On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Alaska to meet with President Trump in an effort to resolve the long-running war with Ukraine. (Too many geographically handicapped people believed SNL’s skit deriding Sarah Palin, asserting that she had said she could see Russia from her home, and they were surprised to learn how short an eastward trip from Russia is to the United States.) For a long time, corporate media largely has framed the war as one of an innocent party viciously attacked by a big neighbor, one that is worthy of unending military and financial support. As Trump has signaled, he’s had enough and wants Ukraine’s neighbors. whose interest is greater than ours, to step up, several Western European leaders have mouthed support. In advance of the summit, Stephen Bryen set out some relevant facts most of which are not well-publicized elsewhere:
Support for the war has dropped substantially in Ukraine: “More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in early July — 69% say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24% who support continuing to fight until victory.
This marks a nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022, when 73% favored Ukraine fighting until victory and 22% preferred that Ukraine seek a negotiated end as soon as possible. Yet, Zelensky continues doing whatever he can to sabotage the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska and to behave as if Ukraine’s army still has some hope of winning a war they are clearly losing.”
Europe is in no realistic position to enforce any ceasefire which might be agreed upon: “A European military contingent is, theoretically, supposed to enforce a ceasefire, the other demand made by Zelensky and his European allies. The idea behind this is a sort of plan (one hesitates to call it that, but it is what it is) to get a cheap ceasefire deal, send in troops, and then restart the war against Russia.”
In fact, Europe has no means to follow through on this — having neither the troops nor the cash to back up Zelensky’s intransigent position.
Now consider this: if Trump and Putin start to work out a relationship, Europe will be on the outside looking in mainly because they have taken an extreme Zelensky position on Ukraine. Trump is a trade maven. He will promote any deal with Russia by touting investment and technology sharing. Where does that leave the Germans or Italians or anyone else in Europe?
Even more likely, US interest in the NATO alliance will continue to disintegrate. Why back Europe if Europe is undermining US strategic interests? If key European allies continue to try and undermine any Ukraine deal, Washington will see it as harming US national security. You cannot keep backing Zelensky and expect otherwise.
Zelensky, for his part, defies democratic norms. Not only does he not follow public opinion, but he sees to it that he keeps martial law in place, refuses to have elections, and jails or exiles his opponents. During the worst of times for the British in World War II, with the loss of most of Europe, the retreat from Dunkirk, the Blitz on London, Britain never declared martial law, nor did they jail opposition politicians (other than some Nazis), attack minorities or close down churches they didn’t like.
Zelensky won’t change direction. He will continue to try and undermine US-Russian negotiations. But Europe needs to rethink its support for a Zelensky-led Ukraine. It is digging a deep hole for its future.
Aside from all this, we do have ample evidence that Ukraine under Zelensky is completely corrupt, a money-laundering machine through which billions of dollars were washed and ended up in the pockets of the Left and cronies. Hardly a sympathetic victim worthy of our wasting more arms and money to defend.
Unfortunately for Zelensky’s grand plan, Trump saw through it, and both he and Putin rejected a ceasefire, preferring an end to the war altogether.
President Trump outlined the next steps:
A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
It is too bad we do not have a detailed readout on the actual conversation at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Trump’s use of provocative symbols, F-35s and a flyover involving a B-2 stealth bomber, and the lack of the usual protocols (no honor guard and no national anthems), hardly was conducive to a diplomatic encounter of heads of state. Moreover, the use of a military base, explained as a “security measure,” was inappropriate, but the Russians, anxious to state their case to Mr. Trump, intent on showing deep respect for the United States, accepted the venue and the conditions, even the escort of Mr. Putin’s Presidential aircraft by US fighter jets.
The bottom line is, at least for now, US policy has shifted. The US and Trump no longer support a ceasefire but want to settle the Ukraine war through negotiations. How long that will take, and even if it is possible, remains to be seen. Meanwhile the war continues and, for the most part, Russia will continue pushing to take Pokrovsk and to expand the contact line further to the west. Ukraine, already stretched and now with uncertainties on military supplies, is facing a crisis.
(Trump’s provocative setting has echoes of Putin’s. In a meeting with Angela Merkel, who is terrified of dogs, he brought his own pooch in to her obvious discomfort.)
Here’s what likely happened at the Alaska Summit. The broad outlines of a Ukraine peace agreement were already in place — otherwise Trump wouldn’t have agreed to a summit at all. Yesterday was about confirming that everyone’s on the same page and committed to moving forward. Trump’s new insistence on going straight to a full peace agreement, not just a cease fire, is another sign of that. On Monday, little Zelensky will be told what the deal is. He might throw another tantrum, in which case he and his European friends will eventually find out the hard way that it won’t end well for them. Or he might come to his senses, accept reality, and take the deal, in which case things will move very quickly.
Mahncke views Zelensky’s latest tweet about how well his war is going as akin to a Hitler-in-the-bunker statement.
Whether or not you agree, my view is that reality wins in the end, and Trump’s view, unlike Zelensky’s or Britain’s or Germany’s or France’s, is one that accords with it.
