Recent News

Israel - Hamas Peace Negotiations

Frustrated lawmakers say lack of trust is making it harder to end the government shutdown

Why gold is having its best year since 1979

Ray Dalio Sees Gold as Safer Than the US Dollar

‘Bow to the Emperor’: 50 Legal Experts on the Trump Presidency

Doug Wilson: America Should be a Christian Theocracy

Press groups condemn US Defense Department rules governing media access

Trump’s war on the left: Inside the plan to investigate liberal groups

Russia's industrial titans furlough workers as its war economy stalls

France's Macron seeks sixth prime minister in under two years

The Anglican Communion is closer than ever to formal schism

Backgruond... GAFCON & Sarah Mullally

A Libertarian Argument for an Interventionist Foreign Policy

Individual Liberty and the Responsibility to Protect: Toward a Neolibertarian Foreign Policy

From here.

Side note: Due to my mother's death there will be little blogging until the 9th of Oct. However, I found this to be a really good read and thought I'd share it. My sisters and I will be quite busy during the mourning period settling mom's affairs. Lastly, I am deeply grateful for the many expressions of sympathy and prayers posted here and communicated privately. They have been a source of comfort in a very dark and painful moment. Thank you.

Memory Eternal!

Mom died tonight. It was unexpected though I was able to say goodbye. She was the last member of the family from that generation. Those who have been through this will know the awful grief. Prayers are deeply appreciated.

In a blessed falling asleep, grant, O Lord, eternal rest unto Thy departed servant Geraldine and make her memory to be eternal!

Memory eternal! Memory eternal! Memory eternal!

Making Polio Great Again

Ok. It's time to call a shovel a shovel. Anti-Vax pseudo-scientific nuttery has now gone mainstream in the Republican Party. RFK Jr. is turning the Department of Health and Human Services into an agency dedicated to all out warfare on modern medicine. Florida's Surgeon General wants to end ALL vaccine mandates for kids. Yes, even Polio! If this quack had been in charge a couple of generations ago, we would still have Smallpox in the world. If you don't know what that is, firstly you are very fortunate, and secondly it's because we eradicated it by mass vaccinations. In the 19th century one in four children did not live to adulthood. Vaccines are one of the most important reasons we have reduced infant mortality rates in the developed world to less than 1%. The most dangerous people are always well meaning fools with power. And these kooks are going to get people killed. 

Ray Dalio Warns of Debt, Wealth Inequality and America's Drift Towards Authoritarianism

One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Donald Trump’s policies.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, said “gaps in wealth” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US.

Speaking to the Financial Times, the veteran financier said many western countries were affected by growing inequality, leading voters to turn increasingly to autocratic leaders.

“I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” he said.

“Classically, increased wealth and value gaps lead to increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can’t be resolved through the democratic process.

“So democracies weaken and more autocratic leadership increases as a large percentage of the population wants government leaders to get control of the system to make things work well for them.”

Concerns about a significant rise in borrowing by the US government were well founded, said Dalio, who has long predicted a reckoning for economies that allow debts to rise.

In his books, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke: the Big Cycle, he has described how large annual spending deficits and unsustainable debt growth had brought the US economy to the brink of a debt crisis – a situation that had worsened over many years.

“The great excesses that are now projected as a result of the new budget will likely cause a debt-induced heart attack in the relatively near future,” he said. “I’d say three years, give or take a year or two.”

Read the rest here.

Unfortunately, the original interview is behind a paywall. But it is getting a lot of attention in the broader press.

Gold Posts New Record

Gold currently trading at ~$3,566 /oz amidst expectations of the Fed cutting interest rates (whether by choice or under presidential coercion), and the risks of a weaker dollar and higher inflation. 

Update: Gold closed at $3,599 /oz. 

China's navy is the world's largest and expanding at breakneck speed

...Suoyuwan park in Dalian, which juts out of north-eastern China into the Yellow Sea, has stunning views of one of China's largest shipyards, and is a place to gather and be merry.

But to White House analysts thousands of miles away in Washington, this cradle of Chinese shipbuilding is part of a growing threat.

In the last two decades, China has ramped up investment in shipbuilding. And that has paid off: more than 60% of the world's orders this year have gone to Chinese shipyards. Put simply, China is building more ships than any other country because it can do it faster than anyone else.

"The scale is extraordinary… in many ways eye-watering," says Nick Childs, a maritime expert with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "The Chinese shipbuilding capacity is something like 200 times overall that of the United States."

That commanding lead also applies to its navy. The Chinese Communist Party now has the world's largest, operating 234 warships compared to the US Navy's 219.

China's explosive rise has been fuelled by the sea. The world's second-largest economy is home to seven of the world's 10 busiest ports, which are critical to global supply routes. And its coastal cities are thriving because of trade.

As Beijing's ambitions have grown, so has its arsenal of ships - and its confidence to stake a louder claim in the South China Sea and beyond.

President Xi Jinping's China certainly wants to rule the waves. Whether it will is the question.

Read the rest here.

Largely overlooked in this otherwise good story is the fact that China's navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific. The US Navy is spread all over the world. 

By the Numbers: The slow death of the manual transmission

Just like the trend toward SUVs in the United States throughout the 2000s, there’s another major shift happening that seems unstoppable. Automatic transmissions have become the standard in many markets, threatening the survival of manual transmission cars.

In 2001, almost every passenger car registered in the five major European markets—Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain—had a manual transmission. Data shows that, at that time, cars with manual transmissions accounted for 91 percent of registrations in those five markets. This type of transmission was more popular than the automatic, even among premium and luxury brands.

At that time, the technology was not nearly as advanced as it is today, so high development costs had a direct impact on the final price, and the automatic transmission was more of a luxury feature than anything.

However, as has been the case with airbags and other automotive technologies, gradual adoption has helped reduce cost and price. With traffic growing in large cities and drivers more preoccupied than ever, the automatic transmission is quickly becoming the answer to the new reality.

Last year, cars with manual transmissions accounted for only 29 percent of registrations in the five major European markets. The breakdown between mainstream and premium brands also shows major changes.

In 2001, premium cars with automatic transmissions accounted for 31 percent of sales. By 2024, they reached 97 percent. As for mainstream brands, the change is just as dramatic: The market share of automatic transmission increased from 5 percent in 2001 to 63 percent last year.

Read the rest here.

Mexican (Catholic) bishop faces backlash for con-celebrating Eucharist with Anglican female cleric

A retired Mexican bishop has provoked widespread controversy after he celebrated the Eucharist with an Anglican female minister at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

On the 26 August, Bishop Emeritus Raúl Vera López of Saltillo presided at Mass in the basilica with Rev Emilie Teresa Smith, a Canadian Anglican minister, standing beside him as a concelebrant. During the liturgy, Ms Smith, wearing a stole (a liturgical vestment), joined in parts of the Eucharistic Prayer, whispered words of consecration, raised her hand in blessing and elevated the chalice containing the Precious Blood of Christ.

