiet part out loud”. Democrats, emboldened by their media echo chambers and hate for Trump, have done a lot of that recently, and I 100% commend them for doing so.

    However, just because, in this instance, the mayor didn’t explicitly go that far, doesn’t mean that’s not what they intended to say. To many, dems and repubs, the subtext is obvious. The message was not “poorly stated”. It was properly stated, and repeated that way, to avoid saying the quiet part out loud.

  636. lucia wrote: “I agree that statement is very poorly stated. It’s obviously backfired on them. But they aren’t saying we don’t want prayers.”

    I think that most of the “prayers are not enough” statements are carefully stated so as to not appear offensive to most people. The less cautiously stated ones very clearly DO say that they don’t want prayers.

    “Don’t give us your f—— thoughts and prayers.”

    “The kids were praying when they died. How’d that work out, you obsequious coward? Now, f— off”.

    “Thoughts and prayers, I’m so beyond that nonsense. The lie of that”.

    And thanks to lucia for dealing with the likes of Joshua so we don’t have to.

  637. Lucia,

    Having thought it through, I tend to think there’s nothing wrong with criticizing people for not getting off their butts and doing something to solve a problem. I don’t think this is a criticism of ‘prayer’ either necessarily. ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’ and all that. Even a believer might argue that we are here on Earth (ideally) to execute God’s will, not to invoke God in the hopes He will magically execute our will. I don’t disagree with people that there is a political dimension here, but I don’t see what difference that makes. People can and do disagree about politics and religion and that’s fine just fine.

  638. Scott Jennings from CNN said “people on the left are denigrating people of faith, at about the 30 second mark of the video:
    https://x.com/thomasmhern/status/1960897634438197297?s=61
    A quote I agree with, From Jimmy Failla:
    “I wanna live in a world where Democrats get madder at the people shooting than the people praying.”
    Another good thought, From National Review:
    “Democrats’ dismissive attitude toward prayer is rooted in arrogance. It contains the condescending assumption that people of faith are like little children who think that prayer works like magic pixie dust to grant all of their heart’s desires. In times of tragedy, according to this crowd, people should find solace not in God, but in government.”
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/08/in-defense-of-prayer/

  639. Lucia,
    I rather suspect your blog participants wouldn’t be enriched by Joshua’s words of ‘wisdom’, endless homework assignments, gratuitous insults, and arrogant snark. If I wanted anything like that, I could just turn on MSNBC or CNN for a few minutes.

  640. When I see Dems criticizing Muslims for offering up prayer then I will reconsider my position that this isn’t an offensive and intentional political statement, ha ha.

    If someone tells you they are praying to God or Allah for your family member’s recovery from terminal cancer then you don’t respond by telling them that is not going to work. They know that, it is an offering of empathy and support along the lines of “sorry for your loss”.

    You can do advocacy and leave the cheap shots out of it. Opportunistic advocacy during tragedies is a bit repugnant, but common today.

    All that said, Catholics can put their big boy pants on and just go about their business.

  641. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/08/29/minneapolis_mayor_frey_to_vance_prayers_are_good_they_are_a_necessity_but_they_are_not_in_themselves_adequate.html

    The guy wants to seize all guns in private hands. He is a joke.

    If politicians on the left actually wanted a serious conversation about gun murders, I expect most conservatives would be happy to have that conversation. But is this guy serious? Heck No! is the political left serious? Heck no! If politicians on the left want to talk about who is actually being murdered by guns and why, that would be a great start…. 20+ thousand are killed every year by pistols in the hands of young men… and they are usually convicted criminals who are not supposed to have guns at all.

    The endless calls for eliminating “assault rifles” and “large capacity magazines”, etc are dishonest and pointless. These are NOT what cause most gun murders. Untreated mental illness causes the kind of tragic murders we saw in Minneapolis, but these are a miniscule fraction of gun murders.

    Improve mental health? Sure. Screen better to stop crazies from buying guns? Sure. But stop the utter nonsense about assault rifles and magazine sizes; concentrate on putting young criminals in jail so they can neither murder each other nor anyone else.

  642. DeanP

    I feel that the number of teen trans is increasing – mainly because being trans is more acceptable now than ever to be seen as one.

    That. But also, some things used to be seen as “stages” and very highly likely to change. Because they are highly likely to change, it’s imprudent to do something medical to bake in the current feeling of confusion.

    Now, for some reason, they want to think kid know they want to change their gender when they are 3 years old and that that idea should be attended to and reinforced. When it is, I’m sure it’s more likely to exist longer.

  643. SteveF

    I rather suspect your blog participants wouldn’t be enriched by Joshua’s words of ‘wisdom’, endless homework assignments, gratuitous insults, and arrogant snark.

    Note, I snipped. He went on to say something that had a grain of truth, but was very incomplete. It was not the “main” problem. Most of us actually touched on much of the “main” problem in any statistical analysis which is we simply don’t know numbers. There are some others– including cherry picking and also… I don’t now it’s name. It’s not the texas sharp shooter. It’s…. something to do with picking the observation and then only doing the statistic because you saw that thing.

    Let’s face it: those of us who think there is at least something mentally wrong with the desire to change sexes– especially to the point of operations– thought so before this event.

  644. DeanP,
    On my “seen as stages” comment above…. I should also note that many things some people insisted were “stages” sort of weren’t. But. Oh. Well.
    There wasn’t necessarily tremendous harm in some things having been seen as stages when they weren’t. Some stages were indulged even while seen as stages.

  645. Frey: “prayers are good, but they are not enough. They are a necessity, but they are not in and of themselves, adequate. It’s only adequate if you can attach an action to the work. And in this case, we know what the solutions are. They’ve been the same solutions three years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago.”

    He is only willing to consider one “solution” that has never worked and never will work.

    The sort of gun control that might work would be to keep guns out of the hands of deranged people. But that requires somehow identifying those people in advance with some degree of accuracy. I don’t know how to do that.