There’s no better example of how little faith Americans have that government officials will tell the truth than the public’s blasé reaction to UFO announcements. In the last ten years, The New York Times has run stories about secret Pentagon programs tasked with retrieving alien craft. Members of Congress have held hearings on “mysterious orbs” and invited government witnesses to testify about black budget projects supposedly reverse-engineering alien technology. Secretary of State Rubio and director of National Intelligence Gabbard have both suggested that the UFO issue is serious. Yet eight billion people around the world collectively shrug.
Can you imagine what the public reaction would have been like had national newspapers and prominent officials released similar details in the 1950s? With the 1947 Roswell Incident still fresh in Americans’ minds, government confirmation of UFOs would have been the most important story in the world. Every article written and television report broadcast would have been framed around the alien/UFO phenomenon.
For eighty years, UFO-hunters have been fighting for government declassifications and official disclosure of alien contact. Now that videos of strange sightings have been released and congressional hearings have been convened to investigate the matter, Americans don’t seem to care. Representatives Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna have said explicitly that extraterrestrial visitors are real, and their statements disappear in a blizzard of news stories discussing the “Aryan micro-aggressions” of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans.
Nobody believes what government officials say. Nobody believes what journalists say. In our world today, fantastic stories come and go, and nobody knows if they’re real.
CIA director William Casey reportedly told other principals gathered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in early 1981, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Whether Casey was being frighteningly blunt or darkly humorous, I don’t know. Yet we certainly know that the CIA and FBI have been running mass propaganda programs on the American people for as long as either agency has existed.
What military schools now teach as examples of “hybrid” or “information warfare” has long been part of the U.S. government’s arsenal of psychological weapons used against American citizens. I wish this fact were more shocking to people. Information warfare is just as effective and deadly as conventional warfare.
As bad as Allied losses were at Normandy, they would have been much worse had Eisenhower and Patton not tricked Hitler into concentrating his forces away from the locus of the invasion. All of the so-called “color revolutions” of the last fifteen years in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East relied heavily upon anonymous (and likely espionage agency–created) social media accounts to inflame tensions, sow chaos, and encourage rioting. The Russia Collusion Hoax and the unbridled COVID hysteria (during which governments rushed to close schools and businesses and censor online speech before basic facts could even be established) are textbook examples of information warfare that upended entire societies without ever firing a shot.
When we acknowledge that government institutions have knowingly and willfully targeted the American people with disinformation campaigns meant to achieve strategic objectives, we are acknowledging that these institutions have made war against us exactly as military planners would wage war against foreign enemies. That is a sobering, terrifying, and unforgivable betrayal of the U.S. Constitution.
Surely the federal government’s information war against the American people is just as newsworthy as the possibility of extraterrestrial or intra-dimensional visitors. Noticeably, however, there are even fewer stories written about the government’s mass psychological operations against citizens than there are stories written about UFOs. That’s pretty revealing. The New York Times would rather hype speculation about little green men than document how federal agencies regularly lie to and manipulate the American people.
Why do you think that is? It is because The Times and other prominent news publications are well aware that they have been willing weapons in this decades-long information war against citizens. The government can’t psychologically manipulate the masses without controlling mass communication. Likewise, instruments of mass communication can’t effectively disseminate disinformation if the people who are meant to be manipulated recognize those instruments as weapons for spreading colossal lies.
When President Trump first began excoriating reporters for publishing “fake news,” the Dan Rathers and Jim Acostas of the propaganda press huffed and puffed, claiming that Trump’s exercise of his First Amendment right to free speech somehow jeopardized Americans’ First Amendment right to a free press. Coming from the mouths of known liars, the journalistic Establishment’s choreographed umbrage was hilarious. The prodigious manufacturers of fake news had long advertised their offal-laden sausages as fine cuts of meat. And Trump had no problem telling the American people that the most famous names in news sold eyeball- and intestine-filled slop.
But it was not Trump’s insults that the corporate news media really feared. After all, lame-duck President Obama had used the “fake news” pejorative repeatedly before leaving office in an effort to blame Hillary’s election loss on random social media accounts supposedly spreading “Russian disinformation.” (Appallingly, Obama was pushing Russia Collusion Hoax disinformation while blaming disinformation for Trump’s victory.) Even the propaganda press picked up Obama’s baton and published numerous stories in late 2016 claiming that an epidemic of “fake news” got Trump elected.
So the purveyors of fake news had no problem disparaging other news publications as “fake.” They only started worrying when they belatedly realized that Trump’s belittling of their profession had shattered their decades-long spell over the minds of the American people. Frauds such as Dan Rather and Jim Acosta called Trump a liar. Trump called them liars. And the American people believed Trump more than the pudgy blood sausages of fake news.
Trust in government institutions and newsrooms has been falling for decades. The Russia Collusion Hoax, the COVID Reign of Terror, and the outrageous lawfare campaigns against conservative politicians and voters have now destroyed public trust in Establishment institutions for the foreseeable future.
Where do we go from here? When authorities no longer have the trust of the people, they survive only by making amends for past transgressions or adopting even more overt forms of coercion. In the former case, government transparency, the impartial application of the law, and respect for public dissent help to renew the social contract between citizens and their government. In the latter case, appeals to expertise, discriminatory criminal enforcement, and rank censorship become hammers beating citizens into submission.
