A New Zealand mountain is granted personhood, recognizing it as sacred for Māori AP
Ambassador Chas Freeman: Israel, Palestine, US, Iran, Russia-Ukraine, Middle East, China (video) India & Global Left, YouTube
Gold stockpiling in New York leads to London shortage FT
DC Airport Collision
American Airlines plane has collided with a helicopter in midair during approach to Reagan National, FAA says Yahoo Finance. The flightpath of the helicopter:
Here is the full ADS-B data available for the unknown military aircraft that crashed into AA5342. Can anyone from the aviation community comment on the altitudes of <500ft AGL or if those are even accurate off ADS-B transponders? pic.twitter.com/1OIJtDMhyl
— Mark David Gaal (@MarkDavidGaal) January 30, 2025
Before D.C. Airport Collision, Lawmakers Brushed Off Warnings And Boosted Flights The Lever
California Burning
Too little, too late: Residents say they were in the dark as fire spread with no evacuation order AP
Syndemics
Will bird flu spark a human pandemic? Scientists say the risk is rising Nature
ECDC: Avian Flu – Virus mutations and Response Strategies Avian Flu Diary
How pandemic helped the far right rise to power and what can be done about it European Pravda
China?
Why DeepSeek disruption is the China risk Wall Street can’t ignore South China Morning Post
Can Trump Strike a Grand Deal With Beijing? Foreign Policy
US Navy confirms drone ‘hellscape’ for use against PLA in Taiwan Strait is on track South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa named president for transitional period Al Jazeera
New ICJ president plagiarized in the name of Christian Zionism The Grayzone
Is Turkey Breaking Its Own Oil Embargo? Foriegn Policy
The Fragile State of Turkey: A Nation on the Brink of Collapse Modern Diplomacy
Turkish foreign minister calls Middle Corridor most reliable, swift trade route Anadolu Agency
New Not-So-Cold War
‘Tis a mystery!
Why would Russia regard it as gravely threatening to have NATO sitting on the other side of its border just because EU bureaucrats like this are openly musing on the importance of going into Russia, smashing it, changing its government, and breaking it up into little pieces? https://t.co/ufxmgts8j4
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 29, 2025
Defence Ministry says Ukraine is ready to share combat experience with NATO Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Bundestag meeting to approve €3 billion for Ukraine closed early Ukrainska Pravda
Putin says peace talks with Ukraine possible, but not with Zelensky France24
* * * EU debates return to Russian gas as part of Ukraine peace deal FT
European Disunion
EU pledges ‘full support’ to Denmark against Trump’s Greenland ambitions Anadolu Agency
Trump Administration
DEI consultants respond to affirmative action rollback Pitchbook. The lead: “President Donald Trump’s new executive order ending affirmative action for federal contractors has already started to shake up private equity-owned businesses selling services in this space.” That’s a damn shame.
Trump to prepare facility at Guantanamo for 30,000 migrants Reuters. Commentary:
The precedent for Trump's order was set by George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, who detained thousands of Haitians at Guantanamo during the early 1990's, following the US-backed coup that removed Haiti's elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
This was Gitmo in 1991: https://t.co/id77EWm7Nt pic.twitter.com/VzuwLUE9as
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 30, 2025
Trump makes moves to expand his power, sparking chaos and a possible constitutional crisis AP
Tension builds around Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation with key GOP Senators undecided FOX
Trump pledges to deport ‘Hamas sympathisers’ on college campuses Al Jazeera
Deferred Culling Email to President Nyarlathotep’s Workforce McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. “The Reformed Cult of the Dread Lord will be built around four pillars….”
A Tumultuous Week for Federal Cybersecurity Efforts Krebs on Security
Lobbying firms tied to Trump report wave of new clients Politico
No US funding used for condoms or family planning in Gaza: Aid group Anadolu Agency. Commentary:
LOL – So it looks like the "condoms in Gaza" were being sent to the province of "Gaza" in…Mozambique. If the Administration doesn't like the idea of helping fight STDs in Africa (like PEPFAR) then they should say so. But they thought you'd think of that other Gaza. https://t.co/m2FbijaDKr pic.twitter.com/4Je70ZtScz
— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) January 29, 2025
Christianity today:
JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world
A lot of the far left has completely inverted that pic.twitter.com/XkoTiKgq3g
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 30, 2025
Let’s cite to chapter and verse. Matthew 22:36-39:
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” 29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'[b] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'[c] There is no commandment greater than these.”
13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.
As you can see, “family” doesn’t enter into it, nor Vance’s larger concentric concept. I don’t know whether Vance is ignorant or heretical; considering the travesty that “family-friendly”/”family values” conservatives have made of Christianity, I suspect the latter.
The Supremes
Justices take up case on right to sue over mistaken SWAT raid SCOTUSblog
Digital Watch
Beware tech bosses bearing dusty economic paradoxes FT
Deep Impact Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At?
AI systems still can’t count Language Log
* * *
The Bezzle
The Dawn of PolicyFi CoinDesk
Zeitgeist Watch
The Shift to Vibes Unpopular Front
CVS gives customers a way to get into locked cabinets The Hill
No Matter How Many Chili Cook-Offs I Win, Everyone Still Sees Me As ‘That School Shooter’s Mom’ The Onion
Healthcare
What an Undervaccinated America Would Look Like Katherine Wu, The Atlantic
The Final Frontier
Astronomers discover 196-foot asteroid with 1-in-83 chance of hitting Earth in 2032 Space.com
Satellite backlog emerges as key constraint at the nation’s busiest spaceport Space News
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Nature. The deck: “Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist.”
Class Warfare
Meritocracy:
I think about this HN comment a lot. pic.twitter.com/UIf6uVjzmZ
— Sahil (@sahilypatel) January 29, 2025
Yanis Varoufakis on What Comes After Capitalism (transcript) Yascha Mounk
Antidote du jour. Via Diego Delso:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“OpenStreetMap Community Discussion on How to Handle the U.S. Federal Government’s Imminent Designation of the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’”
I suppose that Mexico could accept the Gulf of Mexico being renamed the Gulf of America – so long as the US is renamed Mexican America as shown on a 17th century map which the Mexican President displayed-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-president-trolls-trump-us-should-be-renamed-mexican-america/
She’s got a wicked wit that woman.
The Gulf of North America would be most apt though… Cut this Gordian knot.
How about Dinosaur Gulf to commemorate the demise of them when that asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsular in that gulf?
The Maya called it the Gulf of Chactemal, or ‘The Red Place.’
I wonder what the Atlanteans called it.
And how’s about, just, “The Gulf”?
yeah thats what everybody i know calls it…”The Gulf”.
Gulf of Mexico works for me. No need to rename it. DJT does like to throw unmentionables into the punch bowl. The man thrives on making waves.
Funny how the Gulf of California never actually touches any part of the Golden State…
Sure it does . . . Baja California but still. . .
Because of the 1510 novel Las Sergas de Esplandián where it was depicted as an island, early maps of California showed it be that way. Of course we’re an island unto ourselves though.