    Even better would be to have fewer deranged people out on the streets. Bringing back asylums and involuntary commitment might help. But a better place to start would be to stop encouraging people in their delusions and hastening them on the road to becoming deranged.

    Even better would be to move society back towards a sense of individual responsibility and community. But that is diametrically opposed to the Leftist agenda.

  646. Mike,

    Even better would be to move society back towards a sense of individual responsibility and community.

    Yes.

  647. If you throw a “posting violent words and imagery” legal dragnet over social media the left isn’t going to like the disparities that result.

    There are hundreds, thousands, of people posting garbage that is equally or more crazy than Robin who didn’t shoot up a school. If you somehow started penalizing this then the shooters (who have agency) will simply stay underground. Not a solution.

    The blunt tool of banning all guns and spending decades confiscating existing ones would IMO reduce lethal violence, especially completed suicide(?), but at a cost to individual liberty in the US that we are not willing to surrender. People are not going to be shamed out of this position by partisans.

    It’s a very steep hill to climb. Overturing the 2nd amendment looks impossible so the left needs to gain control of the Supreme Court, reinterpret this to allow states to ban guns, then hope it is so effective that most states follow. Not likely, but a better strategy than whatever it is they think are doing.

  648. Lucia,
    “…there is at least something mentally wrong with the desire to change sexes…”

    If you are a man and you want to cut off your penis, you are mentally ill. If you are a woman and want to cut off your breasts, you are mentally ill. These people are in desperate need for mental health treatment.

  649. Fox News: Minneapolis church shooter’s mother refuses to talk to police, obtains criminal defense attorney

    Yes, that’s what happens when you start prosecuting parents. This is completely rational. I do find it unlikely Minnesota / Minneapolis would prosecute this shooter’s parents because … reasons.

  650. Yes, that’s what happens when you start prosecuting parents. This is completely rational. I do find it unlikely Minnesota / Minneapolis would prosecute this shooter’s parents because … reasons.

    If I had to guess the mom’s circling of the wagons is more motivated by the inevitable civil cases than criminal. She’s unlikely to be convicted of anything serious criminally, but any conviction would hurt badly in the civil trials.

  651. Tom Scharf,
    Did she know (or suspect) her son had gone insane? Who knows, but she is never going to be held responsible. Going after her is as crazy as her son was.

  652. Football, more football, several good games on tonight, right now, Western Michigan, and Michigan State,
    Later Georgia Tech at Colorado.
    Tomorrow starts out with a blockbuster, #1 Texas at #3 Ohio State at 12 noon.

  653. Being trans is certainly different as opposed to the LBG people in the community.
    One is a sexual desire question.
    The other is a conscious sexual designation desire demand.
    –
    The % number of the former is hidden by the previous society suppression of open admission of such status.
    There would not be many gay people wishing to be recognised in Saudi Arabia.
    –
    On the other hand there are a lot of men wearing dresses in that society, or what look like dresses to westerners but I doubt they would consider themselves as cross dressers.
    –
    We all have or know families with gay relatives and have interactions with friends or colleges whom are gay but mentally sharp and not more mentally ill than everyone else.
    –
    I struggle to think of one person in my world who is trans.
    It seems to be a condition driven by a need for attention or a need for money.
    The concept of changing oneself into the type of person who would be attracted sexually by the type of person you were but found abhorrent is paradoxical and goes against most logic.
    –
    Hence the increase in numbers suggests attention is a powerful driver for the individual. For most of their life the person they would be seeking attention from would be their parent.
    “Am I pretty enough for you now, mum.”
    Suggests a Munchausen illness by proxy which has become real for the delusional sufferer.

  654. Lucia –

    The main issue, contrary to your claim that ‘we simply don’t know numbers,’ is that we know enough about the numbers to confirm the sample sizes of transgender individuals and mass shooters are extremely small. These tiny samples lack the statistical power to produce reliable results, making any attempt to associate transgender identity with a higher incidence of mass shootings statistically meaningless, as the outcomes are indistinguishable from random noise.

    Surely you must know this. What’s funny is that you seem to feel you need to run interference from your readers to face that they’re trying to read meaning from noise. And so you don’t actually post my point, but hand wave it away with a bogus argument.

    But it’s nice to have it confirmed that you’re reading my messages. I was wondering about that.

  657. Surprise fun football game last night was the Tarleton State Texans beating Army, 30 to 27, in double overtime. The game was played at Army’s Michie Stadium.
    The West Point Corps of Cadets wore their camo uniforms. It was a spectacle, as always.
    The Tarleton State Texans football team is in the United Athletic Conference (UAC). The UAC is a new football-focused conference formed from the rebrand of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and its alliance with the ASUN Conference.
    I learned something last night, the Army cheer squad, called the ‘Rabble Rousers’, are all cadets. The squad will never be confused with an SEC cheer squad; Some of them were short, some of them bordered on being lumpy, but they were enthusiastic and accomplished their mission.
    Rabble Rousers, team photo:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1961677148147573216
    Rabble Rousers, web page:
    https://goarmywestpoint.com/sports/rabble-rousers/

  658. Ukraine is Rebuilding its Military From Scratch
    “The great reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is being implemented. Early this year, commander-in-chief Syrsky announced that the entire structure will now be composed of Army Corps as opposed to Operational Tactical Groups. Although this transition is much needed, as it will improve command and control of Ukrainian forces, there are also important challenges ahead.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT0l-4nJIpU

    The issues involved are significant. The post gets into the weeds of army organization. Worth the time if you have an interest in the topic. I get that most would consider watching grass grow as more interesting.

  659. Ed,
    I started to watch it and started to question the author’s sources (and credentials). Do you know either of those?