The Mass was recorded and published on the bishop’s own Facebook page, where it quickly gained attention. In a post accompanying the video, the bishop invited viewers to “reflect together” on the Gospel of the day, quoting the words of Christ in St Matthew’s Gospel condemning hypocrisy and spiritual blindness.

He described Ms Smith as one “who walks among us picking up the word of many people around finding solutions to the climate crisis we live in".

The event caused shock among Catholics both in Mexico and internationally, with many describing the event as sacrilegious. Critics of the bishop's actions said that the presence of a female Anglican minister at the altar during the Eucharist is a clear violation of Catholic teaching on both the ordained priesthood and intercommunion with non-Catholics.

The bishop emeritus attempted to defend his actions with a second Facebook post: he recounted how, after Mass on the following day, he had been questioned by journalists about whether canonical sanctions might follow. Bishop Vera explained that Ms Smith was a fellow co-chair of the international solidarity network SICSAL, who was passing through Coahuila on route to the COP 30 environmental summit and had accepted his invitation to take part in the Mass at the basilica.

He dismissed accusations of sacrilege, heresy and indiscipline as “common sense” misunderstandings, noting that Ms Smith had long been active in human rights and pastoral work, with experience as a parish minister and theologian.

“Not only does she work with the poor, she has a parish, has a theological background, she is a writer, she is ready to participate in a meeting of the United Nations and with God’s people around the defence of our Mother Earth,” he wrote. He also praised her homily as “excellent”.

“We are no longer in witch hunts and bonfire times,” the bishop also said in his Facebook post. “The word of our sister Emilie gives us light, life and guidance as Laudato Si’ asks for all the people of this planet.”

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Federal appeals court largely rejects Trump’s emergency tariffs

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that most of President Donald Trump’s global tariffs are illegal, striking a massive blow to the core of his aggressive trade policy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a 7-4 ruling, held that the law Trump invoked when he granted his most expansive tariffs does not actually grant him the power to impose those levies.

“The core Congressional power to impose taxes such as tariffs is vested exclusively in the legislative branch by the Constitution,” the court said. “Tariffs are a core Congressional power.”

The appellate court paused its ruling from taking effect until Oct. 14, in order to give the Trump administration time to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

Trump later Friday attacked the appeals court as “Highly Partisan” and asserted that the Supreme Court will rule in his favor.

“If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”

“The President’s tariffs remain in effect, and we look forward to ultimate victory on this matter,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a separate statement.

Friday’s ruling is the second straight loss for Trump in the make-or-break case, known as V.O.S. Selections v. Trump.

The case was consolidated from two separate lawsuits, one filed by a dozen states and the other by five small U.S. businesses.

It is the furthest along of more than half a dozen federal lawsuits challenging Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose sweeping tariffs.

Read the rest here.

Trump Has Dropped an ‘Atomic Bomb’ on the Department of Justice

...Donald Trump has blown through all of this. From the first days of his second term, that much was clear. He granted clemency even to the most violent rioters on Jan. 6, including people found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

At the same time, he launched a purge against dozens of prosecutors who investigated and prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters.

The Justice Department dropped its charges against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, because the case was getting in the way of Adams’s enforcement of Trump’s immigration priorities. The judge in the case said it “smacks of a bargain,” one so transparently in violation of Justice Department standards and practices that it prompted the resignations of multiple prosecutors.

(There have been so many scandals since the Adams incident that it feels like ancient history — as if it happened during the First Continental Congress, and not mere months ago.)

Trump’s bias has extended not just to people who’ve shown individual loyalty to Trump, but also to favored and disfavored constituencies. Earlier this summer, his Justice Department sought an astonishingly light sentence for a Louisville police officer convicted of a civil rights violation after he fired wildly into an apartment on the night Breonna Taylor was killed.

At the same time, it has relentlessly pursued migrants, deporting hundreds to a brutal El Salvadoran prison without due process. Sadly, that incident was but the tip of an iceberg of brutality aimed at people who are suspected of being illegal immigrants.

And it all keeps escalating. I have no way of knowing whether John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, is guilty of a crime, but I do know that when Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., tweets triumphantly amid reports of a search of Bolton’s home that “NO ONE is above the law” and when the vice president of the United States confirms that Bolton is under investigation, they are breaking through the standards designed to remind us that every American is innocent until proven guilty.

Nor do I know whether Senator Adam Schiff of California, or Attorney General Letitia James of New York, or Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, is guilty of mortgage fraud, but the public accusation — in the absence of any adjudication — is yet another grave breach of the standards that preserve the presumption of innocence.

And when the president fired Cook on the basis of an unproven allegation, he not only violated the standards that preserve our system of justice, he may have violated the law as well. The president has to show “cause” before he fires a Federal Reserve governor, and an accusation of impropriety is not the same as the legal proof of improper conduct.

The very effort to use a Trump administration official, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to engage in targeted examinations of the financial records of prominent Democrats is yet another application of Trump’s relentless thirst for vengeance. It is certainly fine — even laudable — to police real accusations of suspected mortgage fraud. It is a gross abuse of justice to single out Democrats for special attention in this way.

On Wednesday, in fact, Trump made another reckless criminal accusation, declaring on Truth Social that George Soros and his son should be charged under “RICO,” the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO is a statute typically deployed to combat organized crime.

But this is what authoritarian regimes do. They don’t simply declare that they’re prosecuting political opponents, they go ahead and do it — through trumped-up charges or selective prosecution.

Read the rest here.

Germany is rearming, with potentially huge implications

...Across Germany, both politicians and members of the public have been going through a similar transformation. The country’s army, officially named the Bundeswehr — which translates as “federal defense” — was established by the United States during the Cold War. It was designed to support NATO rather than ever lead a conflict, for fear that a German military could be misused as it was during World War II. This supporting role suited Germany’s leaders: Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the country’s politicians carefully shaped an image of a peaceful nation that prefers influencing global politics through trade and diplomacy. After the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr began scaling down, with military spending falling from a high of 4.9 percent of GDP in 1963 to just 1.1 percent in 2005.

But in the months following the Russian invasion, then-chancellor Olaf Scholz surprised the world by announcing a radical change in German foreign policy, including a €100 billion ($116 billion) plan to beef up its army. Then in early 2025, five days after the February election of new chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Donald Trump invited Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky into the Oval Office for a browbeating broadcast around the world that signaled his lack of interest in standing up to Russia. A shocked Merz, who had campaigned on a platform of low taxes and low spending, immediately agreed with Scholz to work together to reform the country’s strict borrowing laws — which were embedded in the constitution — and build up its defense capabilities as quickly as possible with a €1 trillion loan, which amounts to about 25 percent of the country’s GDP. According to Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), this type of defense spending was previously unheard of during peacetime. “Countries that spend this much are usually those at war, or autocratic states that don’t have democratic oversight,” he said.

