Memory Eternal!

Anastasios Archbishop of Tirana, Durrës and All Albania has reposed at 95.

The Easy Part May be Over

There are (at least for now) limits to even Donald Trump's ability to govern by decree. In the not too distant future he is going to be facing the threat of default on the national debt while simultaneously pressing to extend his first term tax cuts. Here he may be facing two very powerful obstacles. The first is the greatly diminished, but not yet extinct, fiscal conservative wing of the GOP. There are still several dozen Republicans in Congress who have never once voted to increase the Federal debt limit. They are going to be a hard sell and with their razor thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Republicans may have to do some deal cutting with Democrats to get even a temporary spending bill and short term hike in the debt limit through. 

The second obstacle is the bond market. Interest rates have been drifting up over the last few months, and the Federal Reserve is sending signals that it may not be in a hurry to cut rates. If bond investors start getting nervous about the US Government's ability to get its finances in order, they can make their displeasure known by demanding higher interest rates in order to lend the government money. Given the current level of debt, this could create serious problems fast. The US Government is currently borrowing more money just to pay the interest on the existing debt, than it  is spending on the entirety of the national defense budget annually. Back in the early1990s Bill Clinton's ambitious agenda got almost completely shut down by the so called "bond vigilantes," leading the famed Democratic political guru James Carville to opine that when he dies he wants to come back as the all powerful bond market. Clinton, with a lot of help from a frequently hostile Republican Congress (that actually was fiscally conservative) has gone down in history as the last president to balance the Federal budget. Privately he groused that he had been turned into an "Eisenhower Republican." But when he left office in 2001 we were running surpluses that were being used to pay down the principal on the debt, which in turn meant paying less interest and freeing up more money. Then came George Bush (43) and everything went to the hot stinky bad place. 

Meanwhile Trump is threatening to start trade wars with a not insignificant part of the rest of the world, including countries that we have historically had very close relations with. A tariff war would have immediate and serious consequences, almost certainly spiking inflation and damaging GDP. 

All of which brings to mind the old Chinese curse; "may you live in interesting times." 

Political Silly Season

Periodically one sees really idiotic proposals from political people. Most of the time they are some form of red meat, intended to appeal to the more extreme wing of their party or to provoke people from the other side of the political spectrum. Think of it as the political version of trolling. Here are two recent examples that are going nowhere at the speed of light. 

Mississippi lawmaker introduces 'Contraception Begins at Erection Act'

Montana bill would jail priests for 5 years if they refuse to violate seal of confession

Quote of the day...

Russia: 3 lawyers for Alexei Navalny are jailed

PETUSHKI, Russia (AP) — Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were convicted by a court Friday as part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels unseen since Soviet times.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were already in custody and were given sentences ranging from 3 1/2 to five years by a court in the town of Petushki, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Moscow. They were arrested in October 2023 on charges of involvement with extremist groups, as Navalny’s networks were deemed by authorities.

The case was widely seen as a way to increase pressure on the opposition to discourage defense lawyers from taking political cases.

The U.S. State Department condemned the sentences against the lawyers “who were simply doing their jobs to ensure a political prisoner was afforded his right to legal representation, turning defense lawyers into political prisoners themselves,” said spokesman Matthew Miller.

He called it “yet another example of the persecution of defense lawyers by the Kremlin in its effort to undermine human rights, subvert the rule of law, and suppress dissent,” and urged the government to release all political prisoners immediately.

Read the rest here.

Memory Eternal

My step brother has reposed. In your charity please pray for the servant of God Doug and his family who are in shock and deep mourning. His passing was both sudden and unexpected. Thank you.

How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President

The people closest to President Biden were well aware that he had changed. He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait.

“Your biggest issue is the perception of age,” Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime strategist, told him in mid-2022, according to three close aides who heard it. That bit of feedback, delivered repeatedly by Mr. Donilon, was the sort of blunt talk that did not often make its way to a man who had spent a half-century in politics prizing loyalty and deference.

Mr. Biden acknowledged the concerns, but the warnings only ignited his defiant, competitive streak. In April 2023, without convening his family or having long deliberations with aides, he announced he was running again.

Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump heads back to the White House, demoralized Democrats debate what might have been had the president bowed out in time to let a younger generation run. Mr. Biden, 82, has at the same time made the extraordinary admission that he might not have made it through a second term. “Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?” he said in an interview with USA Today on Jan. 5.

The president’s acknowledgment has put a new spotlight on his family and inner circle, all of whom dismissed concerns from voters and Mr. Biden’s own party that he was too old for the job. And yet they recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. Then they cooperated, according to interviews with more than two dozen aides, allies, lawmakers and donors, to manage his decline.

They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president. At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing.

Read the rest here.

Trouble in the House

Less than two weeks after Mike Johnson narrowly secured the speakership after a brief revolt from the right, he’s now drawing ire from the opposite wing of the Republican Party. 