  661. ISW says the Trump Putin meeting was just a stalling tactic from Putin. My assessment at the time was that ‘ Putin is playing Trump’:
    “NEW: Russia reportedly leveraged the August 15 Alaska Summit in order to stall for a planned Fall 2025 offensive, among other things.”
    and….
    “Russian forces notably took advantage of the August 15 Alaska Summit to intensify ongoing offensive operations in certain areas of the theater, such as conducting an infiltration operation near Dobropillya, and to stockpile drones and missiles that Russian forces used to strike Kyiv and inflict heavy civilian casualties overnight on August 27 to 28.”
    https://x.com/thestudyofwar/status/1961598190194491668?s=61&t=7w4bCW3a8ve2DqoeniQatQ

  662. does anybody have any evidence as to where Trump has been hiding? He’s been MIA for nearly a week.

  663. Russell,

    This is an interesting concept. A wind turbine balloon that floats at 1500 meters….

    I was looking for a tether. I don’t know how it would work without a tether.

  664. Lucia,
    Me too
    edit,
    I have been unable to find more information on it. Maybe it’s all BS.

  665. Trump missing? He had that cabinet meeting on Tuesday. And didn’t he have press in the Oval Office a couple days ago for executive order signings?

    Trump is more visible in one week than Biden was in any month and people are speculating that something is wrong.

  666. Trump hasn’t been seen for four days, which is a fortnight in Trump time. Normally on a holiday weekend, he’d be golfing at some exotic resort.
    It’s curious he hasn’t been seen

  667. I just remembered another take away from the Tarleton State vs Army game last night. There were a lot more white guys on the field that I’m used to seeing.

  669. I have seen no Democrat who has a hope of beating this guy:
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/08/28/vp_vance_prays_for_minneapolis_shooting_victims_.html

    Vance is graceful, eloquent, up-front with his thinking, and most of all, appears completely sincere. I think that if the Dems put up a dedicated leftist in 2028 (as is their wont), then they are burned toast. If they put up a much more centrist candidate (like Josh Shapiro?), then they have an outside chance, but only an outside chance. I have not heard a more talented politician than Vance speak since Ronald Reagan…. and I suspect Vance has a much better understanding of the issues than Reagan ever did.

  670. Steve,

    I don’t think they will find their way out of the wilderness in time to have a hope of defeating Vance, but a lot can happen. Really, if something fairly catastrophic or damaging happens it might be out of Trump’s hands and yet R’s could (and likely would) still be blamed for it. I think it would take some event like this (like Covid was for example) to upset Vance winning 2028 IMO.

    I’m more interested in midterms and whether or not it looks like we will lose the House. I think it’s still too early to tell that as well though.

  671. mark bofill,
    “I’m more interested in midterms and whether or not it looks like we will lose the House. I think it’s still too early to tell that as well though.”

    Well, yes, the possibility of Republicans continuing to control the House is the ‘issue of our times’. Based on all that has happened, I’d say it is just about a coin toss. Should Dems gain control of the House, it will be all impeachment of Trump all the time for 2 years, and (of course) paralyzed government. But while two years of paralyzed government is bad, it is not nearly as bad as crazy lefties controlling government.

    I see Vance as someone who might hold things together after 2028, until the crazy left becomes (a bit) less crazy. YMMV. I may not be around to see how it turns out, of course.

  672. Steve,

    Yep. Oh I like Vance for sure, and I agree with you. I like Vance for President better than I like Trump in that office honestly. I’m glad of and grateful for Trump though, he can take the hits and take out most of the garbage while he is in office. But I still look forward to Vance.

  673. The big question I have about Vance is if he can get the votes of the low propensity voters and normally Democrat voters who turned out for Trump.

    We should not assume that Vance will be the nominee. I hope he has one or more serious challengers for the nomination. Coronations don’t end well.

  674. Mike,

    Sure he can face challengers. I think DeSantis is plenty comparably competent, although he doesn’t have the same charisma. Rubio has been standing out as well, but he has (wisely) deferred at least for now discussing any 2028 ambitions.
    But sure. Of course we will see what things look like when the time comes. Of course things look different years out than they sometimes end up being. STILL, I don’t see what’s wrong with recognizing that the VP looks like the strongest candidate I can see today.

  675. As VP, Vance definitely has the pole position. And he appears to be a much better campaigner than either Rubio or DeSantis. So it could be that any strong contenders will just bow out without giving it a try. That would not be beneficial.

  676. Schumer had to avoid a previous lockdown as the emergrncy governing powers would have let Trump place some of his blocked political placements into their roles without the (absent) congressional oversight.
    –
    Will this be the case come the next decision day which I expect will lead to a Government shutdown?
    Schumer too much egg on his face from the last time to back down this time.
    Also would allow any firings left in the lineup blocked by judicial processes which might also be voided.
    –
    Pocket excision sounds exactly the wrong name for something designed to stop leakages from the taxpayers pocket!
    –
    Russell, I distinctly remember a female transgender shooter only 3 months ago but you have only listed males?
    The Ai only listed initially 4 recent shooters asked for more details 3 times ! It grudgingly gave 6,8 then 10; each time with the proviso that such occurrences were rare and unusual. Talk about bias in AI.
    Sure there are more it is reluctant to divulge
    Alexis Rivera 2001
    Casey Morgan
    Jordan Lee
    Taylor Swift

  678. Oops Taylor Smith, not swift , had a Newsom moment.
    Alexis Johnson, Jamie Lee , Tiffany Williams.
    Et al all lovely first names.
    –
    Summary of Findings

    Rarity of Incidents: The number of mass shootings involving transgender individuals remains low compared to the overall statistics of mass shootings in the USA.
    Complex Factors: Each case often involves a combination of mental health issues, societal pressures, and personal struggles, emphasizing the need for comprehensive support systems.
    Victimization vs. Perpetration: The focus on these incidents should not overshadow the fact that transgender individuals are more frequently victims of violence rather than perpetrators.
    This expanded list provides a clearer understanding of the rare instances of transgender mass shooters in the USA since 2000, highlighting the complexities surrounding each case and the broader societal implications.
    –
    It really helps to expand the original question several times to get the underlying AI picture.Even here it only gave notable cases

  680. Mike M,

    I am sure Vance will face primary challengers, I just don’t think any will be strong enough to take the nomination from him. DeSantis is a tough fighter, so I doubt he will give up easily.