The United Kingdom has chosen coercion. Law enforcement agencies in the U.K. spend more resources policing public debate on social media platforms than they do curbing illegal immigration or protecting children from rape gangs. Citizens who express unapproved thoughts that contradict official government policies put themselves in legal jeopardy. U.K. health authorities continue to defend their COVID totalitarianism as a reasonable emergency response backed by “scientific” expertise. In the U.K., protections for free speech, dissent, and freedom of conscience are dead.
The Brits will surely reap what they now sow. They will discover how many citizens are willing to “trust the experts” when “net zero” energy rationing puts lives and livelihoods in danger. They will learn how many capable warriors are willing to fight and die in future wars for a country that treats illegal aliens better than patriotic citizens. They will rediscover that the criminalization of public debate leaves silenced citizens no alternative to rebellion.
In the United States, we have a small window to avoid Britain’s fate. While President Trump is keeping the corporate news media’s propagandists and Silicon Valley’s censors at bay, Americans have one final chance to defend free speech from the contemptible Deep State. If we fail, everything will soon resemble a UFO. Nobody will know what’s fake or real…or even care.
Forget everything you think you know about baseball — the Colorado Rockies are not just a team; they are a cosmic force poised to revolutionize the sport in ways the world has never seen.
The Rockies are the most electrifying team in baseball! They don’t simply compete; they transcend the game itself. A breakout year for a franchise on the verge of dominance!
The Rockies are poised to surprise the baseball world and claim the World Series title due to a combination of emerging talent, strategic improvements, and their unique home-field advantage. True, they’ve taken their fans on one hell of a scary ride, but they’re poised to deliver a knockout performance and become another winner! This is a story about the impossible becoming inevitable.
Despite their challenges in recent seasons, the Rockies have the ingredients to make a championship run. They’ve been losing just enough to stay off the radar, all while building a quiet confidence and a core of young talent that is now, in August, ready to explode. Look at the late-season surge of the 2007 “Rocktober” team — a team that won 14 of its last 15 games to even make the playoffs. This 2025 team is simply taking that principle to its most extreme conclusion.
The team’s manager, Warren Schaeffer, who took over in May, has been quietly instilling a culture of grit and determination.
First, the Rockies boast a roster with young, dynamic players who are hitting their stride. Ezequiel Tovar, the shortstop, has developed into a star with his elite defensive skills and improving offensive output. Alongside him, players like Brenton Doyle and Michael Toglia are showing power and consistency, giving the lineup depth. The pitching staff, led by a resurgent Kyle Freeland and bolstered by a strong bullpen, has the potential to keep games close, especially in the high-altitude environment of Coors Field.
Second, the Rockies have made under-the-radar improvements in their farm system and coaching staff. Their prospects are beginning to contribute at the major league level, and the organization’s focus on player development has started to pay off. The team’s analytics-driven approach to pitching in Denver’s thin air gives them an edge in managing the unique challenges of their home ballpark.
What if Coors Field isn’t a curse, but a weapon? The Rockies, having played over half a season there, have been secretly honing their skills in an environment unlike any other. Their pitchers, accustomed to making their pitches work in the thin air, will now travel to sea-level ballparks where their breaking balls will have an extra snap, their fastballs will have an extra kick, and opposing hitters, who haven’t had to face this unique combination of skills all year, will be left bewildered. The offense, similarly, has been training in a high-octane environment, and will now feel like they’re playing on a little league field. Every fly ball that falls short at Coors will suddenly be a home run on the road.
Defense? If defense wins championships, the Rockies are already champions! This is art in motion. The Gold Glove-winning wizardry of Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle turns routine plays into jaw-dropping spectacles. Watching them field is like witnessing Picasso paint — only with gloves and spikes.
Pitching? Forget ERA — these Rockies pitchers deliver a rollercoaster of emotion, keeping fans on the edge of their seats with every curveball and slider. Germán Márquez and Antonio Senzatela are the unheralded maestros conducting symphonies of strikeouts and daring pickoffs. And their bullpen is the best-kept secret in the league!
Offense? Coors Field is their stage, and every swing is an aria. Every at-bat is a must-watch moment! When Michael Toglia connects, the ball does not simply fly — it soars with the grandeur of an epic film score crescendo. They’re basically the ‘Fast & Furious’ of baseball — speed, style, and impossible to stop!
But the magic goes deeper: emerging stars like Kyle Karros and Chase Dollander are the young prodigies, the next generation ready to take this masterpiece to its grand finale.
Mark my words: the Rockies aren’t just chasing the World Series. They’re rewriting the script of baseball history, turning doubters into believers one spectacular play at a time. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
So, grab your popcorn and settle in — because the Colorado Rockies’ World Series victory is the ultimate underdog saga we all deserve. The World Series parade goes through Coors Field!
Forget the Dodgers, forget the Braves — 2025 is the year of the Rockies Renaissance!
I live near this event (The April 19th Reenactment of the encounter between Colonials and the British at the Old North Bridge) but had only gone to it once before many years ago, and it was rainy with no visibility of the event due to crowd size. I determined it wasn’t worth going to again until this anniversary. I thought this would be something I should go to.
In 1976, the 200 Year Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I had no opportunity to see any of it because I was an E2 Airman Apprentice doing Scullery Duty in the Chiefs Mess aboard the USS JFK tied up at Pier 12 in Norfolk, VA. Wasn’t even able to go ashore on liberty.
So, I thought I should not miss this opportunity, as I likely won’t be alive for any future celebration of this kind.