So New Mexico is now New America?
Santa Fe is the oldest established city in the USA, founded in 1610.
And Mexico was called New Spain
St. Augustine begs to differ.
Forgot about that one, the original Florida Man too.
There is more than one gulf in North America: misleading name. The same goes with Gulf of America but worse as the US tries to appropriate “America” meaning exclusively the US of A. Grandeur pretensions there. It could be North Caribbean Gulf if Mexico is so disgusting for Trump..
But what about Johnny Horton, ‘o we fired our guns and the British kept acomin’ down the Mississippi to the Gulf of ….. I don’t know!
“Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa named president for transitional period”
Qatari funded Al Jazeera is to Syria what NYT is to Gaza. Stuff just keep happening according to the article titles, no context that al-Jolani named himself as president, that Jolani was born in Saudi Arabia and radicalized/trained in a series of American detention camps, that the so called transition period is for 4 years and will likely be filled with more atrocities against Alawites, Shiites, Christians, and non-Takfiri Sunnis.
“Putin says peace talks with Ukraine possible, but not with Zelensky”
Putin pointing out the obvious. Zelensky had it put into the Ukrainian Constitution that it is illegal to negotiate with the Putin government so that little bit will have to be repealed. But Putin and Lavrov have stated that Zelensky is not the real leader of the Ukraine as he canceled elections and kept on being President. Was this the inspiration for Romania? Point is that he cannot be the one to sign any final negotiated peace unless he re-instates elections and win the Presidency once again. This is not the Russians being officious but avoiding an obvious trap. Consider.
The war comes to a close and Zelensky – the unofficial leader of the Ukraine – signs that agreement before moving to Florida for his own health so that he does not suffer a severe case of lead poisoning. After a year or two and in contravention of the agreements signed, the west starts to re-arm the Ukrainian military to build it up once more to threaten Crimea and the Donbass. The Russians protest the illegality of it but the west tells the Russians that those agreements are not valid as they were signed by an illegitimate leader. It could happen that easily and the Russians have zero cause to trust the west hence this Russian position.
Documents signed by the unofficial leader of the Ukraine are as worthy as those signed by the official leader of the USA.
Documents signed by the official leader of the Ukraine or any Western US poodle regime are as worthy as those signed by the official leader of the USA. Hence, Russian must persue of purely optimal military not negotiated or diplomatic victory.
Antidote du jour.
A Lion again, situated in a peaceful setting, resting or waiting for dinner, can’t tell which. Metaphor?
Re Asteroid in 2032: So there’s hope!
Will this one also land in the Gulf of America too? Be ironic if it did. Of course there was this part-
‘On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms’
So assuming similar asteroids seeded life on other worlds and life developed with a ‘right-handed’ form, there would be a difficulty in visiting such a world. You could eat a warehouse of food from that planet and you would starve to death as your body would not be able to assimilate those ‘right-handed’ foods.
There’s a Phish festival being held right now in Riviera Maya, MEX and people are calling it “The Gulf of Phish”.
After the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well blowout, such euphemism and hopium are tragic.
When is Trump going to declare New Mexico is New America?
Idiocracy was released in 2000 or so, and was already outdated, just the documentary that we see it as it is now???
Not necessarily: all sugars characteristic of life on Earth are “right-handed.”
Time to break out the DART system and use it on an asteroid that has a probability of hitting the planet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test
I just checked Vegas odds on the Bills winning the Superbowl in 2032, which is also 83-1.
Going beyond the chapter and verse you cited, Luke 14:26: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even [his own] life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Jesus preached love of God and the stranger AGAINST love of the family and blood kin. This is a difficult passage for many devout Christians and many struggle with it. But there is no doubt about the deeper point. “Family values” Christianity is, to this extent, contradictory, and always has been.
https://platypus1917.org/2024/07/01/christian-socialism-and-the-present-left/
Christian socialism and the present Left
Spencer Jones
Platypus Review 168 | July – August 2024
Clearly a misquotation by Luke or some perfidious scribe! Besides, the book of J.D. supersedes it.
The verse you quote likewise coughed politely and tapped my shoulder when reading above the antidote. Rich tapestries of contradiction endear holy books to zealots of every denomination, bless them. Exalt what you like, deprecate the rest. It’s like the world’s longest Rorschach test. Readings tell you what’s in the reader, not what’s in the book.
The Christian tradition has always interpreted that passage as a hyperbolic statement about loving God and being obedient to him beyond loyalty to family. That would be an especially poignant item in a patriarchal, communal ancient culture where people were more deeply expected to worship the same gods as their parents (even beyond the kind of family expectations that might exist today). It does not mean that it is disloyal to God to love one’s family in appropriate ways.
Another classic example of this hyperbolic principle is Matthew 5:27-30. No Christian interprets that passage as literally calling for dismemberment. It’s a statement on the importance of holiness and loyalty to God.
I know it must feel very smart and cool to try to prooftext from the Bible and argue that what somebody claims to be from the Christian tradition clearly goes against the Christian tradition. And it may have been especially fun back in the mid-2000s when Bush-era evangelicals were trying to justify the Iraq War and so on. But it’s actually kind of tiresome having people conflate their misinterpretation with the Christian tradition, and it needlessly contributes to polarization.
The problem with J.D. Vance’s position is that the U.S. can obviously afford to take care of its citizens and provide a couple billion dollars of medical aid to African countries. Arguing with him about the Christian tradition is basically arguing that he’s wrong about the state prioritizing taking care of its citizens. How is that profitable?
The book Evolution of God made an analogous argument, more abstractly. Religions that reinforce kinship ties are necessarily old and narrow (like Judaism), as they have trouble creating new, broader societies with diverse peoples. Universal religions, like Christianity and Islam, need to have mechanisms for membership that does not depend on existing blood ties, or in other words, create new kins joined by common belief rather than blood. It is, however, a difficult and, literallt, unnatural step, I should think.
Evangs were the only cohesive voting bloc in the country in 2024, that kinship has sale’d.
Today’s Israel which is tightly tribal and nationalistic is an example of a society that cares not a whit about “the stranger” or the enemy which Jesus adjures us love as well. Real Christianity is sharply at odds with Judaism and Christianity as it has evolved.
Amen, brother Cosmos. Personally I find the “Great Commandments” (love God, love your neighbor) are better translated as “Great Proclamations.” They are statements of fact. If you don’t love yourself, you won’t be too loving to your neighbor. Similarly, the thing to which you’re wholeheartedly devoted … that’s your God. It can be the God of Abraham, or the Oakland Raiders.
Some additional observations:
-Following one of the Great Proclamation passages is “In this is all the law and the prophets.” Readers Digest couldn’t compress the entire Hebrew Bible so neatly.
-Islam didn’t exist when Jesus was around (if he ever was), but Samaritans were the Jews’ heretical opponents. Guess who gets to be “good.”