    WRT turning out low propensity voters: donno. I find Vance an inspiration (hard to say that about most politicians!!), but other people may not be so inspired.

  681. SteveF
    I always prefer Governor as appropriate relevant experience over all other experience. It’s an executive function and also reveals actual positions more.

    I don’t like DeSantis’s position on abortion– if done at a federal level. But I doubt I like Vance’s either!

  682. Choosing between DeSantis and Vance is the sort of problem I’d enjoy having. Either would work. I’d prefer the one who’d be most likely to win, whichever that might be.

  683. I pretty much agree with mark. DeSantis is a terrific governor and I think he would make an excellent president. But after watching his 2024 campaign, I think he would make a poor candidate. OTOH, I think that Vance might have the rare ability to appeal to both enthusiastic Trump supporters and those who held their noses to vote for Trump.

  684. DeSantis … errr … governs better because he has been a governor. He is a doer, not a great speaker. Remember he wrote the playbook on dismantling DEI before Trump took office the second time. Florida, where woke goes to die. He came out smelling like a rose on his high political risk Covid decisions. The legacy media crucified him over that and he crushed them.

    DeSantis would be a better president but I’m not sure he can win it without a personality transplant.

    All Republicans will have a tough road if the economy turns sour.

  685. Texas QB Manning looked mediocre. Missed a lot of open receivers and failed to convert important plays. He has been downgraded to regular human. Opening on the road at Ohio State is tough so he can redeem himself.

    Glad to see Florida State back from the dead.

    Lee Corso will be missed.

  686. Tom,
    I agree on both Manning and Florida State.
    The Gator game was a yawner.
    The Florida State Florida game has not been interesting since Florida State has been so bad. Maybe the rivalry will come back.

  687. I would be happy with either DeSantis or Vance, but my guy is Rubio. Republicans have a plethora of first level choices. I do like a primary system with a number of good candidates.
    The Democrats have crap.

  688. angech, your post:
    “Russell, I distinctly remember a female transgender shooter only 3 months ago but you have only listed males?”
    Their confusion as to their own names and sex gets me confused as to their names and sex.
    I couldn’t figure it out, so I ran it again with Grok. I hope this helps.
    I asked:
    “name the multiple shooters since 2019 that have been trans“
    Grok responded:
    Based on available data, the following mass shootings since 2019 in the U.S. involved perpetrators who were reported to identify as transgender or non-binary. Note that definitions of “mass shooting” vary (e.g., four or more people shot or killed, excluding the shooter, per the Gun Violence Archive), and gender identity reporting can be inconsistent or unconfirmed. I’ve included only cases with credible reports of transgender or non-binary identity, as some claims have been debunked or lack verification.

    1. Highlands Ranch, Colorado (May 7, 2019)
    – Shooter: Alec McKinney
    – Details: McKinney, a transgender teenager (assigned female at birth, identifying as male), and co-defendant Devon Erickson carried out a shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, killing one student and injuring eight others. McKinney was sentenced to life in prison plus 38 years, citing bullying as a motive.

    2. Nashville, Tennessee (March 27, 2023)
    – Shooter: Audrey Elizabeth Hale
    – Details: Hale, identified by police as transgender (assigned female at birth, using masculine pronouns on social media), killed six people, including three children, at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school. Hale was killed by police.

    3. Minneapolis, Minnesota (August 27, 2025)
    – Shooter: Robert “Robin” Westman
    – Details: Westman, identified as transgender, killed two children and injured 17 others at Annunciation Catholic Church and school. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The incident is noted as rare, with evidence suggesting influence from online subcultures venerating mass shooters.

    Notes on Other Claimed Cases:
    – Colorado Springs, Colorado (November 2022): Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub, was claimed by their lawyers to identify as non-binary. However, skepticism exists due to Aldrich’s history of anti-LGBTQ remarks and the attack being charged as a hate crime, casting doubt on the non-binary claim.
    – Aberdeen, Maryland (September 2018): Snochia Moseley, who killed three people at a Rite Aid warehouse, was reported by some sources to identify as transgender. However, this incident falls just outside the 2019 timeframe, and gender identity reporting is less definitive.
    – Perry, Iowa (January 2024): Dylan Butler was falsely claimed to be transgender by some social media accounts based on pro-LGBTQ+ posts, but no credible evidence supports this.
    – Houston, Texas (February 2024): Gennesse Moreno was falsely labeled transgender by some sources due to use of aliases, but police confirmed no transgender identity.

  689. The Abundant Life Christian School shooting occurred on December 16, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin, and involved 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha. Here are the detailed aspects of the incident:
    The information below involved asking the duck duck AI To identify the younger shooter and then further having to ask it if she was trans.
    Hence I do not think the AI is programmed to answer the question directly and is why it will not show up on your statistics.
    –
    AI
    Yes, Natalie Rupnow identified as transgender and had been using the name Samantha. This aspect of her identity has been part of the discussions surrounding the incident, particularly in the context of understanding her motivations and the broader implications for the transgender community.
    –
    It appears to be a problem with the AI coders bias.

  690. angech,
    I’m not sure it’s “coder bias”. I think it’s a problem we discussed above which is “identifying who is trans”. This can be a big difficulty especially with young people who sometimes ‘oscillate’. In decades past, people just called it “confusion” and “a stage”. Now, some embrace it, some fight it, some still treat it as “a stage” and so on.

  691. I should add: The problem of identifying “who is trans” affects both the problem of figuring on the fraction in the population and the fraction who commit mass murders of any sort. Would she have been tallied as trans for “general population” before the murder? We don’t know that either!

