Car humor

The sad thing is that there is an entire generation of people who won't get the joke.

The Case for "Saint" Dositheus II of Jerusalem

Study on treatment of gender dysphoria goes unpublished over political concerns

An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

Read the rest here.

Paul Tudor Jones sees fast approaching reckoning over US debt levels

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones is raising alarms about the U.S. government’s current fiscal deficit and the increased spending promised by both presidential candidates, saying the bond market may force the government’s hand after the election in addressing it. 

“We are going to be broke really quickly unless we get serious about dealing with our spending issues,” Jones told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday.

Read the rest here.

I tend to agree. No matter who wins, their spending plans are going to spike the national debt. Trump's are worse, by far. But the next four years, and possibly beyond, are going to be a bumpy ride. A quarter century of bipartisan fiscal profligacy may finally be reaching its inevitable end. 

Trump tax plans could exempt 93 million from income taxes

Former President Donald Trump’s tax reform ideas could offer total or partial income tax exemptions to roughly 93.2 million Americans, a meaningful chunk of the U.S. electorate, according to CNBC’s analysis of several estimates.

As part of his economic pitch to voters, Trump has floated a sweeping tax overhaul, including a slate of income tax breaks.

So far, the Republican presidential nominee has officially proposed eliminating income tax on tips and Social Security benefits, along with overtime pay. And last week, in an interview on the sports media site OutKick, Trump said he would consider tax exemptions for firefighters, police officers, military personnel and veterans.

These exemptions are part of Trump’s larger vision to transition away from the income tax system and replace it with the revenue he says would be generated by his hardline tariff proposals.

“In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for “Fox & Friends.” “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.”

Trump has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports.

Tax experts reject the notion that tariff revenue could offset the losses incurred by eliminating income taxes.

“The math doesn’t work out,” Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, told CNBC.

He said Trump’s tariffs would raise approximately $3.8 trillion over the next decade, far less than the roughly $33 trillion of estimated revenue generated by income taxes over the same period.

Given that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers and those costs have historically been passed on to consumers, Trump’s strategy appears to be based around a notion of replacing income tax revenue with a kind of invisible sales tax.

Tariffs, much like sales tax and other point-of-sale costs, tend to have the biggest impact on low-income consumers, for whom the amounts represent proportionately larger slices of their monthly budgets.

If implemented, Trump’s income tax exemptions could affect tens of millions of taxpayers.

Roughly 68 million Americans receive Social Security benefits each month, according to the Social Security Administration. And in 2023, about 4 million workers were in tipped jobs, according to an estimate from Yale University’s Budget Lab.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs approximated in March 2023 that there were 18.6 million living veterans. There are 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, according to the Department of Defense. And there are 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers and roughly 500,000 paid firefighters.

Taken together, these reforms could leave about 93.2 million people off the hook for at least a portion, if not all, of their income taxes.

That accounts for about 38% of the 244 million Americans eligible to vote in 2024.

Read the rest here.

Trump's economic plan in summary: Eliminate income tax for most people, levy a 20%+ tariff (sales tax) on all imports which will start a trade war with pretty much the entire word and replace about 10% of the lost tax revenue in the best case scenario, precipitating an explosion in inflation and the national debt.

On which note, gold is currently trading at ~$2,745.00/oz. 

Neighborhood Picnic 1920s

Is gold safer than U.S. Treasury bonds as federal debt keeps soaring?

Backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, U.S. Treasuries bonds have long been viewed as the gold standard in safe investments.

In times of uncertainty, economic downturns, or full-blown crises, investors have flocked to Treasuries as a haven. But what if actual gold is the new gold standard for a safe investment?

Analysts at Bank of America asked that question in a note on Wednesday, explaining that the outlook for U.S. debt is bullish for the precious metal.

With debt as a share of GDP set to break record highs in the coming years, the Treasury Department has to sell more and more bonds to investors, who may demand higher yields. And when yields rise, the price of bonds on the secondary market falls.

That has helped weaken the historic correlation between bond yields and gold prices. While lower rates are still bullish for gold, which doesn't pay interest or dividends, higher rates don't necessarily put pressure on bullion anymore, BofA said, maintaining a gold price target of $3,000 per ounce.