The following month, Germany’s lawmakers voted to back the plan, setting the country’s military on track to be the best-funded in Europe and the fourth-biggest in the world. In Merz’s view, Europe didn’t just need to arm itself against Russian aggression, but also “achieve independence from the USA.” Later in the year, NATO members would agree to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, at Trump’s behest.

Read the rest here.

This is a longish read, but very good.

White House declares $4.9B in foreign aid unilaterally canceled

President Donald Trump threw a grenade Friday into September government funding negotiations on Capitol Hill, declaring the unilateral power to cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid by using a so-called pocket rescission.

Escalating the administration’s assault on Congress’ funding prerogatives, the White House budget office announced Friday morning that Trump has canceled $4.9 billion through the gambit that Congress’ top watchdog and many lawmakers argue is an illegal end-run around their “power of the purse.”

The move to unilaterally nix money previously approved by Congress raises tensions on Capitol Hill as lawmakers face an Oct. 1 deadline to avoid a government shutdown, pitting Republicans at the White House against GOP lawmakers and increasing pressure on Democrats to force a funding lapse unless Trump stands down.

Democrats and Republicans alike have warned that a pocket rescissions request would hamper cross-party talks to avert a shutdown at the end of September, while fulfilling White House budget director Russ Vought’s wish that the process of funding the government be “less bipartisan” to accommodate a raft of conservative priorities.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hinted Friday that Democrats could refuse to offer the votes to get a government funding bill through the chamber before funding lapses late next month if congressional Republicans don’t push back against Trump’s latest funding move.

“Republicans don’t have to be a rubber stamp for this carnage,” Schumer said, adding that “if Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won’t be party to their destruction.”

Yet three congressional Republicans, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they expect Vought to send additional requests to revoke funding between now and the end of the current fiscal year, which would only inflame tensions.

“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” the Senate’s top Republican appropriator, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, said in a quick and clear rebuke of the Trump administration’s gambit.

But the Trump administration is embracing the strategy boldly and without apology, while also signaling it intends to stare down any legal challenges that may come its way as a result: “Congress can choose to vote to rescind or continue the funds — it doesn’t matter,” an official from the White House budget office said in a statement. “This approach is rare but not unprecedented.”

Read the rest here.

Trump revokes Secret Service protection for Kamala Harris

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has revoked U.S. Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris, a senior adviser to Harris told NBC News on Friday.

“The Vice President is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety," the adviser said.

A senior White House official confirmed Friday that Trump had revoked Harris’ Secret Service detail, adding that vice presidents typically only get six months of protection when they leave office.

Congress passed legislation in 2008 that authorized the Secret Service to protect former vice presidents, their spouses and their children under 16 years old for up to six months after the end of a vice president’s term.

A Secret Service official told NBC that while that's true, then-President Joe Biden signed an executive memorandum in January extending Harris’ protection to 18 months.

Aides to the former president didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the rest here.

Want to work for National Weather Service? Be ready to explain how you agree with Trump

As the National Weather Service scrambles to hire up to 450 people to restore deep cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency, potential applicants are being asked to explain how they would advance President Donald Trump’s agenda if hired.

A posting from the weather service’s parent agency seeking meteorologists asks applicants to identify one or two of Trump’s executive orders “that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”

It’s among screening questions added to government job applications as part of a “ merit hiring plan” that Trump announced at the outset of his second term, and it’s not unique to the weather service positions. But some experts said they are alarmed at the prospect that a candidate’s ideology could matter for jobs in science.

Read the rest here.

With the rich ALREADY fleeing New York, who’d be left for Zohran Mamdani to tax?

Anyone who thinks Zohran Mamdani’s plans to tax the rich are remotely workable, beware: The city’s share of “the rich” is already shrinking.

So if Mamdani gets his way, there soon might be no one at all left to squeeze.

From 2010 to 2022, the Citizens Budget Committee reports, New York state’s share of taxpayers with more than $1 million in federal adjusted gross income shrunk by almost a third — from 12.7% to 8.7%.

The city’s share also fell, from 6.5% to 4.2%.

New York’s loss was other states’ gain, particularly Florida, Texas and even California.

Thanks to inflation, the gross number of million-plus earners in New York grew, but it less than doubled; it tripled in California and Texas and quadrupled in Florida.

New York’s losses come with a steep cost, the CBC warns: “Had New York State and City had the same share of millionaires in 2022 as they did in 2010, the State would have received $10.7 billion more” in personal-income-tax revenue, and “the City $2.5 billion more. More millionaires mean more PIT revenue.”

Read the rest here.

DOJ drops charges against another client of AG Pam Bondi's brother Brad

For the second time in less than a month, the Justice Department on Wednesday abruptly dropped charges against a client represented by Brad Bondi, the brother of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Federal prosecutors in Missouri this week agreed to voluntarily dismiss an indictment against Sid Chakraverty, a property developer who faced felony wire fraud charges. Prosecutors under the Biden administration accused Chakraverty in 2024 of lying about hiring women- and minority-owned subcontractors on a housing development in order to allegedly secure favorable tax incentives.

As recently as three weeks ago, career prosecutors held that Chakraverty should face criminal penalties for his alleged scheme.

But on Wednesday, the newly installed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Thomas Albus, a Trump appointee, filed court papers informing the judge overseeing the case that the "defendants have agreed to make restitution of the taxes" and that it is therefore "prudent for the government to end this criminal prosecution."

Read the rest here.

Ashli Babbitt, Jan. 6 rioter killed in Capitol, offered military funeral honors

Pardon me while I throw up.

Pope Francis blessed King and Queen’s anniversary despite their divorces

Pope Francis gave the King and Queen a blessing for their 20th wedding anniversary, it has emerged.

The King and Queen, who had a private audience with the late pontiff in April, were offered his blessing behind closed doors.

Their marriage would not be recognised in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Both have been divorced, with Andrew Parker Bowles, the Queen’s ex-husband, still living.

But Pope Francis gave a blessing during a 20-minute meeting during their state visit to Rome, it has been claimed.

The late Pope and the King are also said to have prayed together, thought to be the first time the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the Bishop of Rome have done so.

Read the rest here.

Medical Quackery and RFK's Purge at the CDC

An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had repeatedly undermined the agency’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, firing the committee’s members and appointing new members, including vaccine skeptics.

Early Wednesday, Monarez suggested to Dr. Richard Besser that she was going to be forced to sign off on new vaccine recommendations.

“She said there were two things she would never do in the job,” said Besser, a former acting CDC director and the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “One, in terms of firing her leadership who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp ACIP recommendations that flew in the face of science.”