  692. Russell, I too would prefer Rubio to the two others. I think his appointment to State received resounding support in the Senate both Repubs and Dems.

    And I agree that we Dems do not at this point have a compelling candidate.

    The most intelligent emails I get from that quarter are from Pete Buttigieg. He even recognizes that our extreme wing drove us into craziness and that the Repubs have a point that some parts of our bureacracy have expanded far beyond any real need.

    But, I cannot imagine Buttigieg winning the presidency in our present climate.

  693. I agree John.
    Also, I am beyond belief that the centrist Democrats have let the crazies control things for this long.

  694. If Democrats were still in power, or maybe I should say while they were still in power, Democrats strangely seemed to have no problem with the crazy. I don’t think this is lost on voters. Democrats are going to have to persuade people, against a certain amount of prior evidence, that this has changed.
    Because frankly, I believe Buttigieg was and is fine with the crazy ideology, just not with being out of power.

  695. Mark,
    The thing is that when a politician was very openly and vocally for ‘X’ quite recently, then that ‘X’ becomes voting booth poison, then the politician wants to be seem as “no longer for X”, they actually need to openly and vocally say they’ve changed their mind. And they need to be willing to repeat that they are no longer for X when asked by reporters.

    Kamala tried to take the ‘just drop talking about X’ path. That can work if you stopped expressing strong support for X three cycles ago and if X hasn’t become literal poison at the voting booth. But it doesn’t work if your strong support was recent and it’s become poison. Your opponents will bring up your recent support precisely because it is poison. You either must embrace your old position and say why it was right or you must say you were wrong.

  696. Mark Bofill,
    “…. I believe Buttigieg was and is fine with the crazy ideology, just not with being out of power.”

    I would not limit it to one politician. The position seems to be: ‘Acknowledging someone is mentally disturbed and in need of treatment is “cruel” and never acceptable.’ They think crazy people, even minors, should just be allowed to ‘live how they want’, no matter the suffering that causes for themselves and their families.

    Which is, of coursed, why we have so many deranged homeless people living under carboard boxes in cities around the country. I think this is something ‘progressives’ will never compromise on.

  697. Lucia,
    “You either must embrace your old position and say why it was right or you must say you were wrong.”

    It is difficult for anyone to admit they were wrong. It is just about impossible for ‘progressives’….. members of what is very much like a religious organization. You might as well try to convince the Pope to become an atheist.

    So what do we pretty much always see? Dem candidates lying about what they believe in to get elected. The ones who are more honest about what they believe (like AOC) are unelectable outside of a few small regions.

  698. Steve,

    I think a lot of the problem comes from subtle philosophical errors. People are not in fact the blank slates progressives believed they were. Setting aside the plumbing, male and female still aren’t identical and interchangeable. Things have a nature, not everything is societal convention or social construction. More important still, there’s objective reality out there and operational right and wrong. I’m pretty sure there’s objective normative right and wrong as well, although arguing it gets tedious fast.

    But yeah. It’s predictable the types of ‘crazy’ progressives will embrace once their common philosophical premises are understood. And as you point out, the consequences for society of making these sorts of errors aren’t pretty. And voters are tired of it, perhaps.

    I’d like to believe that voters are tired of it anyway. Who knows. That last might be wishful thinking on my part.

  699. Lucia,

    I agree with you; there is going to have to be some public repudiation of prior positions for Dems to come in from out in the cold. It’s going to be hard though, as they still need to run the gauntlet of activist extremists who’d love the opportunity to demonstrate their ideological purity by crucifying traitorous heretics. It’s a darn shame…

  700. The reconciliation bill effectively eliminated milage standards by:

    1) Removing’s California’s special authority to set their own milage standards, and

    2) Eliminating all penalties for car manufacturers not complying with Federal milage requirements

    The second is a replay of setting the Obamacare non-insurance penalties to zero.

    The Biden era milage standards, which were in fact impossible to meet except for electric cars (which was the entire point), are effectively revoked until Dems have a trifecta in Washington, DC and can pass a bill to re-instate the penalties.

    So maybe 7 years (9 years?) of relative sanity on auto milage rules. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Since EV tax credits are expiring in a month, EV sales are likely to drop considerably. Fuel sipping hybrids may benefit, since their lower fuel costs do usually justify their slightly higher prices compared to straight internal combustion vehicles, and they are WAY cheaper than un-subsidized EVs, without the range issues of EVs.

  701. Tesla, with a price of $334 and a P/E ratio of almost 200 may be a good ‘put’ option at a price of $250, or even $200. I expect their sales to plummet.

  702. SteveF

    The ones who are more honest about what they believe (like AOC) are unelectable outside of a few small regions.

    This is why it’s hard for some people to move to national positions. Unless the public comes around to their view, they can’t be elected nationwide.

    It’s also why parties need real primaries. Kamala was not attractive when she ran in the primaries. Thinking she would suddenly be attractive nationwide once they picked her was very wishful.

    And, of course, openly repudiating your former ideas has its own bag of troubles. You lose your former supporters. You don’t necessarily have other people believe you are honest about your current views. You have to have some very open, public discussion about the change of view– and that’s not easy if the change was sudden.

  703. My guess is that the left will over celebrate Buttigieg’s sexual identity (the first openly (fill in blank) !!!” and call anyone who disagrees with his policy out as homophobic. This will likely doom his candidacy. If Buttigieg can get in front of this and overtly decline to “represent” this group (which is different than being against it) then he will improve his chances.

    The trans member of Congress I thought did a good job with this, basically saying they were a member of Congress who happened to be trans and refusing to engage in the bathroom battle.

    The right will of course lay a hundred land mines along the trail and it would be difficult to avoid them all.

  704. Mark Bofill

    Setting aside the plumbing, male and female still aren’t identical and interchangeable.