I got out of my car at around 4 AM, parking about four miles away and walking over because I wanted to be at the Old North Bridge for some 05:45 AM event, and the shuttle busses didn’t start running until 6 AM. I arrived at the Old North Bridge around 05:15 or so. There were a lot of people setting up and preparing, but only a few spectators like me, so this was as good as I could expect.
I asked where they were going to allow people to watch from, and found what I thought would be the best area to view from when the re-enactment took place. I made sure to ask some park rangers, and they pointed out the best spot to watch from. (That reenactment never took place. It was only a parade ceremony.)
As the ceremonies progressed, I saw through my binoculars a person with an idiotic “No Kings” sign off on the other side of the Concord River, and another soy boy on the Old North Bridge with a “Stop Facism” sign who stayed there until they kicked him off, and a few more of those types of dumb asses, and thought that I wouldn’t care as long as I wouldn’t have to be close to them.
There were two guys here, one dressed as a banana for some reason, with their signs indicating they were being oppressed.
I think these people are total statist morons, the kinds who would wave around Little Red Books in Mao’s Communist China. But those men stood their ground on that bridge 250 years ago to give even these ideologic statists the RIGHT to stand out there with their filthy signs. So, I have to accept the bad with the good. It has been my observation, from much experience, that Conservatives almost always have a similar opinion as my own.
However, long experience has also told me that this mindset is not in any way reciprocated by Leftists.
Around 06:30 AM, they began to move spectators out of the way, and they came into the area I was in. I saw an amusing sight (to me at least) of a man in British Army garb with his electric bike…it occurred to me that the British Regulars might have appreciated those back in 1775.
As the crowd in the spectator area began to increase, a woman asked me if I would be willing to move to allow her and her friends to stand together, and I politely refused, saying I had picked out this spot hours ago because it gave me the best view of both ends of the bridge for the soon to be non-existent reenactment. She seemed to accept that.
Then, I realized as the crowd of people directly around me increased, that her “friends” were all these douchebags affiliated with an organization called “Indivisible” who I know are the most radical and vocal a-hole Leftists out there. Worse than Code Pink or MoveOn.org type. Over the years, I have had to see their scumbag signs on a daily basis, and have had the tiresome opportunity of crossing their paths politically at some standouts or other demonstrations. I immediately recognized their jackass “Dear Leader” from having seen and heard him before. I estimate there were ten or 15 of them with their signs though it was hard to tell the way they milled around.
At that point, a media person came over to interview them. They all lined up dutifully with their signs, and he began interviewing them.
One of these people being interviewed was so vacuous, that I realized there was value in transcribing what she said as her fellow Leftists all nodded dutifully in approval at what she was saying. I began recording it, not secretly, but holding my phone up to record the voice (not video).
A man behind me said “Are you from New England?” and as I said “Yes I am!” and turned, I saw it was one of the Leftists wearing a mask, apparently the husband of the woman who had asked if I would move to give her group more room. I said politely “I’m not interested in talking with your group.” and the guy said “There’s nothing wrong with talking, I think we have to talk.” and I said politely in a level tone “No. I’d rather not interact with you. Let’s leave it at that.”
While he was endeavoring to engage me, his wife was trying to dissuade him from bothering me, which he stopped trying to do, and I had no further issue with them. As a matter of fact, she went out of her way to thank me (after my next encounter with the stupid one who got in my face) for serving in the military, which my ball cap made evident, and said that her father had served in WWII. I politely and genuinely thanked her but was not interested in pursuing the conversation. I appreciated that she did that. It made me wonder why she was there with those other people. I guess she had her reasons.
The “reporter” asked them: “Why do you feel like you have to come out here?”
As I heard this one person speak (all dressed in black with the American flag face diaper) I was glad I had turned on my recorder:
“Umm…this is one of they many issues I have with this administration. Well, I believe that I have my choice over my own body. I believe that Black Lives Matter. I believe that science is real. I believe that we should protect our water. I believe…uhh…what are some other things we believe? (asking her “comrades”)
The stupid one jumps right in:
“I believe that healthcare is a right. I believe we should take care of our seniors and our disabled people. That cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will lead to unnecessary deaths. I believe that this administration is literally killing us by cutting out our science and we won’t have any response for bird flu or whatever the next pandemic is. My family is a family of scientists, and shutting down their experiments now will set back drug development for a decade or more, and that is because this fascist government does not care about the people. They don’t care if you live or die. In fact, it is more convenient for them if you die. So, the fascist government is only for the rich oligarchs at the top. Not the people.
The “reporter” asked her: “Why do you feel like Concord was the right place to come for this protest?” the dumb one answered:
“You know, eight years ago I would have come here for the historical spectacle, because I love history. I have costumes of every period. I love America. But now, I am fighting. I am fighting. Every hour I am fighting fascism, to try to save America, because I don’t think we have another 250 years if we don’t…hold the line…now.”