Hours later, Monarez was out, according to a Health and Human Services post on X. Almost immediately, several top officials resigned in protest.

One of those officials, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases — which oversees vaccines — wrote in his resignation letter that a particular document related to the vaccine committee “ignored all feedback from career staff at CDC.”

The document was guidance for a newly formed work group that will present Covid vaccine data and research at the upcoming ACIP meeting — scheduled for September 18 — and contained anti-vaccine talking points. The work group will be led by newly appointed ACIP member Retsef Levi, an MIT professor who has been vocally against the mRNA Covid vaccines.

Read the rest here.

Europe must assert hard power or become a ‘hunted animal,’ France’s top general warns

PARIS — Europe's disunited governments are in denial about the extent to which violence is shaping global politics and must step up to assert their combined force as a hard power, the chief of defense staff of the French military has warned in a sweeping interview.

"A weakened Europe may find itself tomorrow as a hunted animal, after two centuries of the West setting the tone,” General Thierry Burkhard said in unusually outspoken remarks to POLITICO and French newspaper Libération.  "It's not only about armed forces, but about the fact that hard power dynamics now prevail."

Burkhard warned that Europe's fragmented countries would have to bind together more tightly as a strategic force to counteract the "spheres of influence" being built by China, Russia and the U.S.

"On the one hand, European countries have never been so strong. On the other, there is a form of denial from governments and populations in the face of the level of violence in the world today," he added.

The French general's reality check echoes a growing number of warnings about Europe's weakness.

Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi also stressed last week the EU had to stop pretending it could exercise global influence just as an economic force and consumer market. He insisted the bloc had received a "very brutal wake-up call" from Donald Trump that it needed to think in far more strategic terms about security and defense spending.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday accused the European Union of sliding into irrelevance on the world stage. "We must be willing to pay the price of our freedom and our independence,” she said.

Read the rest here.

France may be heading into a full blown political crisis

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s allies don’t seem to have any good answers as to what happens after the almost certain fall of the government of Prime Minister François Bayrou in the Sept. 8 parliamentary vote of confidence.

The names of Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin are emerging in the chatter as potential successors to the poisoned chalice of the premiership, but what would a new recruit really solve? A new PM will be ensnared in exactly the same quagmire.

French politics will still be too internally riven to pass vital deficit-slashing reforms, despite Bayrou’s Cassandra-like warnings that France could be headed toward a Greek-style debt crisis if it sits on its hands and doesn’t implement an unpopular €43.8 billion budget squeeze.

So how about another snap election? If Macron calls one, the political landscape could still be mired in exactly the same impasse — but the blame after a vote would more obviously fall on him rather than on his prime minister. And all that time, the financial markets will be running out of patience regarding France’s ability to put its books in order.

All in all, a state of shock grips elected officials, aides and advisers from the various parties that support France’s minority government.

Read the rest here.

Terrorist Attack on Minneapolis Catholic Church/School

There has been a planned attack on a Catholic Church in Minnesota, almost certainly motivated by anti-Catholic hatred. At least seventeen people, mostly children, were shot and wounded. Two children were killed. While these holy martyrs are in no need of our prayers, their devastated families and the wounded are. 

Kyrie Eleison.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump is playing with fire in his attacks on the Federal Reserve

The US Federal Reserve must henceforth be considered the personal political agency of Donald Trump. America’s monetary credibility has been utterly trashed.

The world’s superpower central bank will set interest rates at his whim, much like the Turkish central bank under the Erdogan regime.

Markets must now assume that Trump will compel the Fed to soak up America’s exorbitant debt issuance and hold down long-term interests by a form of de facto yield curve control.

They must also assume that Trump will force the Fed to press the pedal to the floor and slash interest rates far below the natural Wicksellian rate until the midterm elections are safely out of the way next year.

Trump has crossed the Rubicon by purging an independent member of the seven-strong Fed board, each appointed for 14 years with Senate confirmation and protected tenure to shield them from pressure.

He has already sacked the protected head of the Federal Trade Commission and got away with it, so the latest abuse should hardly come as a surprise.

If there were any authenticity to the sacking of Lisa Cook, one of the federal governors, under the legal category “for cause” it would have entailed a genuine probe under due process.

Trump’s obvious purpose is to bring the Fed under his full control immediately and, above all, to issue an implicit warning to any member of the Federal Open Market Committee who refuses to toe the line that they too will be disposed of if anything can be found against them – and something can always be found.

“It’s an authoritarian power grab that blatantly violates the Federal Reserve Act, and any court that follows the law will overturn it,” said Elizabeth Warren, the veteran Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Her caveat is noted. It takes some courage for intimidated judges to “follow the law” in Donald Trump’s America.

The dollar was already on borrowed time as the world’s hegemonic reserve currency before the death of the Fed. The process will now accelerate, with potent implications for the dollarised system of global finance.

The Bank for International Settlements estimates that $13tn (£9.6tn) of offshore global debt is denominated in US dollars, or $35tn if you include embedded liabilities in swaps and other derivatives.

Trump can bulldoze his way through resistance within the US – and he can strong-arm foreign allies into concessions, until they cease to be allies – but there is one great immovable power that is beyond his reach.

He cannot force the global bond market to buy US treasuries and fund his debt.

The Achilles’ heel of Trumpism is that the US has a net international investment position of minus $24.6 trillion, or 82pc of GDP. It has a personal savings rate of 4.7pc, a fraction of US post-war levels or of global levels, and is living off a constant supply of foreign credit to cover day to day spending.

Read the rest here.

One additional factor not getting a lot of attention in all of this is that Trump has been investing hundreds of millions of his own money in US bonds since he won re-election. If he can force down interest rates, he stands to make a killing.

The gerrymandering wars is a flashing warning light for US democracy

After the extraordinary scene of Texas Democrats fleeing their state to forestall a rare mid-decade gerrymander, Texas Republicans nevertheless moved this week to approve a new congressional map. It is designed to give their party five additional seats in Congress in next year’s midterm elections, as requested by President Trump. 

California Democrats responded this week by rushing to advance their own plan to draw a new congressional map to counter Texas Republicans. Red and Blue states across the country are now predictably threatening to join this bare-knuckle political brawl. 

Although partisan gerrymandering has sadly become a routine practice pushing us further into tribalism and dysfunction, the current crisis should be seen for what it is: a flashing red warning light for our democracy. 

Indeed, if this race to the bottom continues, every aspect of our democratic system of governance could be captured by extreme partisanship, and every last vestige of trust necessary for that system to work could soon be lost. At that point, it may well be too late to change course. 

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) has proposed the best way out of the current standoff: a federal bipartisan embrace of independent commissions to draw electoral maps so that voters can choose their politicians rather than self-interested politicians cynically rigging the system to their partisan advantage.