    If they were interchangable, they wouldn’t need the plumbing change.

    The problem with claiming that the trans teens need biological transformation holds in it its own contradiction. It says the plumbing really really matters. It also says that males and females are really, truly different in some mental-psychological way and that you need to change the plumbing. It says if you aren’t “really” a woman or man if your mental state is “the other”.

  705. Last week, my three YO grandson (on his own, no prompting or encouragement) set four upside down plastic containers on my pool patio, found a large stick, and began drumming loudly enough to bring me from my office to investigate. He was fascinated by the horrible noise and reluctant to stop. Yes, boys and girls are different, and not just in the plumbing.

  706. Lucia,

    I completely agree that the fixation on genitalia demonstrates that indeed biological sex is both distinct from gender and important to gender. The trans movement tries to subordinate the physical objective reality of biological sex to the subjective perspective of gender / performative behavioral preference, with unfortunate results.

    But yes. We are all (and have been for quite some time now) already sufficiently free that we can live out our preferred performative genders without messing with the plumbing, and I think it’s indicative of a more fundamental problem that this is not enough. This is one of the reasons I return to the ‘war on reality’ motiff, I really think that somewhere down at the root of the belief system that progressive thinkers end up at war with reality one way or another.

  707. Lucia,
    In Kamala’s case the primary voters could see she is at best a mid-wit, promoted to a level of utter incompetence, who had produced nothing in her life beyond inscrutable word salads. She was picked as VP because James Clyburn set a black woman VP the price to make sure Biden won in South Carolina.

    I believe she was the most politically costly DEI hire in history, since a more accomplished candidate could well have beaten Trump in 2024.

  708. It’s completely possible EV’s will become dominant without government subsidies. They are selling them cheap in China already. LPF battery prices continue to decline. If we didn’t have trade barriers then US manufacturers would have big problems.

    “EVs in China are generally affordable, with a fiercely competitive market leading to prices comparable to or even lower than gasoline cars, with the average EV price around $25,000-$26,000 in mid-2025, while budget models like the BYD Seagull can cost under $8,000 after recent discounts.”

    https://electrek.co/2025/04/08/byds-low-cost-seagull-ev-now-starts-under-8000-china/

  709. Ben Shapiro’s main theory on the wackiness is what he calls the left’s “omni-cause” or intersectionality. If you are a member of a minority identity group on the left then you are morally bound (shamed) to support all the other minority identity groups. This is how you end up with queers for Palestine. It’s all bundled under the umbrella of the oppressor / victim matrix and all the victims must unite against the majority.

    This theory is consistent with a lot of the left’s seemingly irrational political behavior, the inability to openly criticize Hamas to the point of ignoring hostages for example. Being for gay rights does not mean one would be for trans “rights” or a supporter of Palestinians. Jews are a minority but are designated an oppressor somehow.

    Part of it is simply tribal loyalty but the left is doing itself no favors when they put crazy under the umbrella of protection and socially enforce unpopular positions.

    The latest evolution of omni-cause flags. Who dares speak out against this?
    https://www.hrc.org/resources/lgbtq-pride-flags

    It’s not even clear how teaching gender fluidity to grade schoolers or supporting minor transitions without parental permission made its way onto the platform.

  710. Tom Scharf,

    I read Shapiro’s analysis of this some time ago. I think he is right, in that it is a) 100% tribal, b) irrational, and c) leads to insane outcomes like gays supporting people who would toss all gays to their deaths from rooftops if given a chance.

    I think it does show how the promotion of ‘intersectionality’ by colleges and universities has damaged the country. And how stupid college professors can be.

  711. Tom Scharf,
    Tesla sells their Model 3 in China for US$32,000, but near US$45,000 in the States. Labor cost differences are the biggest factor. Gasoline powered cars are cheaper in China as well….. of course. Many models cost under $10,000.

  712. SteveF

    She was picked as VP because James Clyburn set a…..

    This is, precisely, the Dem’s not having “real” primaries. They have heavy weights making decisions.

    If you want to do things in dark smoky rooms, admit that’s what you are doing. If you want to have primaries, have real primaries. The system the Dems are picking got them Hilary as a candidate. Biden barely won– against a sitting President with manifest negative issues with the public. And the second time, he was going to lose to Trump. And then his replacement
    lost.

    I think the reason for these fake primaries is the Dems want to feel 100% certain to present a vision of unity. But actually, they need to fight each other. After that, they can focus on the ideas that won out.

  713. Tom

    If you are a member of a minority identity group on the left then you are morally bound (shamed) to support all the other minority identity groups.

    That rule is crumbling.

    It’s not even clear how teaching gender fluidity to grade

    Grandpa Snoop Dogg has now apologized for stepping on the LGBTQ+ rail. But you how… we know his raw reaction.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15052089/Snoop-Dogg-breaks-silence-backlash-homophobic-Lightyear.html
    “Snoop Dogg breaks silence amid backlash for saying saying same-sex scene left him ‘scared to go to the movies'”

  714. I think the reason for the fake primaries is that the Dem party bosses want control and power. Hillary was one of them, so she could be trusted, unlike Bernie. The manifest shortcomings of Biden and Harris were a feature, not a bug, since that ensured that the bosses could largely control them after getting them elected. Unfortunately for the bosses, their reach exceeded their grasp in 2024.

  715. Groundhog day.

    NPR writes a 1000 words on the Minneapolis school shooter’s (alleged lack of) motives and never mentions they were trans. Identity of shooter and victim means nothing.
    https://www.npr.org/2025/08/29/nx-s1-5522038/minneapolis-shooting-motive

    NPR can find the motive for the Atlanta spa shooter even though the shooter survived and said it wasn’t about race. Identity of shooter and victim means everything.
    https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1087028236/1-year-after-the-atlanta-spa-shootings-a-look-at-the-movement-to-stop-asian-hate
    “On the anniversary of the spa shootings in Atlanta, we look at the long history of Anti-Asian hate, from pandemic-related hate to the fetishization of Asian women.
    …
    A study from the Virulent Hate Project found that 75% of known offenders, the people verbally and physically harassing Asian Americans, are white men.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/why-atlanta-spa-shooter-s-asian-acquaintances-can-t-tell-n1275348
    “The prosecutor cited interviews with acquaintances of Asian descent who knew the suspect and claimed none had seen him exhibit anti-Asian bias. But experts say that’s far from conclusive.”