-Jesus said “As you have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done to me.” This is an entirely different concept of an ego than we usually expect. So when Jesus says “No one comes to the father except through me”…he’s not claiming exclusive access. Try this on your evangelical friends and see what happens!
To simplify and for me clarify: Do not treat any other like dirt. Do not do to others what you would not want done to you. All of us are children of God and the command is to love one another, so love one another.
Hitchens did a revised version of The Ten:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfPJ2ukzMd0&ab_channel=Epo
There is a longer version as well titled “Thou Shalt Watch this Video”
If anyone fails to provide for his own, and especially for those of his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever
1 Thimothy 5:8
Aquinas explained that charity is like concentric circles: first one own, then family, town, nation…This applies to Catholics, since Aquinas is the greatest Catholic philosopher and his philosophy is considered “official” in the Catholic Church.
This is not to defend JDVance and we can find reasons to criticize him. But it is silly that people that are not Christian find some isolated verses and think they can give lessons of Christianity to Chistians. Dunning-Kruger effect. I won’t give Islam leasons to Muslims, even if I know some verses of the Qur’an, because I don’t like showing my ignorance of Islam.
Putin says peace talks possible… “Russia’s army said Tuesday that its forces had captured a large village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, the latest territorial gain for Moscow’s advancing troops.” ***** just looked at a map for the first time in a while regarding the conflict. Was surprised to see this is significantly beyond Luganst and the 4 Oblasts that voted to join Russia. The folks of Team Trump should come clean and admit “we don’t have tools” and rid themselves of Ukraine by just cutting off funding now instead of pretending they have any cards to pressure Russia other than WW3.
The advancement on that part of the front was glacial, until Ukrainian tactical geniuses sent all their best troops and equipment on an excursion in Kursk.
Regarding Vance and Christianity, there is also Luke 14:26 and other universalist (and, by extension, even occasionally anti-family) passages in the NT suggesting that JC, as a guru, saw himself as overtly breaking with the tribal communitarianism of established Judaism.
I wonder how they handle the admonition in Matthew 19:21-24:
“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
Truth > The dominant world religions are vast repositories of fake news and rumours; conspiracy theories are as old as humanity; and false, cartoonish, and biased narratives and ideologies are the norm throughout human history… For most people in most places, there is little embarrassment in the fact that their worldview, religion, or ideology are designed not for truth but for things like identity formation, celebrating the glory of their tribe, achieving cooperation, and demonising enemies.
Religions are practiced in very different ways so I don’t see how you can generalize on whatever your experience has been. Most religions I know (and I’ve studied most of them and practiced their spiritual practices) have a firm grounding in spiritual experience by those at the center and a long-lasting lineage of aspirants to understanding the deepest layers of consciousness. Myths have power as Joseph Campbell attempted to teach us–narrow materialism is simply not enough for most human beings.
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Richard Feynman
H. L. Mencken
That’s a completely dishonest and ignorant view of religion–it applies to a certain American version of Christianity which is, for me, often toxic. Mencken lived at a particularly bad time for Christianity. Not all religions, are like any form of Christianity. Christians believe in an eternal Hell and are the only ones with that belief. I believe in Heaven and Hell in eternity which, for me, as a mystic, means the eternal moment which can change.
Sorry, lifelong card carrying Pantheist here, I don’t buy in to the idea of praise or damnation in the afterlife, and Heaven is right here on this good Earth.
JD and “neighbors”–
It’s the Luke version of “Two Greatest Commandments” that JD needs to review. “An expert in the Law (i.e. the Torah)” asks Jesus:
Jesus answers by reciting the two “greatest commandments. Then the smart-ass expert asks:
Jesus responds with the good Samaritan story, which blows Vance’s imposed hierarchy on the duty to love right out of the water. The “neighbor” turns out to be someone regarded by the Jews as a foreigner who follows a despised religion, not the people who live next door.
I hope JD is a better VP than he is biblical exegete or Christian theologian.
Not sure if anyone else happened to watch the Sunday morning blahblah. Margaret Brennan had JD Vance on as Special Guest. Understatement of Special!
Vance military service was as a PR Flak for the Military in the mid-east.
Brennan was unable to insert a word or question edgewise in Vances breathless 6 minute non-stop diatribe.
It appeared to me he learned one skill while in the Mid-east: waterboard the audience, regardless of content or veracity.
Maybe I shuld go to church on Sunday instead of watching the performative DC Kabuki!
You saw a completely different interview than the one I saw. He is the most intelligent and articulate VP since Richard Nixon–not that I necessarily agree with either one. As a side note, Brennan was quite stressed (from her body language) and was easily outclassed, in my view. Brennan is, as any participant on that program is bound to be, a religious follower of Washington Conventional “Wisdom.”
Do yourself a favor and eschew the “Washington Conventional Wisdom.” On the other hand if you prefer fantasy, go to it.
That prosperity godspell has many firmly in its grip.
If you hung out in Washington as I have for decade you would know what that means. Another way to put is the Overton Window of Washington, i.e, the capitol of the USA. I don’t get what you mean because that “wisdom” is quite real and tangible.
Re: The fragile state of Turkey article by a PolySci PhD from Germany I assume. I wasn’t at all convinced that Turkey is in dire straits. The Kurdish problem is mostly contained. They successfully manipulated all the big players in the area and brought down Assad in Syria. Trump is making moves to leave Syria, yet again abandoning the Kurds. They’re the manufacturer of Europe. They’re the crossroads of various major energy pipelines and an ally to Azerbaijan. They’ve a burgeoning defense industry. Apart from the Kurdish issue, what’s going to tear them apart? Plus Erdogan, much like Trump has managed to cull the majority of his political opposition.
>EU pledges ‘full support’ to Denmark against Trump’s Greenland ambitions Anadolu Agency
The U.S. in many ways already controls Greenland and Canada, and the EU for that matter. As with the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico it is misdirection to gin up fake issues and keep people squabbling rather than focusing on real issues like the needless, wasteful, wars, declining living standards, and encroaching control of central gov’t to name but a few.
Just an FYI.
Who am I to speak for JD Vance, but maybe I can offer some understanding. I have many Protestant family members that are from the same demo as he is. That worldview in the post is literally exactly theirs. Very likely a cultural thing in backwoods fundamentalists. It is completely at odds with several passages of scripture but more in sync with other passages and other later early Christian Church teaching.
But this issue among many others has led to my lifetime of trying to understand. It is obvious to an insider who grew up to be an outsider how some of these things can lead communities off the rails.
I was trying in the campaign to raise issues like this on here and on my social media. He and I are from largely the same growing up background and the same era. I intimately know his thinking pattern because I grew up with it. But I was shot down because “his book is a lie” or more commonly it was more important to call him “weird”. Other than his weirdness, which was the stupidest approach ever, no questions asked. The media and the political class have become a token/emoji subculture – no thinking or probing allowed. This is especially true of the left leaning. How did that work out? LOL.