That would solve the immediate crisis, but we must also confront the larger issue of extremism dominating our politics.

The truth is our democratic system has been completely hijacked to yield outsized power to the partisan fringes. These voters on the far left and right of the political mainstream view politics as an existential tribal struggle that must be won at all costs, and they thus demand that their elected officials engage in tribal warfare and scorched-earth politics. 

Read the rest here.

The Threat to Madisonian Democracy

...In an astounding 80 percent of our states, a single party already controls the House, Senate and governor’s office — a so-called trifecta — or has enough power to block gubernatorial vetoes from the other party. With further redistricting, this figure could hit 90 percent before the end of Trump’s term.  

The upshot is that Americans are increasingly living in airtight partisan state and local political bubbles, while being governed nationally by a single individual openly hostile to the interests of half the population.

From a Madisonian perspective, American democracy is at present spiraling headlong in the wrong direction. In the words of famed Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, Trump has established and demonstrated his position as “sovereign” by repeatedly “deciding” unilaterally on “exceptions” to the constitutional order, then designating for punishment political “enemies” he sees as obstacles to the exercise of his sovereign will. 

He has singled out former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI director James Comey, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James for legal retribution — even declaring some of them guilty of “treason.” He has shaken down law firms and universities and even refuses to rule out pursuing a constitutionally prohibited third term. 

Abroad, he has declared outlandishly bogus “emergencies” under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to threaten or impose massive import tariffs — tariffs such as those targeted at Brazil for its judicial prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro. He has even threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. 

Read the rest here.

Archbishop Alexei of Alaska (OCA) Meets Putin; Sparking Criticism

See here, and here. Unless you are calling the man to repentance, I fail to see any justification for a prominent hierarch to meet with an indicted war criminal and almost certainly a murderer many times over. It reminds me of the old days when prominent Catholic clergy were openly cozy with Mafia bosses. To say that this was ill advised would be a gross understatement. 

HT: Deacon Nicholas

In the news

Politics may have spurred August purge of 5 veteran FBI agents

Trump bought more than $100 million in bonds since January even as he demands rate cuts that would greatly increase their value.

Bolivia set to end decades of leftist rule

Israel approves settlement plan to 'erase' idea of Palestinian state

Trump administration revokes security clearances of 37 current and former government officials

Florida is now the 2nd most financially distressed state in the US — topped only by Texas

Trump suggests he's a "war hero"

Laura Loomer flexes influence, racks up wins with Trump

See also this.

RIP Pretty Girl

How I wish I could complain one more time about tripping over your toys or your habit of sprawling on top of the AC vent on hot days. To have you sit down next to me and poke me with your nose at the dinner table, begging for a bite of my supper. In all our years together, today was the first time you hurt me.

Why Democrats are in trouble, and what I think they should do if they want to start winning again

Five years ago, Raymond Teachey voted, as usual, for the Democratic presidential nominee.

But by last fall, Mr. Teachey, an aircraft mechanic from Bucks County, Pa., was rethinking his political allegiances. To him, the Democratic Party seemed increasingly focused on issues of identity at the expense of more tangible day-to-day concerns, such as public safety or the economy.

“Some of them turned their back on their base,” Mr. Teachey, 54, said.

Working-class voters like Mr. Teachey, who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 but either backed President Trump last year or, as Mr. Teachey did, skipped the 2024 presidential election, help explain why Democrats lost pivotal swing counties like Bucks, and vividly illustrate how the traditional Democratic coalition has eroded in the Trump era.

Read the rest here.

I am not and have never been a fan of the political left. That said, and writing as a deeply disaffected former Republican, here is my unsolicited advice if Democrats want to start winning elections again.

* Ditch the identitarian politics and move to the center on the culture war issues. It may play well on the left coast and in New York, but in most of the rest of the country it is driving voters away. I realize that some groups need to be reassured now and then that you still have their backs and you can't afford to lose all of their votes. But that should not be the face of the Democratic Party. There is a reason why Bernie Sanders is drawing stunning crowds in deep red states. Bernie is about class and income inequality. Stop focusing on pronouns and start focusing on paychecks. 

* Stop treating people with traditional moral and religious beliefs as kooks, or worse. It's not divisive. It's offensive.

* Stop treating crime as a subject for a sociology lecture in college. Tell people that criminals need to be locked up, and then do it. And tell the "Defund the police" crowd to shut up. You can't treat every fringe opinion as acceptable if you want to win an election. These clowns are costing you more votes than they are delivering. And they are wrong.

* Get serious about the border. You don't have to be xenophobes where the only legal immigrants being welcomed are White South Africans. But illegal immigration was out of control. Trump wasn't wrong about that and Democrats were. 

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. fiscal conservatives. Americans are getting seriously frightened by the national debt. And they should be. 

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. champions of free trade. Tariffs are a sales tax aimed squarely at the working class and poor. They are also highly inflationary. Billionaires will still be able to afford their yachts. But Walmart shoppers are going to get hurt bad.

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. defenders of freedom globally. Isolationism, whether political or economic, is dangerous. Despotism is a form of political cancer. If it's not checked, it inevitably spreads. Ronald Reagan called Soviet Russia "the evil empire" and won the cold war. Can anyone see Trump telling Putin to "tear down that wall?" Start channeling Kennedy and Truman. 

* Move to the center on abortion. Stop endorsing abortion on demand with no questions asked and no time limit. Unfortunately, Democrats aren't, and never will be a pro-life party. But you don't need to be the party of Kermit Gosenll. 

* Stop talking about guns. It's a losing issue outside of the most left wing parts of the country.

* Return to traditional Democratic values. Between 1932-1968 the Democrats largely owned Washington. Eisenhower was the only Republican president elected in that 36 year period, and he was not exactly MAGA. How did Democrats do it? By concentrating on core bread and butter issues. A fair shake for the working man. Good schools for their kids with the real hope that they would have a shot at a better life than their parents. And a fair tax system where the wealthy paid their share. I would wager every dime I own that Elon Musk and Donald Trump pay a lower effective tax rate than the guy who changes the oil in your car. If Americans ever came to realize how completely rigged the tax code is for the benefit of Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy, the public outrage would be felt even in Texas. 

How the War Ended from Japan's Perspective

The Emperor in August 

Something appropriate for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Vigil for the Feast of the Dormition

Trump is lobbying for a Nobel

Well this explains his degrading decision to meet with Vladimir Putin, on American soil of all places. Somebody needs to remind him that, as pointed out by unreconstructed rebel in an earlier post; Neville Chamberlain never got the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump asked Norwegian minister about Nobel Prize

Reflections on the Decline of Civil Discourse

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part I: The Problem of Dialogical Illiberalism

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part II: The Barbarians at the Gates

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part III: When the Barbarians Are at the Gates; Fascism, Bullshit, and the Paradox of Tolerance

I found much of the above to be pretty insightful, and at times, a bit uncomfortable reading.