    This has gotten so old, ignore the perp’s own words and fill in the preferred narrative.

  716. Luica,
    “After that, they can focus on the ideas that won out.”

    What I expect will win out is a broad endorsement of everything most voters don’t like about the Dem party. Count on them choosing someone who is 100% on board with DEI, open borders, ‘sanctuary’ cities and states, and refusal to prosecute criminals for their actual crimes. If they lose in a landslide in 2028, then maybe (just maybe!) the crazies will lose influence.

    The late Charlie Munger described it as “simple denial of reality’; it is just too painful for ‘progressives’ to accept the reality that their policies are rejected by most voters. So they deny that is possible and blame anything except the foolish policies.

  718. So you’re still sticking with this Lucia? That’s OK. Because I’m still getting part of what I want, which is for YOU to read my comments because YOU must know that I’m right and YOU are the one who is cutting my arguments off so as to neuter them rather than for you to let your readers see how silly their arguments are. Of course, it’s up to you, but that you’re cutting off my arguments just reinforces my point. Anyways:
    .
    You’re still aidestepping the *core* issue: the data we have, even with uncertainties, are precise enough to show the sample size is far too small to draw meaningful conclusions about any association between being transgender and mass shootings. Let’s address your points directly.
    .
    Null Hypothesis: The null hypothesis is that there’s no association between being transgender and committing mass shootings—any observed overlap is due to chance. Rejecting this requires robust evidence, which we lack because the sample size is minuscule.
    .
    Statistical Power: Power measures the ability to detect a true effect. Mass shootings are rare (e.g., ~50-60 incidents annually in the U.S., per FBI data, in a population of 330 million), and trans people are a small fraction of the population (roughly 0.5-1.5%, per Gallup and Williams Institute estimates). With so few cases—likely a handful at most—the statistical power to detect a real association is negligible. You’d need a vastly larger sample to draw any conclusions.
    .
    Sample Size: Mass shootings are statistically rare, and trans individuals involved in them are even rarer. Even accounting for uncertainties in the data (e.g., underreporting of incidents or trans identities), the sample size is surely small—likely fewer than 5-10 cases total. We don’t need perfect data to know this; the numbers are precise enough to confirm the sample is tiny and incapable of supporting broad claims. It’s like trying to link mass shootings to left-handedness (10% of people) or being born on a Tuesday (14% of births). Small samples produce noisy, unreliable results.
    .
    True Percentage of Trans People: You ask for the “true” percentage of trans people, but we don’t need an exact figure to make the point. Estimates range from 0.5-1.5% (1-3 million in the U.S.), and even if these are off by a factor of two, the proportion remains tiny. The data, imperfect as it is, is good enough to show that the overlap between trans individuals and mass shooters is so small it’s statistically meaningless. Demanding precision here is a red herring when the broader truth is clear: the numbers don’t support causal claims.
    .
    The Broader Point: Cherry-picking traits like being trans, left-handed, or born on a Tuesday to explain rare events like mass shootings is a statistical dead end. Small samples lead to spurious “patterns” that collapse under scrutiny. The data we have, despite its limitations, is sufficient to show the sample is too small to mean anything. By moderating my comments to strip out this reasoning, you’re dodging the evidence for a preferred narrative.

    Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify my point further.

  719. lucia. AUGUST 31, 2025 AT 6:43 AM
    “, I’m not sure it’s “coder bias”
    –
    Respectfully disagree.
    Example one of bias generally.
    I use safari with duck duck go as search engine with its AI but occasionally Google.
    It is much more difficult in a search for conservative titles and views to get them to come up directly and honestly than left wing sites like the guardian and msnbc which pop up instantly.
    Your site, amongst others is extremely difficult on some search engines which take you to sites discussing your site and refuse to bring it up even with your name, your sites name and the www. things.
    Example 2 in respect to Russell’s search results giving only 4 male trans shooters.
    I got exactly his list along with multiple mealy mouthed excuses three times that length explaining why trans shooters are a vanishingly small percentage and not to blame compared to the white male perpetrators who do the bulk of all killings.
    Unasked for extraneous coder bias.
    Asked if there were more it gave another 2 shooters.
    Pressed politely to give more it added another 6 back to 2001.
    It still refused to identify the recent 15 year old shooter.
    Coder bias.
    Example 3 on reading Russell’s next comments I was able to ask 3 times regarding the case of the 15 year old before nailing an answer

    “I think it’s a problem we discussed above which is “identifying who is trans”. AUGUST 31, 2025 AT 6:51 AM
    I should add: The problem of identifying “who is trans” affects both the problem of figuring on the fraction in the population and the fraction who commit mass murders of any sort.”
    –
    The AI had massive problems with this exact identification issue putting up multiple excuses for not answering the question directly saying the situation was complex and had nothing to do ( provably) with her being trans.
    –
    Example of bias
    this morning (Gatewat Pundit not a reliable source of course)
    KEILAR: By CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings sicne 2020, only three were committed by transgender shooters.
    GORKA me if I don’t go with CNN’s stats, okay?”
    CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last ten years. Perpetrators of the Russia Russia hoax, and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I don’t take your stats
    KEILAR: It’s simple math, two of 32…
    GORKA: It’s not simple math. It’s distortion. You are distorting the facts.
    Let me be clear, in just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who were confused in their gender. SEVEN in just the last couple of years. That is inordinately high. I’m going to stick with the facts and not CNN’s pseudo-facts.”
    –

  720. The weird thing for me about Biden and the Dems is that it was so obvious to anyone actually willing to be honest with themselves that Biden was already little more than a talking eggplant by his second year in office. (I thought it obvious before he even took office!) How negligent a ‘party boss’ would you have to be to refuse to do anything about that? Completely. Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, cabinet secretaries, the White House staff, and a host of others knew he was incompetent and did nothing about it. How little must these folks care about the country to not act to protect it from a dementia patient as President.