This issue above by far and away is not even close to the most important for the rest of us. Others are far more consequential. I suspect he may have some very interesting priors from his childhood vis a vis Israel, Russia (Gog and Magog), and the entire Jewish race, and mercantilism. Read up on the rapture and Hal Lindsay. To have these intstilled in your brain as a child is really a thing. Although I do not espouse them, I have internal fights with them frequently. I have them infrequently coming out of my mouth at inconvenient times. But I am not the VP. He is. I would have loved to have someone address these with him during the campaign, but again no such luck. Those who could were on the weird bandwagon. No thinking outside the official narrative allowed.
Oh Well. The “weird” was real fun for a while.
Thank you for this. I grew up around fundamentalists, but luckily my parents weren’t into it. I can corroborate that whatever the Bible may say, Vance is expressing the way Christianity is lived among the fundies. And there is enough Bible to make it say whatever you want.
I go to India with some frequency, and know quite a bit about Vedic philosophy from back when I was a philosophy student. Yet it would never occur to me to walk up to an actual practitioner of Hinduism and “correct” their practice. To the contrary, when I have seen my knowledge of Vedic phisosophy clash with actual practice, I have inquired into the practice to learn more about Hinduism beyond the version taught in western phisosophy departments.
That is precisely what most of the people critiquing Vance are doing – using their mostly academic knowledge about a religion to critique someone actually practicing their religion. It’s tiresome. But then again criticising people for following their religion and calling them “weird” are really all the Democrats and PMC have at this point. Maybe instead of name calling and turning every raised arm into a nazi salute, they could deliver on universal health care (care, not “access:) and actually codify Roe if they ever come back into power. I won’t be holding my breath.
Vance does not fit neatly into a Fundamentalist or Evangelical box. He grew up in a loosely Evangelical setting–even though he was not ever baptized–but wound up an atheist (Fowler’s Stage 4) as a young man. He was baptized and confirmed at St Gertrude the Great in Cincinnati, which might not seem noteworthy since it’s in his home state, but St. Gertrude’s is a particularly conservative parish, formerly pastored by the late Daniel Dolan, who rejected Vatican II and continued to use the Latin Mass.
In some ways, Vance’s religious journey reminds me of Richard John Neuhaus, who migrated from the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but his need for an ultimate authority led him to become a Roman Catholic. One oddity: Dolan, St Gertude and the people who must have instructed him in confirmation were Dominican, but Vance points to Augustine (alert Dr. Hudson) as a major influence. That’s a little like a Bills fan wearing a Kelce jersey.
I don’t think it’s the least bit unfair to jump all over Vance for such a radical distortion of Christian doctrine and the biblical text. He’s not your typical layman, and he’s mixing the authority of his civil office with his, as we say at NC, made-up shit.
I tried to read Vance’s book but it didn’t seem very interesting to me. Most Southerners of my era already know quite a lot about poverty and don’t need the 10,000 ft level.
And re the above controversy, Vance seems to simply be spinning out some rhetoric to justify the “America first” agenda. And surely family first beats being the Bad Samaritan pretending to be the Good Samaritan.
America hasn’t really been that good at “running the world.” Let somebody else do it.
There is a lineage of Christian mysticism/spirituality that uses life as a practice to achieving some direct knowledge of God–that is to practice love where you can in families, marriages (in my Catholic upbringing marriage is a sacrament–I still agree with that), children, and so on. Wherever love can arise that’s where you start–abstract principles like universal love of humanity has to come from somewhere and it starts with love where it most easily arise and then expands through practicing that love. Dante only saw God (in Paradiso) through the eyes of a specific human being, Beatrice.
I do think it is proper to confront authorities and experts (self-proclaimed, especially) in their fields of study, but one should just try to understand their followers.
> As you can see, “family” doesn’t enter into it, nor Vance’s larger concentric concept. I don’t know whether Vance is ignorant or heretical; considering the travesty that “family-friendly”/”family values” conservatives have made of Christianity, I suspect the latter.
Finding two or three passages and prooftexting them isn’t how a Christian ethics is built. Of course J.D. Vance is right at a high level about the Christian tradition. This can be demonstrated from additional scriptural references:
1 Timothy 5:3-4, 16
Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God.
…
If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows.
(In other words, Christians should care for those within their family first before pushing them into using church resources.)
Mark 7:9-13
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
(In other words, Christians should not allow claims of piety or otherwise to prevent them from helping their own direct family. This could be extended to not making an excuse from completing one duty based on a different duty.)
Titus 1:5-6
This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you—if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.
(Even holding office in the church is linked to holding “office” in the household successfully.)
The issue with the principle of weighing duties of love by proximity isn’t whether the concentric circle notion is correct. The issue is whether it’s actually carrying out love. Of course parents should care for their children logically prior to worrying about orphans. The issue is whether the principle is being made an excuse to cut off love from others when one has the capacity to love them–similar to the corban passage–or whether it is being used to rightly order priorities.
Vance’s position is open to interpretation at this time. You could take him as reasserting that of course a state should care for its own citizens, not allowing their wellbeing to deteriorate, in order to achieve other goals. And I think it’s fair to say that the regime has neglected U.S. citizens in favor of the wealthy, major corporations, one or a few states on the other side of the world, and so on. Yet, using that principle as an excuse to cut off paltry funding for public health programs in poor countries may be more of a corban situation.
Cervantes: Timothy was a man of his time, circumscribed by certain ideas.
Let’s read a little farther on in his same epistle:
11 But the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry;
12 Having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith.
Oh.
The issue is not home life — the issue was that in the classical era, the household was the central economic unit. There were very limited “social services.” Even in Rome itself, the welfare state consisted of subsidizing the family rather than providing services. Neighborhoods were organized (the vici) but there were no social workers and walk-in clinics.
DJG, you appear to be a non-Christian arguing with a confirmed Anglican Christian about what the bible teaches. It is not clear why you think this profitable.
I don’t want to be unfair, but the reason I surmise that you lack background in this matter and may not be a Christian is that you are unaware of the authorship of 1 Timothy. That is a letter *from* Paul *to* his protege Timothy. It’s not *by* Timothy.
Your method of argument seems to be that you can find something objectionable in that letter, so it’s not relevant. For most Christians, this is not an appropriate method for addressing how the New Testament teaches ethics. The broader principle of love is applied to everyday life in the advice Paul gives to churches in his epistles. From Paul’s perspective, people should care for their families rather than throw those family members on the “welfare system” of the church. You are right that the household was an important aspect of the ancient economy and I fully agree that the imperative of love would be contextualized by Christian thought, but it’s not clear what your point does to the broader principle of caring for one’s family. Paul could have instead said that all widows, including one’s relatives, should be on the church’s rolls and that households should give more money to the church to take care of all of them. After all, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). He did not; he asked Christians to take care of their own families first. Lastly, it’s not clear why you think verses 11 and 12 are objectionable, what you think they mean, or what your motive would be.