Johnson sent shockwaves around Capitol Hill when he decided to oust Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio — a staunch NATO supporter who has aggressively pushed for U.S. aid to Ukraine — as chair of the House Intelligence Committee and replace him with Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., a conservative who voted against the most recent Ukraine aid package.

It’s a move that appeased conservatives and allies of President-elect Donald Trump, but infuriated the GOP’s more moderate members. 

One lawmaker who, like Turner, is a member of the Main Street Caucus, said the unexpected swap at the intelligence panel has eroded trust within the Republican conference and could make it much harder to pass Trump’s agenda. With two House Republicans up for positions in the Trump administration, the party’s majority could soon shrink to 217-215 — giving Johnson just a one-seat cushion on party-line votes.

These Republicans said they were giving Johnson an earful after Turner’s removal became public.

“This hurts us in the reconciliation process,” said the lawmaker, referring to the expedited budget process Republicans plan to use to pass legislation related to Trump’s pledges on taxes, the border and energy costs. “Looks like backroom politics and backstabbing.”

A second GOP lawmaker, one who had a recent conversation with Turner, predicted the ousted chairman would make life difficult for Johnson in the coming year and could be in a position to halt Republicans’ entire agenda if he chooses to do so. Turner did not participate in House votes on Wednesday or Thursday.

“I think Turner will burn the House down,” the second lawmaker said. “He will be a no vote on everything. I mean, he just got totally f-----.”

Read the rest here.

The news here is not the Trumpist coup on the intel committee. The big news is that apparently there actually are a handful of normal Republicans left in Congress.

A note from the land of long ago

From here.

I'm not sure which is more disturbing, a man drinking a bottle of bed bug poison thinking it was rum, or a doctor prescribing a bath of New England rum as a cure for what ails you. 

Vatican Allows Gay Seminarians

VATICAN CITY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Vatican has approved new guidelines from Italian bishops that allow gay men to enter seminaries as long as they abstain from sex, in an unexpected adjustment to how the global Catholic Church considers possible future priests.

Although the Vatican had not explicitly barred gay men from entering the priesthood in the past, an earlier 2016 instruction had said seminaries cannot admit men who have "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

The new guidelines, posted without fanfare on the website of the Italian bishops' conference on Thursday, say seminary directors should consider a priestly candidate's sexual preferences, but only as one aspect of their personality.

"When referring to homosexual tendencies in the formation process, it is also appropriate not to reduce the discernment to this aspect alone, but … to understand its meaning within the whole framework of the young person's personality," state the guidelines.

Read the rest here.

I've seen this movie before, and I know how it ends. 

Addendum: The above report is being denied.

The Biden Presidency: Four Illusions, Four Deceptions

Americans tend to have a soft spot for our former presidents. Even the bad ones.

By the time Richard Nixon died in 1994, his presidency was as likely to be lauded for the opening to China or the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency as it was to be damned for Watergate. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, furiously condemned at the time as a dirty political bargain, was later celebrated as an example of selfless statesmanship. Jimmy Carter’s reputational resurrection — not just for the way he conducted his post-presidency, but also for his acts in office — would have astounded the country that sent him packing in 1980 amid stagflation and a hostage crisis.

Will Joe Biden enjoy a similar place in our national memory? It’s possible, and his administration had its achievements: NATO enlargement, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, defending Ukraine and Israel, strengthening alliances in the Pacific.

But Biden’s presidency will also be remembered for four big illusions — and four big deceptions. They will not serve his legacy well.

The illusions: first, that the 2021 surge in migration was seasonal (“happens every single solitary year,” as Biden said that March); second, that the Taliban would not swiftly seize Afghanistan (“the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” as he said that July); third, that inflation was transitory (“Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary,” also that July).

The fourth, and the biggest: that he was the best Democratic candidate to defeat Donald Trump: “I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” he often insisted, even after the debate debacle.

That last illusion was pure hubris. But there was an arrogance to the first three, since he was loudly alerted (including by, well, me) on each point that he was making a fundamental mistake. The White House spent months in 2021 refusing to use the term “crisis” for the border — it was, instead, a “challenge.” Pentagon leaders warned the president that the Afghan government would soon collapse if the United States withdrew. Biden shrugged. Larry Summers was outspoken about the inflationary risks of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Biden ignored that, too.

Read the rest here.

Trump reiterates intent to annex Greenland, Panama Canal and Canada

Well, it's not like we didn't know the man was barking mad.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested he would consider using military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and "economic force" to acquire Canada.

In Kosovo a Return to Christianity

The Catholic priest stood at the altar in the hilltop church for the mass baptism, dunking dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.

Then he rejoiced at Christianity’s recovery of souls in a land where the vast majority of people are Muslim — as the men, women and children standing before him had been.

The ceremony was one of many in recent months in Kosovo, a formerly Serbian territory inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an independent state in 2008. In a census last spring, 93 percent of the population professed itself Muslim and only 1.75 percent Roman Catholic.

A small number of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic kin to look to the church as an expression of their identity. They call it the “return movement,” a push to revive a pre-Islamic past they see as an anchor of Kosovo’s place in Europe and a barrier to religious extremism spilling over from the Middle East.

Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is today Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans in the 14th century, bringing with it Islam, ethnic Albanians were primarily Catholics. Under Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, most of Kosovo’s people switched faiths.

By reversing that process, said Father Fran Kolaj, the priest who carried out the baptisms outside the village of Llapushnik, ethnic Albanians can recover their original identity.

Read the rest here.

A great car ad from the land of long ago

Great advert for a great car. No frills transportation at its best. Look up "four wheels and an engine" and this is what you will find. Amenities? Power... nothing (unless you count the headlights, turn signals and the AM radio). Not even power breaks or steering. You got a work out driving those things. You felt every bump in the road and heard all the noise. The engine gave you 50-60hp depending on the year and model. Yes, you could drive them on the highway. It just might take a minute to get up to normal speed. The heater sucked. AC? That's what the hand crank on the door was for.

But they ran, and they ran surprisingly well. They were generally more reliable than most other cars of that era. In a time when people often swapped cars every few years, these could easily last 100k miles if you took care of them. And when things did go wrong, they were some of the easiest vehicles to repair. The VW Beetle (or Analog as I like to call them) were one of the most mass produced vehicles in history. The German version of the Ford Model T, with roughly the same level of comfort and engineering. And they were also highly affordable. You could pick one up in the early 70s for ~$2,000.  In an era characterized by the famous gas guzzling land yachts from Detroit, these gave you an almost unheard of ~30mpg on the highway and low to mid 20s in town. 

Even today, there are plenty still around and running. Many can be had for under $20,000. All you need is a key, the ability to drive an old school manual (4 on the floor), and a basic level of mechanical skills with a good tool set and a few spare parts. Some people still use them as daily drivers.

Surgeon General: Alcohol use causes cancer

Alcoholic drinks should carry cancer risk warning labels, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in a report Friday.

The report cites a direct link between alcohol consumption and at least seven types of cancer, including of the breast, colorectal, liver and mouth. An estimated 16.4% of total breast cancer cases are linked to drinking alcohol.

There are about 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and about 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths in the U.S. each year, the report found. Alcohol is the third-leading cause of cancer in the U.S., after tobacco and obesity.

While research has shown a link between alcohol and cancer, “the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a statement.

Read the rest here.

Russia and China Are Sabotaging Undersea Power and Communication Cables

Russia’s connection to the rupture of an undersea cable between Finland and Estonia is raising a new bevy of fears over the sabotage of critical power lines.

The new incidents come as tensions between the West and Russia and China have risen over the war in Ukraine, and as the world braces for a shift in U.S. leadership as President-elect Trump prepares to take office. 

The Estlink-2 power cable between Finland and Estonia was allegedly cut on Christmas by a Cook Island-flagged ship called Eagle S. Western officials claim the ship is part of a vast Russian shadow fleet working to circumvent western sanctions. 

The incident adds to a larger problem related to the security of undersea infrastructure, as China has also been accused of three incidents since 2023 that have disrupted power lines in European waters.

Dozens of cables are ruptured each year, usually accidentally, and it’s unclear if the latest events were intentional. Still, European leaders are sounding the alarm. 

“Recent Baltic Sea sabotage attempts are not isolated incidents; they form a deliberate pattern aimed at damaging our digital and energy infrastructure,” said European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas in an interview with German newspaper Welt.

Read the rest here.

The Wall

HT: TDT

What's Wrong with Chicago?

The word bankruptcy has been hanging over Chicago like a storm cloud about to burst. Mayor Brandon Johnson is the latest leader to attempt to close Chicago’s gaping fiscal gap: He proposed a $300 million property tax increase to partly fill Chicago’s $982 million projected budget deficit, only to be unanimously rejected by the City Council. The City Council narrowly passed a budget on Dec. 16, with far less in tax increases than the mayor had initially demanded.

The Windy City’s woes are the product of decades of fiscal profligacy and a cautionary tale to policymakers in every region and at every level of government: Retirement benefits are like free junk food to politicians — everyone loves them, and the bills don’t arrive until later. They can be ruinous for a city’s long-term fiscal health.

At the heart of Chicago’s deficit are decades of increasingly generous retirement benefits offered by Chicago’s leaders to more than 30,000 public employees, a politically powerful constituency. Today, a city employee retiring after 35 years with a final salary of $75,000 would receive combined pension and retiree health benefits of about $77,000.

The City government has failed to fund those pension promises fully and the bill has come due. Retirement benefits and debt service together made up 43 percent of Chicago’s budget in 2022, the highest rate of any U.S. city. Chicago spends more on debt and pensions than it does on the police and infrastructure, according to an analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian-leaning policy group. In other words, Chicago is paying for the past, not investing for the future.

Chicago’s pension actuary warned in a letter to the plan’s leadership last year that “the Fund is still at risk of potential insolvency if an economic recession or investment market downturn were to occur in the near term.” (He wrote it in boldface to get policymakers to take notice.)