  721. Angech,
    Coder’s bias is a poor way to put it in my opinion since the LLMs themselves don’t have code per se. What they actually are essentially are a series of huge matrices. There are standard existing programs (like llama.cpp for example) and libraries for running LLM computations or inferences. We wouldn’t say the coder’s bias of the people who wrote llama.cpp affects the inference results obtained from executing a particular model. The model’s weights have a lot more to do with that than the code does. The code just .. does a lot of matrix multiplication, mostly. Or directs the GPU to do it.
    [I am oversimplifying a little, but this is the essence of it.]

  722. Btw, Lucia, it should go without saying that even if there’s a higher % of trans people among mass shooters than in the general population, you have no idea about potential moderator or mediator effects or direction of causality. IOW, if mental health is the primary driver of mass shootings, and trans people face disproportionately higher mental health challenges (e.g., ~60% reporting distress vs. ~10% of cisgender adults, per the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey), a higher proportion of trans shooters could effectively mean nothing about trans identity in itself, and just reflect that mental health issues, (driven higher by factors like stigma or lack of support), are the causal factor, not being trans. The same could also apply for political ideology, also, by the way. As I’ve said at your blog before, anyone looking to find a signal of political ideology in mass shooters is just looking to confirm a bias and push their agenda” what do you think. The events are just too rare, and the shooters are extreme outliers on any meaningful sense.

  723. Guys: Joshua persists! Twice. Of course he has no numbers and the stuff he’s spewing is Joshua speak. And evidently even if I get numbers we won’t know direction of causality. Well…. duh!! LOL! That’s right. We also don’t know the direction of causality for suicides.

    I’m flying to Orlando tomorrow at 8 am. So I am not going to post to show him the result on a test someone could do. (Other tests? Might not be possible… but a test? Yep. One could do with some data some people have here, nor the power of the test . Power depends on what “the truth ” is– which never know.

    I might post when I get back…. meantime, I’m going to put up a fresh post so all y’ll have a fresh nearly empty comment thread while I’m in Orlando. Where I hope to beat people who are better than me!

  724. Keep reading, Lucia. Even if you misrepresent what I’ve said, that’s good enough for me. My guess is that you’ll think about it some, and then write a comment essentially paraphrasing my points.

  725. BTW – you were going to make a toy model to show that Greek guy he was wrong about the direction of causality between warming and CO2 emissions. What ever happened with that?
    .
    Oh, and it’s cute that you’d want to take the time to show me a test, but really don’t waste your time. I can just ask Grok to run some numbers for me:
    .
    Expected Proportion Under the NullIf trans people make up 1% of the population, we expect 1% of shooters to be trans by chance.
    For a sample of n shooters, the expected number of trans shooters is n × 0.01.
    ” .
    2. Binomial Test SetupLet n be the number of school/church shooters in the sample (e.g., 50 or 100 over a decade).
    Let k be the number of trans shooters observed.
    The probability of observing k or more trans shooters by chance, given a population proportion of 0.01, is calculated using the binomial distribution:P(X ? k) = 1 – P(X < k), where X follows a binomial distribution with parameters n and p = 0.01.

    We want the smallest k where P(X ? k) < 0.05, indicating statistical significance.

    3. Calculating the ThresholdLet’s test for different sample sizes (n) to find the minimum number of trans shooters (k) that would reject the null hypothesis at p < 0.05.Sample Size: n = 50 (e.g., 5 shootings/year × 10 years):Expected number of trans shooters: 50 × 0.01 = 0.5.
    Using a binomial calculator (or cumulative distribution function), we compute P(X ? k) for increasing k until p < 0.05:For k = 2: P(X ? 2) ? 0.264 (not significant).
    For k = 3: P(X ? 3) ? 0.080 (not significant).
    For k = 4: P(X ? 3) ? 0.019 (significant at p < 0.05).

    Proportion: 4/50 = 8%. So, if 8% or more of shooters are trans, the result is statistically significant.

    Sample Size: n = 100 (e.g., 10 shootings/year × 10 years):Expected number: 100 × 0.01 = 1.
    Testing values of k:For k = 4: P(X ? 4) ? 0.189 (not significant).
    For k = 5: P(X ? 5) ? 0.081 (not significant).
    For k = 6: P(X ? 6) ? 0.029 (significant).

    Proportion: 6/100 = 6%. If 6% or more of shooters are trans, the result is significant.

    Sample Size: n = 20 (e.g., 2 shootings/year × 10 years):Expected number: 20 × 0.01 = 0.2.
    Testing values:For k = 2: P(X ? 2) ? 0.017 (significant).

    Proportion: 2/20 = 10%. If 10% or more are trans, the result is significant.

    4. Generalizing the ThresholdThe required percentage decreases as the sample size increases because larger samples provide more statistical power. Roughly:For n = 20, you’d need ~10% (2 trans shooters) to reach significance.
    For n = 50, you’d need ~8% (4 trans shooters).
    For n = 100, you’d need ~6% (6 trans shooters).

    However, these percentages are sensitive to the sample size and the true population proportion. If the trans population is 0.5% instead of 1%, the threshold percentages would be slightly higher (e.g., ~10% for n = 50), and if it’s 2%, they’d be lower (e.g., ~6% for n = 50).

  726. Lucia –

    Explain to Steve why, if increasing by one number (in such a small sample) has such a big effect, he should realize how little basis there is for his conclusion.

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