Lambert’s resort to the broader principles of loving one’s neighbor is a fair reminder of the overarching principle of love that should apply and be carried out through caring for one’s family, neighbors, enemies, and distant cities. I would suggest that it’s more profitable to question the sincerity of J.D. Vance’s principles and whether he is appropriately applying them to his situation rather than getting into some hackneyed back-and-forth over Paul’s epistles.
Good points. Love must grow in us from somewhere–family, friends, spouses all those who we are duty bound to love are the best places to start. It is hard for materialists to understand religion and spirituality.
I’m not in a position to judge Vance’s statement on theological grounds, and this and other comments have been interesting and helpful. I am more interested in what actions we can reasonably assume are prioritized by this belief, if he believes it. I don’t think that, given his role, it is as important that he’s a family man than that he be a sensible and moral statesman. He has the opportunity to influence decisions on foreign policy, where a wrong turn here or there can spell a million violent deaths. What I, and I think, a lot of others read into his statement at first glance is an unemparhetic and parochial nativism out of step with where a U.S. VP ought to be in 2025, though I’m not sure anyone seriously, as opposed to wishfully, expected any different.
As I see it, we have a responsibility to be good to those our actions effect. For most of us, that means family and neighbors; for Vance, it’s everyone.
Imagine how all this fact checking of someone’s faith would be received if the citations required came from the Torah or Talmud.
How do we do “good”? How do we now what good is? Applied Christianity tries to deal with that–love of family, spouses, children, friends, is where it must start as a spiritual practice until the consciousness (not abstract opinion) of how we are all connected to each other and God regardless of background comes about spontaneously. For increasing numbers of people, it often starts with love of pets because of fragmenting families due to our culture of narcissism and nihilism. Wherever it starts there we must be love always expands.
A New Zealand mountain is granted personhood.
Because today seems to be religion day at Links, I will paste the paragraph in the article about said “personhood”: ‘The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”’
I realize that New Zealand has a British-derived common-law system, but personhood with responsibilities and liabilities for a mountain and its region seems fairly weak, more procedural than sacred.
What we are talking about is epiphany, recognition of the sacred, assertion of divinity. Maybe the common law is too thin to handle such a concept. Nice try, though.
J.D. Vance misses what Saint Francis taught:
Further on religion, as a bad cradle Catholic and a bad Buddhist, I tend to have misgivings about converts to Catholicism like J.D. Vance. Too many of them are seeking authority or some kind of dogma that settles things. Catholicism is filled with doubts, saints, the occasional stigmata or levitation, and other weird miracles.
It isn’t that J.D. Vance is heretical. It is that he has it backwards. His little politico-religious disquisition places politics first, with Catholic ethics subordinate to politics.
The bible is ambiguous, but Jesus seems to recognize two spheres:
Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?
19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.
So I’m hearing some “hypocrites” trying to force Caesar into what is the divine.
See, farther up, epiphany. Even a bad Catholic knows to look for epiphany.
Thanks. I’ve never been comfortable when authority starts “quoting the scripture”. To me, it indicates a weak hand and/or a weak mind, and is a clear “warning” sign.
I am reminded of an early episode of the britbox series Grace. He, Grace, a Detective Chief Inspector (?) Is in the witness box and asked if he believes in the supernatural. He replies that when he stepped into the witness box the first thing he did was the requirement that he place one hand on a book and swear an oath to a supernatural being and that it would be unusual if he didn’t.
I’ve visited NZ maybe a dozen times and Aussie maybe 6 times, and the difference between how the Maori were treated in NZ society versus the Aboriginals in Australia was night and day.
It stems from the Maori fighting the English to a standstill in a couple of wars in the mid 19th century, earning their respect, whereas the Aboriginals just sat there and really did nothing.
Marriage between Maori and white NZ settlers was already happening in the 19th century, and a good many of the best players on the All Blacks have always been Maori.
You’ll see road signs in both Maori and English in NZ, could you imagine the same in the USA with any old tribe we subjugated back in the day?
Protestant or not, Vance did convert to Catholicism like many other American New New Right types (perhaps this ilk should be called “neo-paleo-conservative”?). Maybe Vance’s Catholicism is closer to the RC faith of the recently departed Jean-Marie Le Pen? Le Pen famously quipped in an anti-EU moment: “I prefer my daughter [or my family] to my friends, my friends to my neighbors, my neighbors to my countrymen, my countrymen to Europeans.”
Or as I’ve heard it phrased elsewhere: “Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against a stranger.”
It’s supposed to be a Bedouin saying. I’d seen it used often to describe “Middle Eastern” thinking, but doubtlessly applies to a lot of societies (same sentiment shows up in a lot of Springsteen lyrics, for instance–Man turns his back on his family, He ain’t no friend of mine.)
“Who is my mother?” (Matt 12:48).
Yeah, JD didn’t get catechized too well.
JC turned that old Roman saying “Mater certa, pater semper incertum” on its head: “Pater certum, mater semper incerta”, hmmm?!
“Gold stockpiling in New York leads to London shortage”
Well at least the Bank of England still has all that Venezuelan gold – unless they spent it all already. Funny thing about gold. If you say that gold may still have a place in the modern world you are accused of being a ‘goldbug’ over a ‘barbarous relic.’ And yet, yet, I see that whenever a country is smashed like Iraq or Libya or the Ukraine, the very first thing that happens is that that country’s gold reserves are packed aboard a military transport and take off – destination unknown. And now the US is sucking in all the gold that they can grab. For me it is not a case of listening to what they say but watching what they actually do.
Re: Vance
He’s a fraud of course. And the biblical references are valuable.
Still, look at the order of the 10 Commandments:
Honoring parents comes prior to ones about neighbors
Nitpicking Vance about priorities is a waste of time
The violations of the golden rule and all 10 commandments that he and his boss commit with every breath and action they take is the key point.
Even more important is to see that Vance et. al. are exemplars of our Ruling Elites.
Time to petition Saint Luigi and throw the money changers out of the temple.
People will have the next four years to see what Vance is really all about which is good because no doubt he will be the Republican 2028 Presidential candidate. Unless Trump changes the law so he gets himself a third term that is. :)
Yes, but for Christians, Christ represents a new covenant that supersedes the old covenant. Where there is conflict or ambiguity, Christ’s teachings supersede those of Moses and the Old Testament. That is why some of us find Christians who always seem to quote the Old Testament instead of the New and seem to have no familiarity with the Beatitudes so disturbing. As for Vance, he and his fellow “evangelical Catholics” who’d like to revert to pre-Vatican II Catholicism don’t represent most Catholics and don’t represent the teachings of the current Pope, or of the longest-reigning Pontiff of my lifetime, John Paul II.
Old testament, and as jokers have been pointing out forever, almost half are about worshipping the one true God.
In the King James Bible, which my very right wing mother studies every week in Sunday School, Jesus has love thy neighbors front and center, whips money lenders, and all the lefty stuff. Which somehow doesn’t influence her thinking.
He is a fraud, of course? He seems pretty straightforward and articulate. His religion is his religion and works for him. Are you saying he isn’t really Catholic? Or a fraud because he is Catholic? This is purely ad hominem without any evidence or supporting statements.