The “reporter” thanked them and asked if he could take their picture with their signs, and the Asian guy (who I think is their “Dear Leader”) suddenly interjected: “Wait-I would like to say a few words too!” The reporter agreed, and this guy started speaking:
“We are with the “Indivisible” organization. Uhh, we truly believe we are losing our democracy in a big way. The oligarchy and fascists are taking over with the administration. The four signs of that are very straightforward. They took over the press and journalism, you guys are very careful not to say anything bad about them, otherwise you lose all your rights. We are losing the uh, the uh, universities, they are basically doing the ‘divide and conquer”, threatening all the universities, so that people are afraid to say anything or they will lose their funding. We are uh, losing the law firms, one after another, oppress them so that they won’t say anything against this administration and it’s working. And lastly, they totally own the business. All the big business owners, the corporate owners, already cater down to this administration, any deals at all, they wouldn’t touch the administration and they want all the government contracts. All those four solutions are signs of how countries lose their democracy, and it is happening in a big way. So, we believe that, uh, the only way we can uh, save our country, is for the ‘grass roots’ like ‘Indivisible” to rise up and get a big uprising to payback, we cannot take this, no King, nothing, hands off, all these things are very important, otherwise, we will lose our democracy and our country. Today, here, it is very simple: we are the most patriotic people in this country. We believe in saving our country, getting our country back, otherwise we will become another Putin, or a CCP country. So, that is why I am here today. Concord, very important. 1776 we said ‘No Kings” and we are having a king. Today is the day to say that. We do not want a King in this country. And if you notice, I am dressing all flags because I would claim to the MAGA folks, I am the most patriotic people not only to think about what is great again, we are the people that’s going to rise up and say America is great because of people like us.“
IT IS VERY RUDE TO BE FILMING RIGHT NOW!”
As I looked at the screen of this Leftard putting her face into my camera inches away from it where all I see is that…mouth…I can be heard to exclaim “Priceless!” So she writes her name on the “reporter’s” pad, turns back to my camera putting her mouth right up to the lens and says venomously:
I’LL PRAY FOR YOU, DEAR!”
I admit that it instantly crossed my mind that the prayers offered on my behalf (coming from someone who supports the murder of unborn children and eventually, the likely elimination of those who disagree with her) might not be prayers to my God. I am comfortable with that…
So, things went on. The woman was deliberately pressing in on my space (even putting her ass in front of my camera) so I saw a kid who was in the crowd behind me who couldn’t see, so I invited him and his parents to move up between me and the Dumb One. They gratefully let their kid up so he could see directly through the crowd control fencing, and they stood right behind them.
That worked well to provide a buffer between me and the Dumb One, and when I saw another young couple in their mid-twenties, I invited them up as well, further distancing the Dumb One who was trying to crowd in on me.
I enjoyed some wonderful conversation with this young couple from New Jersey. He was a history buff, and we talked about the abundance of Revolutionary War history both in Massachusetts and in New Jersey.
There turned out to be no reenactment, just a volley of muskets:
All in all, it was a disappointing event, having to listen to the blather of the execrable Massachusetts governor who talked about herself on that day, how she was a groundbreaker, how we had to fight tyranny in our country today, blah blah blah.
Typical Leftist drivel. And when she laid the wreath at the monument, the General saluted the wreath, and she did too.
It struck me that watching that Leftist POS Governor salute that wreath had the same impact on me as hearing that stupid, irreligious Leftist say she would “pray for me”.
I have been teaching economics since 1967 — 40 years of it at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. During that interval, economic reality has not changed. Just as Galileo’s law about the independent influence of gravity on falling objects has not changed, neither have the fundamental principles of economics. Economics is fun and simple. It’s made complicated by some economics professors — fortunately, not by my colleagues at George Mason University. Let’s apply some simple tools of economics to reveal outright myths, lies and tricks.
Who is punished by tariffs on imported goods? Let’s go through the steps. The Canadian government imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products and protects Canada’s dairy producers from American competition. What should be the U.S. government’s response to Canada’s screwing its citizens? If you were in the Trump administration, you might retaliate by imposing stiff tariffs on softwood products built from pine, spruce and fir trees used by U.S. homebuilders. In other words, the U.S. should retaliate against Canada’s harming its citizens by forcing them to pay higher dairy product prices, by forcing Americans through tariffs to pay higher prices for wood and thereby raising the cost of building homes.
Many politicians, pundits and some economists would have us believe that corporations pay taxes, but do they? Economists distinguish between entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those upon whom tax is initially levied. Just because a tax is levied on a corporation doesn’t mean that the corporation bears its burden. Faced with a tax, a corporation can shift the tax burden by raising its product prices, lowering dividends or laying off workers. The lesson here is that only people pay taxes, not legal fictions like corporations. Corporations are simply tax collectors for the government. Similarly, no one would fall for a politician telling a homeowner, “I’m not going to tax you; I’m going to tax your property.” I guarantee that it will be a person, not the property, writing out the check to the taxing authority. Again, only people pay taxes.
Here’s a question: Are natural or manmade disasters good for the economy? Dr. Larry Summers, top economic adviser to President Obama, said about the Kobe, Japan, earthquake: “(The disaster) may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.” After devastating Floridian hurricanes, it’s not uncommon to read newspaper headlines such as “Storms create lucrative times,” or “Economic growth from hurricanes could outweigh costs,” or “It’s a perverse thing … there’s real pain, but from an economic point of view, it is a plus.” Then there’s Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who wrote in his New York Times column “After the Horror,” after the 9/11 attack, “Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could do some economic good.” He went on to explain that rebuilding the destruction would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation.