A Photographic Tour of 19th Century Colonial Hong Kong

Peace for our time

So; Donald Trump has invited a brutal dictator and indicted war criminal to the United States in order to negotiate the surrender of another country's territory to Russia. What could possibly go wrong?

A Trip Across America (mid 1930s)

Vigil for the Transfiguration

A quick admin note

It's been forever since I did a review of the sidebar links. And sure enough, there were a lot of blogs and websites that have gone dark. It pained me to do it, but with very few exceptions, any blogs or sites that have not posted anything new in the last three years, were removed.

What Really Happened to the USS Maine?

America's Slide Into Authoritarianism is Accelerating

Office of Special Counsel launches investigation into ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith

Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official

Texas moves to make elections meaningless

Pam Bondi ousts ethics watchdog amid DOJ purge

Trump's authoritarian streak

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump's tariffs are the greatest act of economic and political self-harm in modern American History

Donald Trump has succeeded in forcing America’s democratic allies to their knees. His country must henceforth live with the invidious consequences of what he has done. 

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal,” to borrow a line from Henry Kissinger.

Vladimir Putin has strung Trump along for six months without paying a price. China has turned the tables, forcing the White House to hand over Nvidia H20 chips in exchange for rare earth magnets that Trump should have thought about before launching his trade war. Didn’t the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, say China was playing with a “pair of twos”?

Trump’s full viciousness is reserved for Canada, a Five-Eye and core NATO loyalist, so dependable that America can leave its entire northern border undefended. It is punished with 35pc tariffs, hit harder because it dares to differ on the Middle East, though the effects will ricochet straight back into the US economy.

US-aligned Taiwan gets 20pc and a landing ban in New York for the country’s president as Trump curries favour with Xi Jinping. The Swiss get 39pc for failing to jump smartly to attention.

Brazil is outraged by 50pc tariffs explicitly intended to subvert the Brazilian judiciary and rule of law. Years of diplomatic effort to lure India into the Western camp are squandered by petulant 25pc tariffs plucked out of thin air and a burst of hectoring posts of Truth Social.

There is hardly a better way to keep the unnatural but menacing “BRICS” confederacy alive as the epicentre of a new global power structure dominated by China. Trump is achieving the near impossible. He makes the predatory communist dictatorship of China look almost attractive.

And if I sound angry, it is because I am. Nobody will forget this disgraceful abuse of American power.

The average US tariff rate will settle near 20pc. This is comparable in nominal terms to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 but tariffs were already high before that infamous bill and the US was then a closed economy. Imports were just 5pc of GDP. They are 16.4pc today and include critical components that keep the productive machine going.

“We’re looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley,” said Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate for trade theory.

Euphoric markets are wishing away the reckless demolition of a global trade system built, led, and painstakingly nurtured by the US for 80 years. “People just keep wanting to believe that Trump is making sense, that he isn’t as ignorant and irresponsible as he seems. But he is,” said Prof Krugman.

US economic growth slowed to 1.1pc in the first half of the year. You have to combine the two quarters because tariff “front-running” distorted the GDP data. The relevant metric is that real final sales are the weakest since 2022.

“We estimate that real personal consumption has now stagnated on net for six months, which rarely happens outside of recession,” said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs.

If you think America is booming right now, you are looking a) in the rear view mirror, and b) at the wrong data. The next year will see a drip-drip of accumulating damage as stagflation hits with the textbook delay.

Trump’s tariffs are a tax on the US consumer. Maury Obstveld, ex-chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says the pass-through from the Trump 1.0 episode was total.

“Not only did the prices of tariffed goods rise, they rose by the full amount of the tariffs. American households and businesses bore the entire burden; none was shifted to foreign exporters,” he said.

The well-informed are watching the US bureau of labor’s monthly index of pre-tariff prices for imports. This rose in June. It is the smoking gun that tells us who is really paying the tab. The Yale Budget Lab says consumers will face price rises of 40pc for shoes and 38pc for clothes.

Read the rest here.

This needs to be read in its entirety. 

Trump Administration to Allow Proselytizing in Federal Work Place

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - Federal employees may discuss and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace, the Trump administration said on Monday, citing religious freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Agency employees may seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views" in the office, wrote Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. government's human resources agency.

Supervisors can attempt to recruit their employees to their religion, so long as the efforts aren’t “harassing in nature,” according to Kupor's statement. Agencies can't discipline their employees for declining to talk to their coworkers about their religious views.

The statement represents the latest effort of the six-month-old Republican Trump administration to expand the role of religion in the federal workplace.

Read the rest here.

Imperial Japan's last veterans are speaking out

As the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, only a few veterans of Japan’s brutal war remain. Some are talking.

Read the rest here.

A quiet mutiny is brewing in the Israeli Army

...Immense pressure has been building on Israel over the dire humanitarian conditions inside the strip, with aid agencies warning of mass malnutrition and widespread hunger. France on Thursday said it would move to recognise Palestine as a state. On Sunday, the IDF said it was introducing a ‘tactical pause’ in fighting in some areas of Gaza.

Mr Feiner’s opinion on the futility of the conflict appears to be shared by a rising number of serving and retired senior officers who are turning against Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.

Gen Assaf Orion, the former head of strategic planning at the IDF, said while there were clear strategic goals in the Israel campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there was no longer any clear military imperative for the continuation of military operations in Gaza.

He told The Telegraph: “In Gaza, I suspect that the strategic train of ends, ways and means was kidnapped by ulterior motives.

“I think the main reason for a prolonged war in Gaza is political expediency.”

Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, was even blunter.

He said: “By now it has long been clear to most Israelis that the main reason the Gaza campaign lingers on is because of Netanyahu’s political, personal and judicial interests, and he needs the war to go on in order to sustain and even enhance his grip on power.”

Many believe Mr Netanyahu fears his government will collapse if the war ended as ultra-nationalist parties in his coalition would abandon him.

“That’s the main reason. It has nothing to do with Hamas and everything to do with Netanyahu.”

If even some of the spate of leaks from Israel’s security cabinet are to be believed, the scepticism is not confined to retired generals.

Read the rest here.

And now for something a little lighter

With Obama in His Sights; Trump's Revenge Agenda Gains Momentum

This is what Washington thought retribution would look like.

When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to “lock up” or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.

Displaying a willingness to weaponize the federal government in ways that were as novel as they were audacious, he took on a wide variety of individuals and institutions — from law firms and universities to journalists and federal bureaucrats — that he felt had crossed him, failed to fall in line or embodied ideological values that he rejected.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump reverted to earlier form, resurfacing — in a remarkably unfiltered and aggressive rant — his grievances against Mr. Obama, prominent figures in past administrations and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution dating back to the 2016 election.