If anyone is sending condoms to Gaza, I’d assume it’s Israel
It was suspicious right from the initial announcement, after the spokeswoman said that they were all XL. :-)
President Donald J. Trump explains it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NaOaodF0lM
$50 million being sent to Gaza to buy
condoms for Hamas 50 million and you
know what’s happened to them they’ve
used them as a method of making bombs
how about that
Plane crash info from blancolario
Looks to be the helos fault. Airplane was exactly on course.
Terrible
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8
Still early days but wouldn’t that airliner have right of way as that chopper would be much more maneuverable? I suppose that those chopper pilots may have been using night vision scopes which may have reduced their overall vision. There was a collision here in Oz back in ’96 between two Blackhawk helicopters and 18 men died. Not sure but I think that the pilot’s using night-vision may have contributed to that crash
I occasionally look at a pilots forum (pprune.org) so when I heard about this crash I thought I’d have a look at the discussion there. It is mainly UK and European professionals, current and retired, plus some posters from the rest of the world. Many of the non-US posters are appalled that a visual approach at night in a busy, tightly controlled airspace is allowed. One example (that had many likes) here from poster Locked Door:
The whole USA aviation sector needs root and branch reform, there have been so many near misses in recent years that this accident was inevitable, it was just a question of when.
The majority of people inside the system don’t realise how bad it is because it’s all they’ve ever known. We have American contributors here who routinely tell us it’s ok to switch to TA only to avoid “nuisance” RA’s, who will not follow an RA as they have the traffic in sight, who will accept visual separation at night (day is bad enough) or very late visual switches, who think LAHSO is a good idea. USA ATC think it’s acceptable to “slam dunk” a heavy jet, get shirty when foreign operators refuse a questionable clearance, literally forget about an aircraft once it has accepted visual separation. The system allows uncontrolled VFR traffic within 500ft of commercial operations which is madness.
I operated the 747-400 around the planet for over a decade, the USA was one of the most threat laden environments we went to. Lovely people, just insane procedures. In that time I experienced a TCAS RA on vectors to JFK, was sent around and put in the hold as punishment on short final in Miami for refusing LAHSO, had multiple super high workload approaches to SFO combined with the crazy policy of pairing aircraft on approach. I witnessed a Singapore aircraft being refused a diversion to Boston from JFK fifteen minutes after they stated what time they would be leaving the hold and where they would be going resulting in a fuel mayday and an unplanned diversion to a regional airport. I lost count of the times I was chastised for refusing a visual approach and visual separation in congested airspace or a very late visual switch.
On most of the planet the human is the last line of defence in a multi layered safety environment. In the USA the human is often the only line of defence, while the environment they are in is super high workload significantly reducing their capacity to trap safety issues.
Unless there is a marked attitude shift in all parties involved in aviation in the USA this will happen again, potentially quite soon.
Stay safe out there
Somehow, I am reminded of Im Doc’s comments of the American “health”care industry.
The reality is that there should not be any chopper there in the first place. I spent many hours watching flights in and out of Reagan and, first, it is busy as is that entire area, and the last thing you need are copters flying around that area. I’m amazed that these machines are allowed to fly near that airport.
A terrible tragedy to be sure but I find it ironic it happened at Washington National, renamed for the son of a bitch who fired the air traffic controllers back in 1981. The mass firing of PATCO membership put a huge damper on labor actions and many sweetheart deals for companies going forward.
If true we can look forward to some linguistic gymnastics.
When I look at the replay of the aircrafts flying around, I have the impression that the helicopter went right into the path of no less than four airplanes before finally crashing into the American Airline one. Is it just an artifact of the graphical representation, or was the mysterious helicopter trying to pass below airplanes, and if so, is it usual to fly against the flow of departing airplanes?
Somebody knowledgeable with those tracking tools and with piloting could perhaps tell us a bit more.
Let the investigators do their jobs, but it’s already obvious that this disaster was caused by human error on the part of either the chopper pilots or the ATC, possibly both.
That airport should have been closed decades ago. It’s the only big airport I’ve ever flown into that was right smack dab in the middle of a sprawling metropolitan area; even relatively convenient airports like London City, Paris-Orly, and Milano-Linate are at some distance from the city center. DC national is adjacent to the Pentagon and a (maybe) 30 second flight from Pennsylvania Avenue. The obvious solution is to shutter it and build a high-speed rail line from DC to Dulles Airport, using the I-66 corridor. Here’s an idea: Trump can ram this through, pay China to build the rail line (since USA seems to be incapable of such), and call it the TrumpLine. Problem solved, legacy ensured. Just a polite suggestion.
Lots of coverage of this disaster on Russian media, as several Russian/Soviet figure skating legends were on board.
That’s a good idea. Really good. Right or wrong, I have Trump pegged as a legacy matters man, from that perspective, maybe. At the moment, we’re getting Brightline West High Speed Rail Project | Nevada Department of Transportation.
High speed rail to Vegas. Those five words are a useful lens when peering at the crystal ball.
I was in Pavlovegas staying at one of the Dartful Codgers home, and I get the willies just being anywhere near-as soulless of a place as could ever be imagined.
At first glance, the main issue will be any failures re. communications re. the switch from using the 01-19 (longer) runway versus 33-15 (shorter) runway for arrivals.
The helicopter (likely reasonably) assumed that arrivals were using 19 and probably was unaware of the switch to 33.
At night, at that speed and altitude, it’s really tough to judge distances-bearings. Both crews probably had literally no idea what was happening in the final seconds.
There is a cottage industry of youtubers who produce videos of public ATC radio/air traffic tracks. Per mile, flying is still the safest form of travel….but there are a lot of near misses on a monthly basis that never hit the news.
My reasonable/unreasonable prejudice is that I avoid flying through JFK whenever possible, and would rather use EWR or LGA.
a big bone of contention will also be the following line of communication:
ATC to the helicopter: “…’PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ’ ….”
This is a big shaking-my-head. As to a pilot, in the air/at night, “behind” is too vague.
The appropriate communication should have been, to the effect of: turn left, bearing XYZ—immediately.
“Christianity Today”
There are multiple passages in the New Testament that completely undermine what Vance says here–for example, Matthew 10:37. Rather, Jesus often admonishes his disciples for doing exactly what JD says here, elevating family over God, Jesus’ teachings and humanity (“Love your neighbor”) and creating a hierarchy of affiliations. There are Christian cults where members cut off relations with their families because they take Jesus’ teachings on the subject literally and believe that it’s apostasy to love your brother more than, say, your neighbor. I’m not a Christian myself, but I am really amazed at how superficially some Christians think about their sacred texts. It reminds me of something I read about Jim Baker’s autobiography, Baker built a huge ministry, eventually gets sent to prison for fraud, and yet it wasn’t until he was reading the Bible in prison that he came to the realization that Jesus often castigated the wealthy (“easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,” etc.) and himself seemed to prefer the company of the poor.
but I am really amazed at how superficially some Christians think about their sacred texts.