One would never hear my colleagues in George Mason University’s economics department spouting such insanities. Just ask yourself whether the Japanese economy would have faced even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9/11 terrorists have made a greater contribution to our economy had they also destroyed lives and buildings in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Atlanta? The belief that a society benefits from destruction is sheer lunacy.
French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained it in his pamphlet “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” He said, “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” That’s why my George Mason University colleagues are good economists.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.
But the fact remains that everything has a price. Just as objects have financial costs, the choices we make come with emotional and psychological costs. Marriage, for example, means having less control over your independence, but (hopefully) the satisfaction of intimacy with another person.
Flying comes with a psychological cost. Some people are focused more on terrorism. Others don’t like being cooped up. Others dread flying for fear of mechanical failure and human error.
It’s important to point out that airlines — at least as long as they are required to make a profit and stand accountable for passengers’ lives — have a self-serving interest in sending up a safe airplane every time. For example, in the mid-1990s, U.S. Airways experienced a number of crashes. In response to the naturally bad publicity, they overhauled their safety team and advertised that they were making safety “priority one.” Although accidents are always possible, that particular airline did not suffer a major crash for many years thereafter. Similar examples are everywhere.
Ironically, we’re safer in the air than in many other places. There are well over 100,000 commercial flights every day — more than 20 million a year. And the overwhelming majority land safely. These examples could, theoretically, reduce a person’s fears, but I find that they usually don’t. Why? Because, for most people, fear of flying raises issues of control. When you board an airplane, you’re forced to confront the fact that you have no control. You are placing your life totally in the judgment of the pilots, controllers, mechanics and airline executives. There’s no denying this powerful emotion every time you walk down the Jetway.
When you drive a car, you have more control over what happens. You’re the one driving, and you’re the one responsible for making sure maintenance is adequate. But, when you step onto a jetliner, you surrender that control, and that’s what makes you anxious. Every bump, every noise, reminds you of that fact.
There are various techniques for treating the symptoms: anti-anxiety medication, deep breathing, happy thoughts, rational thoughts (i.e., based on facts, not fears), focusing on what you will do when the plane lands, keeping yourself busy, using alcoholic beverages (careful, now…), and so forth. But these approaches only address the symptoms. The fear will return next time.
If you’re interested in tackling the root causes rather than just the symptoms, work on the issues of control and emotional cost in your daily life. Ask yourself how you can become more accepting of things over which you have no control. Ask yourself how you can better accept not only the fiscal costs of things, but more importantly, the psychological costs. Keep a journal, and note when you handle these situations more (or less) rationally than usual. Practice letting go. Sometimes a skilled cognitive therapist or qualified counselor can help reinforce your efforts.
Learn to distinguish the probable from the merely possible. A plane crash is always possible. So are car crashes and lightning strikes. But, under normal circumstances, none of these are likely. The overwhelming majority of flights on the overwhelming majority of days occur without incident. To remain in business, airlines have every incentive to make sure this is the case.
So we pay the emotional cost for the convenience of flying by learning to relinquish control over certain things. Doing so will be difficult in the beginning, but the reward can be a more interesting and exciting life. Consider the alternatives. If the effort is worth it to you, then you can make it happen.
It’s surprising how many people have a fear of flying. Many of those I encounter tell me that they worry about incompetent mechanics on the ground or cost-cutting CEOs sending an airplane with maintenance problems up into the sky. Even worse, some airlines are considering single-pilot operation (rather than a Captain and a First Officer) on passenger jets. Let’s hope that never happens!
But the fact remains that everything has a price. Just as objects have financial costs, the choices we make come with emotional and psychological costs. Marriage, for example, means having less control over your independence, but (hopefully) the satisfaction of intimacy with another person.
Flying comes with a psychological cost. Some people are focused more on terrorism. Others don’t like being cooped up. Others dread flying for fear of mechanical failure and human error.
It’s important to point out that airlines — at least as long as they are required to make a profit and stand accountable for passengers’ lives — have a self-serving interest in sending up a safe airplane every time. For example, in the mid-1990s, U.S. Airways experienced a number of crashes. In response to the naturally bad publicity, they overhauled their safety team and advertised that they were making safety “priority one.” Although accidents are always possible, that particular airline did not suffer a major crash for many years thereafter. Similar examples are everywhere.
Ironically, we’re safer in the air than in many other places. There are well over 100,000 commercial flights every day — more than 20 million a year. And the overwhelming majority land safely. These examples could, theoretically, reduce a person’s fears, but I find that they usually don’t. Why? Because, for most people, fear of flying raises issues of control. When you board an airplane, you’re forced to confront the fact that you have no control. You are placing your life totally in the judgment of the pilots, controllers, mechanics and airline executives. There’s no denying this powerful emotion every time you walk down the Jetway.
When you drive a car, you have more control over what happens. You’re the one driving, and you’re the one responsible for making sure maintenance is adequate. But, when you step onto a jetliner, you surrender that control, and that’s what makes you anxious. Every bump, every noise, reminds you of that fact.
There are various techniques for treating the symptoms: anti-anxiety medication, deep breathing, happy thoughts, rational thoughts (i.e., based on facts, not fears), focusing on what you will do when the plane lands, keeping yourself busy, using alcoholic beverages (careful, now…), and so forth. But these approaches only address the symptoms. The fear will return next time.