Seeking to change the topic at a time when he is under bipartisan political pressure over his unwillingness to do more to release investigative files into Jeffrey Epstein, he said the time had come for his predecessors to face criminal charges.

“I let her off the hook, and I’m very happy I did, but it’s time to start after what they did to me,” Mr. Trump said of Hillary Clinton, adding: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly.”

“He’s guilty,” he added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

But if his enemies list was familiar, his capacity to pursue retribution appears to be expanding.

Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on those who crossed him.

Read the rest here.

The Final Tally on Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper released its final prediction Monday for how President Donald Trump’s signature legislative achievement will grow the national debt and affect U.S. households.

Over the next decade, the megabill Trump signed on July 4 would increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion and cause 10 million people to lose health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts. While the newly enacted legislation would save more than $1 trillion by cutting federal spending on health care — with the majority coming from Medicaid — CBO predicts that the package’s costs will far outweigh its savings.

The bulk of the red ink from the package comes from the GOP’s permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The analysis finds that the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, enacted policies that would decrease the incoming federal cash flow from taxes by a total of $4.5 trillion. That sum includes the cost of tax cuts Republicans added during Senate floor debate of the package.

Read the rest here.

Foreign investors buy nearly 100 billion in euro zone debt

LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Euro zone debt saw nearly 100 billion euros ($116 billion) of buying from outside the bloc in May, Citi said citing European Central Bank data, the latest sign that euro assets are benefitting from a shift away from U.S. markets.

The 97 billion euros of net inflows into euro zone debt with maturities longer than one year was the largest on a monthly basis since at least 2014, Citi said, pointing to portfolio flow data from the ECB.

Read the rest here.

The New York Mayoral Election

Ok, we have five guys running. One of the contenders Jim Walden, has no chance of winning, but could collect maybe five percentage points worth of votes. Mamdani has a lock on the progressive vote, but it's unclear what percentage that will translate to in the general election. Then you have Cuomo and Adams, both of whom have tarnished reputations but who are likely to split the bulk of the moderate Democratic vote. And tempting as it might be to overlook them, around 1 in 5 New Yorkers are actually registered Republicans. Their candidate, Curtis Sliwa, actually got ~27% of the vote in the 2021 election. 

Right now, I don't see Cuomo or Adams winning. The former is deeply unpopular and seen as just plain creepy. Adams is tainted by credible allegations of corruption. My guess is that it will come down to how many New Yorkers are prepared to roll the dice on an avowed socialist as mayor of a city that is also the beating heart of global capitalism. And we also need to consider the Jewish vote, which typically breaks heavily Democratic. I just can't see Mamdani carrying anywhere near a majority of the Jewish vote with his pro-Palestine record. In a normal election I'd say Curtis Sliwa's odds of being elected mayor of New York City were slightly worse than winning the Powerball. But in a five way race, if he holds that 27%, he's got an outside shot. In last year's election Donald Trump actually got 30% of the vote in New York City. If Sliwa gets the Trump voters, he goes from long shot to credible candidate. If he can pick up another 5-10% from disaffected Democrats and independents, we could... maybe... just possibly see one of the biggest election upsets in the city's history. 

The MAGA Civil War Over a Conspiracy Theory

Last week President Trump’s Department of Justice delivered a blow to one of the foundational beliefs of the MAGA movement, one that helped carry him back to the White House.

In an unsigned memorandum, the department declared that there was no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced deceased convicted sexual predator, maintained a client list or that he blackmailed prominent individuals for various misdeeds. The memorandum also declared that Epstein committed suicide.

Most Americans saw this news (if they saw it at all) and barely raised an eyebrow. The Epstein story was part of the past; he died in 2019. But it detonated like a bomb in the MAGA universe. Pro-Trump influencers with vast audiences couldn’t believe what they were reading.

After all, they’d been told for years that there was an Epstein client list. Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, told Fox News in February that the client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” (She later claimed that she was referring to the Epstein case file, not a specific client list.)

In October 2024, JD Vance, then a candidate for vice president, said, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.”

Before he was Trump’s director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel told Glenn Beck, a right-wing radio host, that the F.B.I. had Epstein’s “black book” and that it was “under direct control of the director of the F.B.I.” In 2023, Patel told Benny Johnson, a MAGA podcaster, that members of Congress should “put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.”

In September 2024, Dan Bongino, now the deputy director of the F.B.I., told his listeners, “Folks, the Epstein client list is a huge deal” that would “rock the Democrat Party.”

Read the rest here.

When you spend years building a cult like mass movement based on fringe conspiracy theories and outright lies, eventually it's going to become difficult to hold it all together. That said, I think predictions of the collapse of the movement are highly premature. One of the traits of cult movements is that the true believers tend to reach a point where they become impervious to facts and reason, dismissing any claims that do not align with their beliefs as false. They typically live within an ideological exclusion zone that rejects and dismisses sources of information that do not reinforce their belief system. In this case many of the faithful would give far more credibility to Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones than the New York Times or CNN. Even in the face of glaring inconsistencies or revelations that cannot be simply ignored, members will go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize or explain away those facts and contradictions which do manage to penetrate their information bubble.

See also QAnon. 

Trump's Witch-hunt at the Federal Reserve

The president is desperately looking for a legal pretext that would allow him to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Details here.

Various 07-09-25

Trump Hits Brazil With 50% Tariff Over Bolsanaro Trial

Trump sends more letters dictating high tariff rates around the world

Judge orders Jan. 6 rally organizer to pay $2K daily until compliance with subpoena

US sees record number of measles case

Abbott announces redistricting will be included in Texas special session

Greene says she’ll move to stop additional military aid to Israel

Trump's 50% copper tariff could raise the cost of appliances, EVs and other goods

FBI launches probes into former FBI, CIA directors

Senate GOP not happy with Trump beatdown of Tillis 

Life at St. Tikhon's Monastery

Happy 4th of July

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump has dropped a big, beautiful bomb on America’s economy

China’s leaders must be wondering whether they are hallucinating or whether America’s political class really has lost its mind, committing economic and geopolitical self-harm on a breathtaking scale.

Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” marks a wholesale retreat from swaths of advanced manufacturing and energy technology. It abandons a central front of the Sino-American superpower contest without a fight.

“Utterly insane and destructive. The bill will cause immense strategic harm to our country,” said Elon Musk, now the arch-apostate, perhaps soon to be punished, asset-stripped and deported.

The big bill is the latest in a series of Luddite measures that let China run away with the electro-tech revolution and much of the future global market for cars, trucks, short-haul aviation, home heating and cooling, smart grids, power storage and the products that deliver the cheapest energy ever known to man.