Read the rest here.

Chicago is basically spending money like the Federal Government. This country is drowning in debt at every level of government and that is not sustainable. For most of the last quarter century the spending habits of our political leadership (from both parties) can be summed up as; "If you've got it, spend it. And if you don't have it, spend it anyways." A reckoning is coming, and it's a lot closer than it was ten or fifteen years ago.

Worth noting; the bond market is flashing warning signs. Despite two successive rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, interest rates on bonds, have been rising. Wall Street is getting nervous about all the red ink.

RIP Jimmy Carter

I have never been a fan of Mr. Carter as a president and generally rank him as below average, even setting aside my political prejudices. His one solid accomplishment was the Camp David Accords. Otherwise his administration came across as indecisive in response to runaway inflation and a spiraling energy crisis at home, while showing breathtaking weakness in the face of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and Iran's seizure of our embassy and abduction of US diplomats. An outrage that any other president would have labeled an act of war. I will give a polite nod to some of his charitable work during his post-presidency, especially in support of Habitat for Humanity.

Prayers for his family and loved ones.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

This is probably the best analysis of one of the most controversial events in American History that I have come across.

Christmas liturgy

Christ is born!

Wishing you and yours a blessed feast.

Trump's American Empire

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,” an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Not surprisingly, the government of Greenland immediately rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, as it did in 2019, when he first floated the idea. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said in a statement. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

Read the rest here.

Report: Biden's decline started much earlier and staff hid it

The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report Thursday, based on interviews with nearly 50 people knowledgeable of the operations of the Biden White House. The story details the extent to which the president’s age has posed an issue throughout his presidency, including from the very start, and the lengths to which aides went to conceal it.

President Biden, now 82, was 78 years old when he took office, and the Journal reports that administration officials began to notice signs of his age “in just the first few months of his term,” as he would grow “tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.”

Those who met with the president were reportedly told that “exchanges should be short and focused.” Meetings were strategically scheduled and, sometimes, if Biden “was having an off day,” they were simply canceled. A former aide recalled a national security official saying, regarding one rescheduled meeting, “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”

The Journal reported that lawmakers, Cabinet members, and the public all seemed to have less face time with the president than in previous administrations and that senior advisers were “often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy.” Namely, administration officials like Jake Sullivan, Steve Ricchetti, and Lael Brainard frequently functioned as intermediaries for the president.

Read the rest here. 

Report: Number of civilians killed in Gaza ‘inflated to vilify Israel’

The number of civilians killed in the Gaza conflict has been inflated to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent people, a report claims.

Researchers accuse the Gaza ministry of health of overstating casualty data by including natural deaths, failing to differentiate between civilian and combat casualties and over-reporting the numbers of women and children killed.

The study by the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank, claims the figures have been manipulated by the Hamas-run authorities in Gaza for propaganda purposes, with international media outlets happy to repeat them uncritically.

Read the rest here.

How many Orthodox in America?

Ummm... not likely.

The woke left and religion

We don’t tolerate prejudice at work. Why, pray, do we allow it in church?

HT: Dr. Tighe

All culture warriors are inherently authoritarians. Anyone who thinks they have a right to coercively dictate how other people should live their lives, what they can or cannot say or believe &c, is dangerous and should not be allowed anywhere near political power.

Argentina: One year of Javier Milei

Argentina’s Milei marks one year in office. Here’s how his shock measures are reshaping the economy

Argentina's Mr Market Javier Milei wants to make austerity great again

Javier Milei's Argentina in 6 Charts

On a happier note...

Did you feel the ground shake Sunday night? Did New York suddenly tilt from the Bronx down to Queens?

For decades, Yankees fans scoffed at Mets fans, mocking them just for loving their little team in Flushing. The big, corporate Yankees sucked up most of the oxygen in New York, and if there was any left over, only then were the scrappy Mets allowed to breathe in the exhaust.

That all changed overnight, just as Steve Cohen, the newish multibillionaire owner of the Mets franchise, promised it would. The Mets took Juan Soto from the Yankees.

Soto played only one season in the Bronx, but he helped the team get to the World Series for the first time in 15 years. And then he did what no superstar, top-flight free agent had ever done in the past: He spurned the Yankees to join the Mets for more money. He accepted the Mets’ staggering offer of $765 million for a 15-year contract.

It definitely stunned the Yankees and their devoted supporters, who have absolutely no experience in losing out, at least when it comes to money.

“This is really crushing,” said Jeremy Senderowicz, a lawyer and lifelong Yankees fan from Yonkers. “The Yankees usually get the player they are going after. I naïvely thought it would happen again.”

Oh, the indignity of losing out to the Mets, who, like that younger sibling bursting into adolescence, finally won at playground one-on-one. Was it a fluke? Or did this portend a new reality?

Read the rest here.

Coincidence?

Lara Trump is standing down as head of the political arm of the Trump Organization, commonly known as the Republican National Committee, amidst calls for her to be appointed to fill the US Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio. Simultaniously, team Trump is floating the name of the man responsible for filling that vacancy as the next Secretary of Defense (after Pete Hegseth either withdraws or is rejected by the Senate).