If you’re interested in tackling the root causes rather than just the symptoms, work on the issues of control and emotional cost in your daily life. Ask yourself how you can become more accepting of things over which you have no control. Ask yourself how you can better accept not only the fiscal costs of things, but more importantly, the psychological costs. Keep a journal, and note when you handle these situations more (or less) rationally than usual. Practice letting go. Sometimes a skilled cognitive therapist or qualified counselor can help reinforce your efforts.
Learn to distinguish the probable from the merely possible. A plane crash is always possible. So are car crashes and lightning strikes. But, under normal circumstances, none of these are likely. The overwhelming majority of flights on the overwhelming majority of days occur without incident. To remain in business, airlines have every incentive to make sure this is the case.
So we pay the emotional cost for the convenience of flying by learning to relinquish control over certain things. Doing so will be difficult in the beginning, but the reward can be a more interesting and exciting life. Consider the alternatives. If the effort is worth it to you, then you can make it happen.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said Thursday on “News Central” that polls showed Americans trusted President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers on crime over Democrats.
Why would anyone trust a Party openly dedicated to the well-being of murderers to protect them from violent crime? They ARE the criminals. They experience no accountability, no pain, no shame and no retribution. And no suffering. Unless going through life as a worthless pile of human debris rewarded for your lowest qualities constitutes suffering.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday issued an order wiping out Washington, D.C,. police policies that protected illegal immigrants, and she named a temporary leader for the district’s Metropolitan Police Department.
Bondi’s actions follow an order from President Donald Trump declaring a crime emergency in D.C. and putting its police under federal control.
However, the attorney general for D.C.’s government is pushing back on Bondi’s directive in court.
Bondi’s order removed Metro Police Chief Pamela Smith from running the department and named Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole MPDs “emergency police commissioner,” according to Fox News.
Bondi’s order gives Cole the power to issue orders and says any existing officials in the police department must get his approval before issuing orders.
Bondi also specifically rescinded three orders that have limited local police collaboration with immigration officials. D.C. has considered itself a sanctuary city where illegal immigrants are protected from immigration authorities.
One rescinded order said that MPD officers “shall not arrest individuals based solely on federal immigration warrants or detainers as long as there is no additional criminal warrant or underlying offense for which the individual is subject to arrest.”
Bondi also rescinded a June 2024 order that limited inquiries into an individual’s immigration status and an October 2023 banning arrests for federal immigration warrants.
One rescinded order said that MPD officers “shall not arrest individuals based solely on federal immigration warrants or detainers as long as there is no additional criminal warrant or underlying offense for which the individual is subject to arrest.”
Bondi also rescinded a June 2024 order that limited inquiries into an individual’s immigration status and an October 2023 banning arrests for federal immigration warrants.
Lest there be confusion over whom to obey, Bondi wrote in her order, “To the extent that provisions in this order conflict with any existing MPD directives, those directives are hereby rescinded.”
“Residents of the District of Columbia, the thousands of Americans who commute into the District for work every day, and the millions of tourists from all over the world who visit our nation’s capital have a right to feel safe and to be free from the scourge of violent crime,” Bondi wrote.
However, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb has said Cole’s appointment is “unlawful,” according to Axios.
Mayor Muriel Bowser posted the city’s defiance on X.
D.C. council member Christina Henderson also pushed back, saying, “Respectfully, the Attorney General does not have the authority to revoke laws.”
The dispute is likely to be resolved in court, with the D.C. attorney general filing a lawsuit to stop what he termed a “hostile takeover” of the police, according to The Washington Post.
Anchorage hosted the first in-person talks between the Russian and US leaders since June 2021
ANCHORAGE /Alaska /, August 16. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that the conflict in Ukraine would have never started had Donald Trump been the president of the United States in 2022.
“I’d like to remind you that in 2022 during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that the situation should not be brought to the point of no return, when it would come to hostilities. And I said it quite directly back then that it’s a big mistake,” Putin said at a joint news conference. “Today, when President Trump is saying that if he had been the president back then, there would have been no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that.”
Anchorage hosted the first in-person talks between the Russian and US leaders since June 2021, when Putin met with then US President Joe Biden in Geneva. Putin became the first Russian leader to visit Alaska.
The US side hosted the Alaska summit under the slogan of ‘Pursuing peace’.
You might be using generative AI products like ChatGPT and Gemini to create drafts, summarize documents, reason through complex topics, or make viral videos, but others are using these models to come up with solutions to much bigger problems. For example, an MIT Antibiotics-AI Project study recently published in scientific journal Cell details not one but two AI techniques that allowed researchers to discover never-before-seen antibiotics that might neutralize two dangerous drug-resistant bacteria.
Artificial intelligence models did not create the new drugs on their own. Instead, the AI simply followed complex instructions to discover molecules that might be able to destroy Neisseria gonorrhoeae (gonorrhea) and Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The AI models generated millions of possible chemical compounds that would harm the bacteria and thus put a stop to infections. In each case, the researchers applied specific filters to narrow down the lists of compounds to adequate candidates. These filters included requirements that the resulting antibiotic should not harm humans nor share common traits with existing antibiotics that have lost their efficacy against the two bacteria. After applying these conditions, the researchers ended up with a few viable candidates that show promise in lab testing.