There is a reason iconoclasm always come into vogue. “Bibles” have become the new statues. Monster truck rallies at church are new High Mass in a different language with choirs and fantasic costumes! Luke makes a point about the two kinds of worshippers. There is nothing new under the sun. It answers the question why the NFL QBs never than the Big Cheese for their pick sixes.
These high profile converts to the RCC in the wake of the priest abuse scandal always seem odd: Newt, Jeb!, and Vance among others. They even nabbed Tony Blair. They found a church hungry to refill the pews and the collection plates.
As a wise man once said about Baker – Jesus thinks you’re a jerk.
I hadn’t heard that Baker saw the light in prison. Wonder if that was a sincere example of “scales falling from the eyes” or an attempt to sell more books to recoup a lost fortune?
On June 23, 2021, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the settlement of the state’s lawsuit against Bakker. Bakker and Morningside Church would be prohibited from saying silver solution could “diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat, or cure any disease or illness”.
From the wiki
Larry Johnson’s latest:
https://sonar21.com/the-cias-history-of-supporting-islamic-jihad-the-kosovo-war/
The CIA’s History of Supporting Islamic Jihad — The Kosovo War
Deep Impact – Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At?
“Now, there’s a very obvious “but” here. We do not know where DeepSeek is hosting its models, who has access to that data, or where that data is coming from or going. We don’t even know who funds DeepSeek, other than that it’s connected to High-Flyer, the hedge fund that it split from in 2023. There are concerns that DeepSeek could be state-funded, and that DeepSeek’s low prices are a kind of geopolitical weapon, breaking the back of the generative AI industry in America.”
As if nothing about tech and research in the USA was “state funded.” It has to get hard writing about this stuff with all the stupid AF (non-existent) “free market” ideology that concerns the people being written about.
But at the end of the day this is stull some hedge fund stuff with “training data” (others intellectual property) that is essentially stolen then being claimed as some hedge fund guys’ or finance bros’ intellectual property.
Heh heh, Microsoft, Meta CEOs defend hefty AI spending after DeepSeek stuns tech world.
…but the U.S. executives said on Wednesday that building huge computer networks was necessary to serve growing corporate needs. Self-serving perhaps?
Ends with this beauty, “For AI right now, there’s too much capital expenditure, not enough consumption.”
You’re right.
The most interesting thing in the article, to me, is the bit about Zuck deciding to have Meta in essence reverse-engineer DeepSeek to try to duplicate its workings. It’s interesting because I think it may be the first example of a US or Western leading tech company trying to reverse-engineer a Chinese tech product. It has always been the other way around. . . until now.
That last bit is worth a think.
– “Why would Russia regard it as gravely threatening to have NATO sitting on the other side of its border just because EU bureaucrats like this are openly musing on the importance of going into Russia, smashing it, changing its government, and breaking it up into little pieces?”
While I completely agree with Greenwald’s point, I think it is misleading to characterize Kaja Kallas as a “bureaucrat.” For me that term suggests a mindless functionary. Rather, Kallas is an *ideologue*, and a dangerous one given her position. One of the most striking features of the European “leadership” class over the last few decades is its steady replacement of pragmatic or realist leaders, and even bureaucratic functionaries, with “pro-Western” ideologues like Kallas who are willing to destroy Europe for the greater good of… whom?
How has this has occurred in country after country, and of course in the EU “bureaucracy” itself, and so rapidly?
But Kallas is not wrong. Memories of Russian occupation are still fresh in the memories of Estonians and they know exactly what such occupation means. If anyone is clear about Russian intent and its threat potential to Europe, it’s her.
Kaja Kallas? You mean the privileged daughter of a guy that rose high in the former communist regime and who always had the best of things growing up including where her family lived? And whose husband was found to be making bank by doing business with Russia a year or two ago but when asked about it did a Sergeant Schultz and said ‘I knew nothing, nothing.’
Kallas’s spiel is nothing new in the EU as I have read at least twice before the war of EU officials complaining to Russian officials that their country was too big.
When she talks about smashing Russia to pieces it also brings other memories of occupations. Perhaps we need some other intellectual framework than always fighting old wars and trying to settle centuries old scores.
Btw, Kallas father was communist apparatchik who was able to seamlessly transition to the new regime, so in a way she is a perfect example of certain people who constantly complain how oppressed they were under Soviets.
So do you think Kallas is “clear” about Russian “intent”?? I guess 30 years of steady NATO expansion eastward was because we were clear that Russia ” intended” to invade Europe at some point in the future.
Hardly a unique mindset: typical in weak states with stronger neighbors, I think. The Crow in mid to late 19th century, no doubt, felt that the Lakota should be smashed to pieces and that was the perfectly moral goal that US should help them achieve. They got what they wanted, too.
Weren’t Estonians ardent Nazi supporters? I too come from a Warsaw Pact country and frankly, the “occupation” time had seen greatest development in five centuries so it couldn’t be that bad.
Kallas doesn’t see that the occupation of Baltic states by was midwifed by Germany, who agreed to that in the non-agression treaty of 1939 with USSR. They knew that by allowing the Soviets to take on the Finns, the Baltics, Romanians, that will secure them good allies when going against the bear itself… Hungary was bought with a piece of Romanian territory.
As you can see, “family” doesn’t enter into it, nor Vance’s larger concentric concept. I don’t know whether Vance is ignorant or heretical; considering the travesty that “family-friendly”/”family values” conservatives have made of Christianity, I suspect the latter.
This is an interesting tension within Christianity and part of the drive for monasticism and celibacy in the early Church was to lead lives unburdened by feelings of partiality to families/children. There was also considerable tension in Greek political theory between the public and the private man, and the evils of nepotism. Obviously, with the rise of Protestantism and its hostility to celibacy and monasticism, US historically evangelical Christianity is ideologically pro-family. Vance may be Catholic, but he is speaking to Evangelicals with his remarks. Realistically, I do not know how people cannot naturally feel affection to their families (in the absence of great dysfunction), so it probably doesn’t matter what Jesus felt about the matter:
Matthew Chapter 10
“21 Brothers will turn against their own brothers and hand them over to be killed. Fathers will hand over their own children to be killed. Children will fight against their own parents and will have them killed. 22 Everyone will hate you because you follow me. But the one who remains faithful to the end will be saved. 23 When you are treated badly in one city, go to another city. I promise you that you will not finish going to all the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes again.”
“Too little, too late: Residents say they were in the dark as fire spread with no evacuation order”
‘It could take months to know why some evacuation orders lagged in the Los Angeles fires.’
There could be a possible solution to getting real-time info, ideally to a central command structure. So you have fire stations spread across the map, right? So what if strategic fire stations were equipped with a heavy-duty drone. In case of major fires like the ones in LA, they could be sent aloft and check to see which regions were experiencing any fires and if so, could be moved closer. The ones here in Oz have infra-red sensors aboard so that they can see through smoke and see the actual extent of the burning. These video feeds could be relayed to that command post and would thus give real time info on what was happening with quicker warnings going out. At other times they could be put to use covering normal fires or traffic accident response to aid paramedics.