Vigil for the Feast of St. Nicholas

NY Post: Young men converting to Orthodoxy in droves

Not sure what to make of this. Always good news when people are converting of course. But the article sounds like it is heavily based on anecdotal evidence. FWIW, I've also noticed an uptick in converts.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Ross Douthat and David French on the Hunter Biden Pardon

Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Ross Douthat and David French about President Biden’s decision to issue a broad pardon to his son Hunter Biden.

Patrick Healy: Ross and David, you both have written extensively about the rule of law and presidential power. You both have a good sense of what American voters care about. And you both are fathers. So I’m curious what struck you most about President Biden’s statement that he was pardoning his son Hunter Biden.

David French: As a father, I think it would be very, very hard to watch your son go to prison — especially if you have the power to set him free. I can’t imagine the pain of watching Hunter’s long battle with substance abuse and then watching his conviction in court. But in his role as president, Biden’s primary responsibility is to the country and the Constitution, not his family.

As president, this pardon represents a profound failure. Biden was dishonest — he told us that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter — and this use of the pardon power reeks of the kind of royal privilege that is antithetical to America’s republican values.

Healy: Biden’s decision to rule out the pardon while running for re-election was an enormous misjudgment. At the same time, David — Hunter Biden didn’t harm anyone, and pardons go to people with connections all the time now. I want to understand your umbrage on behalf of “the country and the Constitution” a bit better.

French: When Biden issued the pardon, my first thought was “here we go again.” It’s exactly this kind of self-dealing and favoritism that has created such cynicism in this country, and the fact that pardon abuse is almost routine at this point isn’t a defense of Biden. It’s an indictment of a political class that helped lay the groundwork for Donald Trump — a much worse figure, by the way, but one that did not arise in an otherwise-healthy moment in American democracy.

Ross Douthat: I think it’s important to stress that Biden always kept Hunter close, within the larger aura of his own power, in ways that likely helped his son trade on his dad’s name even as his own life was completely out of control. This pardon is a continuation or completion of that closeness: It’s a moral failure, as David says, a dereliction, but one that’s of a piece with the president’s larger inability to create a sustained separation between his own position and his troubled son’s lifestyle and business dealings and place in the family’s inner circle. A clearer separation would have been better not just for the president and the country, but also for Hunter himself — even if he’s benefiting from it now, at the last.

Healy: Ross, Hunter Biden should absolutely be held accountable for his actions — that’s something that 12-step programs make clear to addicts, in fact: Their addiction is no excuse for breaking the law, for instance. But it seems like you are conflating Biden’s legitimate powers as president with how you think he should have regarded his son in office.

Douthat: I’m not saying that Biden’s pardon of Hunter is categorically worse than prior presidents’ use of the power to help out cronies and donors and the like. But most people regarded, say, Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich as scandalous even though it fell within the ambit of legitimate presidential powers, and this case is scandalous as well. Whether it’s more corrupt to help a relative than a party donor or donor’s spouse is an interesting subject for debate about the nature of political ethics, but I don’t think we need to resolve that question. We can just say that (1) past presidents have used the pardon power in legal but disreputable ways and (2) pardoning your son is also quite disreputable even if it is constitutional as well.

Read the rest here.

Something that struck me as I was reading this, was the realization that Hunter's troubles may not be over. If the GOP (soon to be in full control of the government) decides to hold more hearings on his activities he cannot refuse to testify. Having been granted a full pardon, he no longer can invoke the 5th amendment. Which means he can be grilled under oath about pretty much any subject since 2014 with no recourse. That could get very ugly, very fast.

South Korea Declares Martial law

Preview of coming attractions.

South Korean president declares martial law, accusing opposition of anti-state activity

Biden Pardons His Son

Yes, Trump has abused the power of the pardon, and is all but certain to do so again once he regains office. But that is neither here nor there. Biden's intervention on behalf of his son, after explicitly promising not to, was an outrageous act of personal and official corruption. The scandalous perversion of this constitutional prerogative by two successive presidents from different parties further suggests we may be entering a period where the traditional norms and guardrails that have kept presidents from flagrantly misusing their powers might be crumbling. Making matters worse, Mr. Trump has already made it crystal clear he intends to use that power to shield his allies and followers from criminal prosecution, including those who at Trump's instigation attacked the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. How will Democrats be able to criticize such abuses when their own leader is as guilty? 

Realism vs Fatalism

A unifying theme of this year’s extremely active Atlantic hurricane season, which officially concludes on Saturday, has been the disbelief echoing from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Ozark plateau. “I had always felt like we were safe from climate change,” an Asheville, N.C., woman told The Times after Hurricane Helene. “But now this makes me question that maybe there’s nowhere that’s safe.”

To which the obvious rejoinder is: You’re right. Nowhere is safe.