With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
Using generative AI algorithms, the research team designed more than 36 million possible compounds and computationally screened them for antimicrobial properties. The top candidates they discovered are structurally distinct from any existing antibiotics, and they appear to work by novel mechanisms that disrupt bacterial cell membranes.
This approach allowed the researchers to generate and evaluate theoretical compounds that have never been seen before — a strategy that they now hope to apply to identify and design compounds with activity against other species of bacteria.
“We’re excited about the new possibilities that this project opens up for antibiotics development. Our work shows the power of AI from a drug design standpoint, and enables us to exploit much larger chemical spaces that were previously inaccessible,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering.
Collins is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Cell. The paper’s lead authors are MIT postdoc Aarti Krishnan, former postdoc Melis Anahtar ’08, and Jacqueline Valeri PhD ’23.
Over the past 45 years, a few dozen new antibiotics have been approved by the FDA, but most of these are variants of existing antibiotics. At the same time, bacterial resistance to many of these drugs has been growing. Globally, it is estimated that drug-resistant bacterial infections cause nearly 5 million deaths per year.
In hopes of finding new antibiotics to fight this growing problem, Collins and others at MIT’s Antibiotics-AI Project have harnessed the power of AI to screen huge libraries of existing chemical compounds. This work has yielded several promising drug candidates, including halicin and abaucin.
To build on that progress, Collins and his colleagues decided to expand their search into molecules that can’t be found in any chemical libraries. By using AI to generate hypothetically possible molecules that don’t exist or haven’t been discovered, they realized that it should be possible to explore a much greater diversity of potential drug compounds.
In their new study, the researchers employed two different approaches: First, they directed generative AI algorithms to design molecules based on a specific chemical fragment that showed antimicrobial activity, and second, they let the algorithms freely generate molecules, without having to include a specific fragment.
For the fragment-based approach, the researchers sought to identify molecules that could kill N. gonorrhoeae, a Gram-negative bacterium that causes gonorrhea. They began by assembling a library of about 45 million known chemical fragments, consisting of all possible combinations of 11 atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, and sulfur, along with fragments from Enamine’s REadily AccessibLe (REAL) space.
Then, they screened the library using machine-learning models that Collins’ lab has previously trained to predict antibacterial activity against N. gonorrhoeae. This resulted in nearly 4 million fragments. They narrowed down that pool by removing any fragments predicted to be cytotoxic to human cells, displayed chemical liabilities, and were known to be similar to existing antibiotics. This left them with about 1 million candidates.
“We wanted to get rid of anything that would look like an existing antibiotic, to help address the antimicrobial resistance crisis in a fundamentally different way. By venturing into underexplored areas of chemical space, our goal was to uncover novel mechanisms of action,” Krishnan says.
Through several rounds of additional experiments and computational analysis, the researchers identified a fragment they called F1 that appeared to have promising activity against N. gonorrhoeae. They used this fragment as the basis for generating additional compounds, using two different generative AI algorithms.
One of those algorithms, known as chemically reasonable mutations (CReM), works by starting with a particular molecule containing F1 and then generating new molecules by adding, replacing, or deleting atoms and chemical groups. The second algorithm, F-VAE (fragment-based variational autoencoder), takes a chemical fragment and builds it into a complete molecule. It does so by learning patterns of how fragments are commonly modified, based on its pretraining on more than 1 million molecules from the ChEMBL database.
Those two algorithms generated about 7 million candidates containing F1, which the researchers then computationally screened for activity against N. gonorrhoeae. This screen yielded about 1,000 compounds, and the researchers selected 80 of those to see if they could be produced by chemical synthesis vendors. Only two of these could be synthesized, and one of them, named NG1, was very effective at killing N. gonorrhoeae in a lab dish and in a mouse model of drug-resistant gonorrhea infection.
Additional experiments revealed that NG1 interacts with a protein called LptA, a novel drug target involved in the synthesis of the bacterial outer membrane. It appears that the drug works by interfering with membrane synthesis, which is fatal to cells.
In a second round of studies, the researchers explored the potential of using generative AI to freely design molecules, using Gram-positive bacteria, S. aureus as their target.
Again, the researchers used CReM and VAE to generate molecules, but this time with no constraints other than the general rules of how atoms can join to form chemically plausible molecules. Together, the models generated more than 29 million compounds. The researchers then applied the same filters that they did to the N. gonorrhoeae candidates, but focusing on S. aureus, eventually narrowing the pool down to about 90 compounds.
They were able to synthesize and test 22 of these molecules, and six of them showed strong antibacterial activity against multi-drug-resistant S. aureus grown in a lab dish. They also found that the top candidate, named DN1, was able to clear a methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) skin infection in a mouse model. These molecules also appear to interfere with bacterial cell membranes, but with broader effects not limited to interaction with one specific protein.
Phare Bio, a nonprofit that is also part of the Antibiotics-AI Project, is now working on further modifying NG1 and DN1 to make them suitable for additional testing.
“In a collaboration with Phare Bio, we are exploring analogs, as well as working on advancing the best candidates preclinically, through medicinal chemistry work,” Collins says. “We are also excited about applying the platforms that Aarti and the team have developed toward other bacterial pathogens of interest, notably Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.”
The research was funded, in part, by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Audacious Project, Flu Lab, the Sea Grape Foundation, Rosamund Zander and Hansjorg Wyss for the Wyss Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 