The think tank Ember says China is electrifying its economy at a rate of 10 percentage points a decade. It has already surpassed 30pc of final energy, well on its way to becoming the world’s first electro-superpower.

America has been stuck in the low 20s since 2008, lulled into complacency by its fracking boom. Europe has missed the boat too, without the same excuse. It talks big on electrons without delivering much, while clinging to imported molecules for its economic existence, failing to compete successfully on either.

The woke and the anti-woke are still arguing about renewables but we are past that developmental phase. The big trillions are going to be made in the ways we use electricity. The International Energy Agency thinks the vast electro-tech market will be eight times larger than renewables by 2035.

Trump’s America is betting that it can freeze time and stop this, doubling down on fossils and hoping to force others to go with them as a condition for military protection and market access. Trump is linking trade deals with Japan, South Korea and Europe to increased imports of US liquefied natural gas (LNG). He is even demanding that the EU changes its law and embraces the joy of methane emissions.

China is betting that you cannot halt a technological steamroller or force the world to act against its own economic self-interest.

Read the rest here.

Did Pope Francis Lie?

Something of a scandal is brewing in Rome. Leaked documents from the Vatican seem to indicate that the late pope misrepresented the results of a survey of Catholic bishops, which he cited as grounds for the severe restrictions he placed on the traditional (pre-Vatican II) liturgical rites. The story has been all over the Catholic press and blogosphere. Now it has been picked up by the Associated Press. 

The Dangerous Mythology of Central Banks (and out of control debt)

...Trump has purged the top echelons of the US military, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the justice department and every agency that stands in his way. It would be out of character if he spared the Fed.

His war of words against Powell is in full flight: “Low IQ ... a very stupid person, actually … terrible … a major loser … Mr too late ... a total and complete moron.”

Needless to say, Trump’s determination to get his hands on the machinery of interest rates and bond purchases is an admission that his “big, beautiful bill” is pushing the limits of US debt sustainability.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the draft will add $3.3 trillion (£2.4 trillion) to deficits by 2034, mostly from rolling over the Trump 1.0 tax cuts that were never affordable in the first place.

The US is in a runaway debt compound trap. The budget deficit is 6.7pc of GDP at full employment. The next recession will push it into double digits.

Interest costs were 1.6pc of GDP in 2018, during those halcyon days of free global money. They are 3.2pc this year and rising fast. “The federal budget has become highly sensitive to interest rate dynamics,” said James Knightley, from ING.

The US is also about to breach the Niall Ferguson rule: that great powers go into terminal decline once interest costs exceed military spending as a share of GDP.

Net public debt was 54pc of GDP at the turn of the century. It is now 121pc, rising by two points a year even in good times, and heading for 140pc in short order.

Read the rest here.

See also...

Republican Bill Puts Nation on New, More Perilous Fiscal Path

Tucker Carlson vs Ted Cruz (what we didn't get to see)

Europe considers global free trade pact (without America)

BRUSSELS — Late at night, after a dinner of dumplings and duck legs, the European Union’s leadership excitedly revealed a new plan to combat the hell-raising American president’s trade war: Take him on at his own wild game.

For six months, Donald Trump has upended the global trading order, threatening and announcing tariffs, then easing them to open negotiations, while warning that punitive levies will be reimposed if the terms are not to his liking.

With just 13 days until the Trump-imposed deadline to conclude a EU-U.S. deal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen decided the time for conventional negotiating tactics was over.

She floated the idea that the EU’s 27 countries could join forces with 12 members of the Asian-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership bloc (CPTPP) — which now includes the U.K. — to form a new world trade initiative. 

The new grouping would redesign a rules-based global trading order, reforming or perhaps even replacing the now largely defunct World Trade Organization, she said.

Crucially, the U.S. would not automatically be invited.

Read the rest here.

Andrew Sullivan Takes on the Extremism in the Alphabet+ Movement

To be honest, I am astonished that this was actually published by the New York Times. Mr. Sullivan just picked up a stick and and took a very big swing at one of the radical left's most sacred hornets nests. One hopes he is wearing an asbestos suit because I think he may have just supplanted J.K. Rowling as their new public enemy #1. 

Read it here.

Zohran Mamdani’s Victory in NYC Rattles Wall Street

...Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University, also expressed his distaste Mamdani’s nomination.

“I am profoundly alarmed about the future of the [Democratic National Committee] and the country, by yesterday’s NYC anointment of a candidate who failed to disavow a ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan and advocated Trotskyite economic policies,” Summers said in a post on X.

Part of the stock market has already felt the pain from the prospect of a Mamdani-led NYC. Shares of New York regional bank Flagstar, with exposure to the New York real estate market, sank nearly 4% Wednesday. Office-focused real estate stocks also suffered, with SL Green Realty down more than 6% and Vornado Realty Trust down nearly 7%.

Mamdani advocates for universal rent control, and the New York City mayor has the power to appoint representatives to the regulatory board that oversees rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments. A pause on rent increases would hurt the profits of multi-family rental properties.

Roughly one million New York City apartments are rent stabilized but only about 20,000 are still rent controlled.

“It appears that NYC is electing to commit suicide by Mayor,” Jim Bianco, president and macro strategist at Bianco Research, said in a post on X Tuesday evening.

Read the rest here.

Food for thought

Coal miners used to form study groups to read Gibbon & Thucydides. Lincoln and Douglas delivered speeches that lasted three hours with no pauses. C. S. Lewis, like many kids of his era, read Paradise Lost at age nine and was translating Homer by sixteen. The brain rot is real. https://t.co/Wr1eHVBJRv

— Boze the Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) June 22, 2025

HT: Fr. Z

Greek Orthodox Church Bombed in Syria

A suicide bombing by Islamic State (IS) targeting a church in Damascus has killed 22 people and wounded 63, Syrian state media have said.

The attack on Sunday night was the first major IS operation and the first suicide bombing in Syria since former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December and replaced by an Islamist-led government.

A man affiliated with IS entered the Greek Orthodox Saint Elias church in the old Christian quarter of Damascus during prayers, opened fire and then detonated an explosive vest while inside the church, Syria’s interior ministry said. Eyewitnesses inside the church reported a second gunman who did not blow himself up, but also shot at the 150 or so worshippers present.

“People were praying safely under the eyes of God,” said Fadi Ghattas, who said he saw at least 20 people killed. “There were 350 people praying at the church.”

Videos of the church’s interior show splintered pews overturned by the force of the blast and the bloodied corpses of congregants splayed out across the church. Nearby residents reported hearing a large blast and then the sound of sirens as security forces attempted to establish a cordon around the area and civil defence personnel headed towards the church.

Issam Nasr, who was praying at the church, said he saw people “blown to bits”.

“We have never held a knife in our lives. All we ever carried were our prayers,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Further this

Holy New Martyrs of Syria, pray for us.