But some places are less safe than others. Atop the list of unsafe places is New Orleans. But unlike the other major cities that appear on such lists (Phoenix; Norfolk, Va.; Tampa Bay, Fla; New York), New Orleans has a striking competitive advantage. It knows that every hurricane season poses an existential threat.

I’ve never met a New Orleanian who feels safe from climate change. Living here, rather, engenders hurricane expertise — and hurricane fatalism. You become your own disaster planner, insurance adjuster, land surveyor and roofer. You know how many feet your neighborhood is above or below sea level, which storm drain on the block must be cleared by hand before the rain starts, which door sill needs to be bolstered with a rolled-up towel and where water is most likely to pool, with what appalling consequences.

The National Hurricane Center advises those in the path of a storm to have an evacuation plan. Most New Orleanians I know have three plans: one if the storm lands to the east, one if to the west and a third if the evacuation lasts longer than a week. We don’t wait for a tropical storm to form. We track every depression and cyclone advisory with grim scrutiny. There are storm shutters on every window, a hammer in the attic, candles and matches and gallons of bottled water in the pantry. Local news organizations track how many of the city’s drainage pumps, steam and combustion turbine generators and frequency changers are operational at any given time. We are as prepared as anyone can be with the certain knowledge that one day a storm will come for which no preparations will be sufficient.

Saul Bellow wrote that “no one made sober decent terms with death.” But cities can. New Orleans has. What does it mean, for a city, to make sober decent terms with death? It means living in reality. It means doing whatever it can to postpone the inevitable. It means settling for the best of bad options. But it does not mean blindly submitting to fate.

Read the rest here.

A letter from Syracuse New York

Syracuse, Nov, 25, 1847

Friend Greeley,

This is the day designated by some twenty of the States of our Union as a day of thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father for the many blessings and privileges that we have enjoyed during the past year. It is a good and wholesome custom, and will, probably, within five years, become general in all the states. It is not only due to the Author of our being, but its tendency to stop us in our mad haste to amass wealth and gain renown, to review our conduct as accountable and Immortal beings.

Most of our churches have been open for religious services. Drs. ADAMS and GREGORY (Presbyterian and Episcopal) and Mr. MAY (Unitarian) have spoken boldly and justly of the evils of the times- the Mexican War, Slavery, Intemperance, &c. I have never heard Dr. ADAMS, who is generally considered rather conservative, speak so plainly as he did to-day on the wickedness and injustice of the present War and the abominable system of American Slavery. And yet in a congregation composed of all classes and callings, all seemed to acquiesce and in and approve what was said. Is not this provoking? The country was warned in '44 of this War, its cruelties and hardships. Why cannot people see and hear and believe, and vote to avoid such shameful results?

The joy created by the result of the recent election is giving way to the agitation and inquiry, "Who will be the Whig candidate for the Presidency next Fall?" The answer appears to be almost unanimous, "Who can it be but Henry Clay!" The resolutions and telegraphic report of the Lexington Meeting were well received here, though there is much anxiety expressed to read the Speech of the occasion, written out by its author. It is expected here by this evening's train, when it will be immediately issued from the Journal Office. 

The weather this year has been rather unseasonable. Yesterday morning it commenced raining and it poured down all day, and almost all night. This morning, the sun shown out in all its glory, and we have had a pleasant Thanksgiving. Last year the canals closed on the 25th, but now there is no telling when they will freeze up.

Our town continues to grow and prosper, and there is no stopping its advancement. Several hundred buildings have been erected this season- some very beautiful ones. A long southern wing has been added to the "Globe" Hotel- a capital temperance house- the Malcom estate have built a splendid block of stores immediately east of the Empire House, the 2nd Presbyterian Society are now finishing a beautiful house of worship on the Park (the prettiest in town)- and Mr. TOMLINSON, the owner of the Empire, is now making arrangements to put up a block of dwellings, early in the spring, on Church St. next street north of the Empire block. But enough to-day. 

F.

Source.

Study: Half of states running business on debt

According to the study, 18 states are running very high levels of debt as measured by money owed per taxpayer to cover the state's fiscal obligations ($5,000+). Four of those states are running extremely high levels of debt at $20,000+ per taxpayer. 

Read the full report here (pdf).

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you and yours a blessed feast.

When Leniency Is the Goal, a Justice System Breaks Easily

Last week was not a good one for New York’s sense of public safety. That Monday a man with two knives roamed across Manhattan and is now accused of killing three strangers — Angel Gustavo Lata Landi, Chang Wang and Wilma Augustin — in separate attacks. The next day a man with a gun reportedly robbed a Queens bodega and a smoke shop before being fatally shot by the police after he shot and wounded an officer and a bystander.

The episodes exacerbated New Yorkers’ sense that cascading failures of state and city government have left the city out of control. A criminal justice system transformed with a goal of keeping as few people in jail or prison as possible, for as short a time as possible, has no room for error, and yet it keeps making errors. All it takes for a potentially violent suspect to go free is one weak link — and state lawmakers and city officials have constructed a chain of weak links.