"Indeed, with lingering concerns over US funding needs and their impact on the US Treasury market, the yellow metal may become the ultimate perceived safe haven asset," analysts wrote.

Gold has been on a tear recently, with prices up more than 30% so far this year, topping $2,700 per ounce for the first time ever this past week.

That's even as bond yields have rebounded since the Federal Reserve's first rate cut last month, while fresh budget data showed that the deficit was $1.8 trillion for the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, the interest expense alone on U.S. debt was $950 billion, more than defense spending and up 35% from the prior due mostly to higher rates.

There is no relief in sight as the deficit will expand under either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, though less so under the Democrat, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

"Indeed, rising funding needs, debt servicing costs and concerns over the sustainability of fiscal policy may well mean that gold prices could increase, if rates move up," BofA said.

With the supply of U.S. debt poised to continue surging, concerns have grown about demand and whether investors will keep absorbing more Treasury bonds.

That provides a strong incentive to central banks around the world keep diversifying their reserves away from U.S. debt and toward gold, BofA added.

Read the rest here.

Wishful thinking

Some Catholics keep thinking that if they just fix the Filioque, then everything will be good. That might have been true 1,000 years ago, but Rome has drifted so far from Orthodoxy in its doctrinal additions that we simply do not believe the same things anymore. Our differences with Rome run much deeper than the Filioque and calendars. Papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction, the immaculate conspection, purgatory, indulgences, and so on. At the core, their ecclesiology is so completely alien to us that it's almost impossible to overstate the differences. How could we enter communion with a pope who promotes the blessing of homosexual couples and thinks he has the right to suppress the entire liturgical patrimony of his own church? And then we have the liberal modernism that has been pervasive since at least the Second Vatican Council. Francis' accession to the papacy has dramatically accelerated this alarming trend to the point where the pope himself has openly participated in pagan religious rites. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that half or more Catholic bishops and priests are heretics, even by the teachings of their own communion. Worth noting is that Francis has been going to great lengths to pack the College of Cardinals with these individuals.  Today, I'd say Rome is much closer to full communion with Anglicans and Lutherans than us.

HT: Blog reader John L.

The Mets

That was just ugly.

Cremation and the Church... maybe?

To my considerable surprise, it appears that cracks have begun to appear in the Orthodox Church's longstanding prohibition of cremating the dead. The above image is from the website of the Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Colma California, where the faithful can be interred in columbarium.

A quick update on Milton

I survived the hurricane unscathed as did the house. Lots of debris and power was out for most of the last 24 hrs, but is now restored. A minor tornado passed through the south end of the street and tore up some fences and a few small trees, but happily caused no more serious damage here. Unfortunately, it went into a neighboring community just up the road, mostly composed of retirees in mobile homes. Sadly, around twenty were badly damaged. No injuries though, thank God. I'm afraid many of the communities just north of us did not fair quite so well. Prayers... 

Raising the tax on the mathematically challenged

Mega Millions lottery is more than doubling the price of a ticket to $5

The Pope's New Cardinals

The only heretic passed over appears to have been Katharine Jefferts Schori. 

Full list here.

Israel's Silent Departure: Why some Jews are leaving

This summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage release and ceasefire deal.

Nir Oz was the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.

If the hostages were not brought back, the basic social contract that underpinned Israeli society would unravel, the 77-year-old professor of medicine warned – with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.

He cited an accelerating “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals as a worrying sign that some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.

Ciechanover is a long-term critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and joined protests against his government before the war. But concern about this trend is not limited to political opponents of the Israeli leader. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel, joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to warn that Israel faces an existential threat.

In a paper calling for a new political settlement, they warned that under a business-as-usual scenario “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will not be able to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the coming decades”.

Among the threats they highlighted were rising emigration, particularly among the people who have built up Israel’s hi-tech sector and the schools and hospitals vital to attracting the global elite. “Israel’s locomotive of growth is innovation, and that is driven by a small group of several tens of thousands of people in a country of 10 million,” the paper warned. “The weight of their departure from the country is immense in comparison to their number.”

Read the rest here.

Colorado Election Denier Sentenced to 9 Years

A judge excoriated a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.

The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump.

Read the rest here.