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...