Over the past six years, under two supposedly moderate governors, Andrew M. Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, New York’s progressive-dominated State Legislature radically changed the state’s criminal justice system. In 2019, for example, the state eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and most nonviolent felonies; in 2021 it eased its parole practices to prevent people from being sent back to prison for violations such as missing a parole meeting.

After decades of declining crime and imprisonment, these abrupt changes accelerated the decarceration trend until the state and city could no longer keep reducing crime. From 2019 to 2021, the average daily population in city jails fell to 4,921 from 7,938, a 38 percent drop. The number of people in prison for crimes that took place in New York City fell to 13,020 from 18,903. Prison readmissions for parole violations fell to 2,591 from 7,277.

It’s impossible to prove that New York would have avoided any single crime had its perpetrator been jailed or imprisoned for a previous crime.

But for progressive criminal justice policies to have even a chance of working, the state’s judges, prosecutors and mental health officials would have to be much better at predicting, out of a broad group of people accused or convicted of crimes, who, exactly, is likely to repeat or escalate his behavior.

Last week’s tragedies reveal no evidence that we’ve gotten better at such predictions. Monday’s knife attacks show that even one point of misplaced leniency can undo the protections of the whole criminal justice system.

Read the rest here.

New York: No bail + no mental health care = 3 murders

Tall and disheveled, with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, Ramon Rivera was just one month out of jail when he approached a construction worker early Monday and fatally stabbed him without saying a word, police said.

He was not done, police said. An urban nightmare was unfolding on a mild autumn morning in New York.

The 51-year-old made his way across Manhattan and, more than two hours later, police and prosecutors said, he fatally stabbed a fisherman and then a woman sitting on a park bench. His clothes covered in blood, Rivera was arrested shortly after the third attack with two bloody kitchen knives in his possession, according to police.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams described Rivera as a homeless man with a criminal history and “severe mental health issues,” an example of failures of the criminal justice and mental health systems.

The seemingly random killings highlight the challenges confronting New York City and other municipalities across the country as they maneuver a delicate balancing act – how to deal with soaring homelessness and mental illness and its perceived – and actual – impact on public safety.

Read the rest here.

Trump’s Theory of Power

These are the times that try a constitutional conservative’s soul.

Donald Trump and his allies have proposed two legal maneuvers that could have profound consequences for the function of the federal government. He has proposed confirming presidential appointments through an abuse of his power to make recess appointments, and his allies have proposed reviving a mostly banned practice called impoundment, under which the president can refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

These proposals together would gut core constitutional functions of Congress and could make Trump our nation’s most imperial peacetime president.

You can’t fully comprehend how pernicious these proposals are without knowing Congress’s intended role in our republic. If you read the Constitution carefully, you see that the United States was not intended to have coequal branches of government. Instead, it is clear that the branch of government closest to the people, Congress, was given more power than any other.

While other branches can check Congress’s power — the president can veto bills and the Supreme Court can use the power of judicial review to invalidate statutes passed by Congress, to give the most obvious examples — Congress’s enumerated powers surpass those of both the president and the court.

Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” This constitutional provision is particularly important, given that in the original Constitution the House was the only part of the federal government chosen directly by the people. The power of the purse is inseparable from democratic rule.

Congress has the sole constitutional power to declare war, even if presidents frequently usurp that authority. It can fire the president, executive officers and judges through impeachment and conviction. It can override presidential vetoes, and the Senate can reject presidential appointees.

But if Trump gets his way, he will have the power to nullify congressional enactments, even if they’re passed with veto-proof majorities. He’ll destroy the Senate’s advice and consent authority. He’ll make the executive the most powerful branch of government by far, creating a version of monarchical government that the founders despised.

Read the rest here.

Vigil for Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple

Can the President "Adjourn" Congress?

“…in Case of Disagreement between [the House and Senate], with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, [the President] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” — Article II, Section 3 

The presidential power of adjourning Congress has never been used. There are no precedents and scant commentary about what it means or exactly what triggers it. But now, there is credible consideration of the idea being discussed as part of Trump’s demand for an adjournment to let him use recess appointments to completely bypass the Senate confirmation process. It wouldn’t be the first time the issue has come up, as Trump briefly floated it during his first term, and Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to rule out possible support for the scheme. 

It is important, then, for us to quickly get a handle on exactly what this obscure bit of constitutional text means and what it does, and doesn’t, allow the president to do. 

The possibility is uncomfortably suggestive of one of the most firmly repudiated ideas in Anglo-American law, the attempt by Charles I to rule without Parliament. That did not end well, to put it mildly, for either side of the dispute or the nation as a whole. It was an example the Framers of the Constitution were very aware of and consciously sought to avoid by explicitly constraining the chief executive’s power to interfere with the legislature. 

As Ed Whelan writes at NRO, the basic outline of the idea is as follows: the House (presumably more amenable, though that’s far from certain with a razor-thin Republican majority) would pass a concurrent resolution adjourning Congress, which is the normal procedure. The Senate would not concur. Trump could then cite this as the two chambers being in “disagreement,” and adjourn them to whenever he wants. To allow for recess appointments would require an adjournment of at least ten days. But in theory it could extend nearly an entire year, until the next constitutionally mandated annual convening of Congress on January 3, 2026, per the 20th Amendment. 

Read the rest here.

Our Next Secretary of Defense

Here's Donald Trump's new defense secretary, Fox News' Pete Hegseth, hawking grenade soap so you can join the "well-groomed militia."

JFC.

Are all these people total grifters? pic.twitter.com/PyKHOn0SCu

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) November 13, 2024

Words fail.

Quote of the day...

"He's resigned! All my prayers have been answered. And I don't even believe in God." -A comment from the Daily Telegraph on the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned

Armistice Day

One of the few upsides to Trump's (re) election

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

Read the rest here.

Some Democrats have been worried about the crazy cult of identity politics for years. A lot of others are now seeing its perils. (FTR I am not a Democrat. Although I briefly considered it after leaving the GOP in 2016, far too many of their political views are anathema to me. I am  a registered Libertarian.)

Gasoline on a fire

FEMA employee removed from role after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs after Florida hurricane

The number of conspiracy theories emanating from the usual sources on the far right in recent years has been off the hook. Most are too silly for serious discussion and some are just bat-fecal matter-crazy. Unfortunately this nuttery has taken a firm hold in Trump world. So when you get the odd incident like the above, that actually is true, it just reinforces the belief in all the others. There is a veritable cottage industry out there made of kooks, cranks and conmen who are making a comfortable living off the credulous that regard people like Alex Jones as a more reliable source than the New York Times. 

Where we are

Trump’s legal allies set the stage for DOJ investigations of adversaries 

Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues unlawful orders

Lord Save Thy People

Ross Douthat, David French and Bret Stephens discuss conservatism in 2024 and beyond

Not going to excerpt this. Read it all here.

Why?

People sometimes ask why I'm generally so hostile to government. 

Read this.

(No "Trump will save the squirrels" commentary please. Dictatorship is not the answer to governmental overreach.)

The Paths to 270 for Trump & Harris

A good examination of how each side could win in 19 maps. 

(Spoiler: The math and the maps favor Trump, but not by a huge margin.)

A few quick observations. 

* The undecided vote is still(!) believed to be around 4-6%. How they break could be decisive. 

* Disaffected voters could swing the election either way. But the risk is greater for Harris given the extreme rancor in the political left over Israel and Gaza. There are also a lot of Muslim Americans in Michigan. Right now, I'd say that Jill Stein is a dagger pointed at the heart of the Harris campaign. 

* The most likely path for a Harris victory (MI, WI and PA), especially if she wins them by very slim margins, could see her elected while losing the popular vote nationally. That would be flipping the usual script as Republicans generally believe the Electoral College gives them an edge in elections. It's how Trump won in 2016. But if this happens for Harris, expect MAGA world to erupt.

Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race

The torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump.

They stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election. But they had something in common: They were commissioned by right-leaning groups with a vested interest in promoting Republican strength.

These surveys have had marginal, if any, impact on polling averages, which either do not include the partisan polls or give them little weight. Yet some argue that the real purpose of partisan polls, along with other expectation-setting metrics such as political betting markets, is directed at a different goal entirely: building a narrative of unstoppable momentum for Mr. Trump.

The partisan polls appear focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election and — perhaps more important — cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged. Polls promising a Republican victory, the theory runs, could be held up as evidence of cheating if that victory does not come to pass.

“Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger,” said Joshua Dyck, who directs the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Their incentive is not necessarily to get the answer right.”

Last week, the right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong shared a survey with his 1.1 million followers on X. The forecast from a new polling company suggested, without sharing its methodology, that the former president would take 74.3 percent of the national vote — a landslide unprecedented in American history.

“Trump is absolutely going to win,” Mr. Cheong wrote. “The data shows it.”

Read the rest here.

How Campaigns Used to be Run

This needs to be forwarded to the Catholic Synod

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.

Anti-Semitic violence is rising on and near college campuses

University of Pittsburgh students Asher Goodwin and Ilan Gordon were walking to the first Shabbat service of the school year on Aug. 30 wearing yarmulkes. As they made their way to the campus Hillel building, they said, an older man wearing a keffiyeh approached them from behind and started to beat them with a large glass bottle. 

“He grabbed my Star of David necklace that I was wearing and ripped it off,” Goodwin told NBC News. “I am struck on the back of my neck and the bottle shatters. Glass shards cut across my neck.”

The man, whom police later identified as Jarrett Buba, a 52-year-old white man from Pittsburgh, also allegedly struck Gordon in the right cheek, according to court papers. Buba was charged with two counts of felony assault. A judge denied Buba bail, and he remains in custody.

Goodwin said he doesn’t think his school is doing enough to protect Jewish students. “Currently we have low expectations for any kind of university pre-emptive response, or actions, to ensure [things] don’t get out of hand,” Goodwin said. 

Read the rest here.