It seems two aerospace vehicles at the point of “departure from controlled flight” occupied the same chunk of airspace. A failure of “air traffic control”.
A lot of “why’s” will come from this observation. Each “why” demands evidence and review.
I have no better knowledge of last night’s air traffic collision other than car radio report this AM.
It is very early in the investigation.
Seems to me the passenger aircraft was under approach control. Seems the UH-60 was transiting over the river. The passenger aircraft was asked to land on “shorter” runway, moved its approach over the river. This is not unusual.
Both aircraft were in “view” and recorded by the local airport surveillance radar (ASR) which tracks/tracked aircraft within range of the airport. ASR should reflect fairly accurate azimuth, range and altitude and display on the approach controllers’ ATC workstation. In this situation ADS would be a check to highlight issues of ASR and/or flight plan compliance. There is a lot of automation behind the ATC workstation.
ADS and ASR are aircraft position reporting systems. Both systems performing as spec’ed should be accurate for safe control.
Navigation and flight management systems on FAA certified passenger aircraft are of much greater capability than on most military aircraft, especially helicopters which rarely fly in ICAO airspace.
Did you know Bitcoin is mentioned 417 times in the bible?
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My bad, it was that word that looks like God, but with an extra letter~
Gold stockpiling in New York leads to London shortage FT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To say the retail market for all that glitters was moribund in the 80’s & 90’s might be an understatement, Central banks were all net sellers (the UK sold theirs @ the bottom, the Swiss weren’t much better-selling off 1/2 of theirs at around $400 an ounce) and the spot price was in the horse latitudes of $250 to $400 the last 20 years of the 20th century, and yet plenty of business was being done with an emphasis on boiler rooms selling to evangs, as they are so fruity about anything written in the good book, and oh how they got hosed-the FTC decreeing that a 39% markup was fair on pseudo numismatic bullion coins, with said telemarketers coming in @ 38.992% markups on the goods they were pitching, it seemed like a bloodbath to me at the time, but paying $420 an ounce when spot was $300 ain’t no big thang now in the scheme of things.
Could we be headed back to a rather forced upon us gold standard?
I don’t think so, but its always in the back of my mind-the possibility.
If that occurs during Trump’s Presidency, the only public largely with any holdings in the USA (vastly different than say India-where ownership is widespread) will be the evangs, and they’d be 1-eyed financial kings in a country full of blind people whose wealth is in computer bits, not to mention the present political favor they currently curry.
Could we be headed back to a rather forced upon us gold standard, how else to prop up a fiat currency suffering lack of self-confidence in isolation, lol, with all this talk of commandments I’m thinking “god standard”.
Well it does say “In God We Trust” on all American currency. Nothing about trusting DC though.
That motto was only added to US currency in 1957, coincidentally near the peak of the Cold War, with our adversaries being atheists, we needed a banknote bulwark against Bolshevism.
Triple B rated I see.
The powers that be even went as far as issuing new 1935 dated series banknotes with the motto on them, we were quite serious about dogma.
I look forward to your scholarship turning up in Google search AI summaries.
The American Airlines flight was from Wichita. It has been confirmed that skaters, coaches, and families of skaters who had attended the US Senior and Junior Nationals and then a development camp for young skaters were on the flight. Russian news has announced that Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, parents of Maxim Naumov and 1994 World Champions were among those passengers.
Maxim Naumov is one of America’s top five male skaters and was set to compete at the Four Continents Competition later this month and is an alternate for Worlds.
The parallels are perfect, with 73 on the doomed flight yesterday…
I thought of that, too. I was too young when it happened, but it reverberated among American figure skating for years. Enough so that it was still actively mourned by the time I was beginning my love/hate fan relationship with skating.
Senseless tragedy, then and now.
On meritocracy, because it is tangential and thus not the direct subject, but this certainly leaves out the vast masses that don’t want to take any shots, but rather want to be free to live a fulfilling, safe, long life, free of outside coercion.
i’d just be happy being able to legally sell and egg or a tomato.
and pay cash when i renew my drivers lic.
i woke at 1am, due to storms…as well as what those storms do to my skeleton…and while attempting to return to slumber, ruminated instead on that Matthew Basset thing from yesterday.
the masters of the universe have made things much, much worse in my 55 years.
and i was aware of it happening long before i had the vocabulary to describe it.
“Is Turkey Breaking Its Own Oil Embargo?”
Is the Pope a Catholic? Does a bear dump in the woods? For more developments, see news at 11. This is all old news and yes, Turkiye is still pumping oil to Israel. There are two reasons for this. One is that Turkiye wants to be seen as a reliable oil partner like Russia is who can be trusted to keep deliveries up, no matter the circumstances which will bolster its international reputation. The second is that Erdogan’s family gets a kickback on all those oil deliveries to Israel.
I feel compelled as a former employee at NOAA (contractor, not civil) to speak out against the horrible, dehumanizing way Trump has DOGE-piled the Federal workforce with his ham-fisted “resign or face the music” campaign.
I’ve always been critical of overspending but we forget that these are people and many have had long, distinguished careers.
There may be a few bad apples abusing WFH to take long naps or watch Netflix, but isn’t that their managers job to look at their work product and draw conclusions?
From what I recall about my days in the Federal Gov, people were treated with dignity vs. corporate America that views labor as a nuisance they have to put up with.
I hope Karma strikes Musk and Trump. Quickly.
“Dignity” being eliminated with (shuffles letters around) ah, “tidying” up.
I think this whole thing is going to collapse by March. You can try to scare people into resigning, but even if they take the bait (and the buyouts aren’t funded yet, so they’d be fools to do so) you still have the problem of the FTE position being funded by Congress.
Worst case scenario, a bunch of folks retire early or say to heck with it, I don’t want to stick around. Then, each agency has a bunch of vacant positions. DOGE cannot cut the budget – only Congress can do that.
Meanwhile, Mike “Tomato Can” Johnson looks like he’s about to get Donkey-kicked by the wilier gang of Pelosi, Jeffries, and Schumer. Unless he can hold together a very narrow 2 vote margin in the House, the Donkeys can stop any DOGE-tricks.
My money is on Johnson getting Donkey-kicked.
Congress critters do like “kicking the can”.
‘Mike Ev’ looks to have a similar fate to my ill-fated Congressman…
Oompa Loompa, do-ba-dee-doo,
I have another mandate for you.
Oompa Loompa, do-ba-da-dee,
Ditch your Saab for a trendy EV.
What do you get from a glut of EV?
Corruption, grifting and greed make three.
Why don’t you try simply taking the train?
Or can you not bear to look plain?
You’ll get no, you’ll get no
You’ll get no, you’ll get no
You’ll get no rich patrons
Oompa Loompa do-ba-dee-da,
In your EV, you will not go far.
In the back seat you might sleep too
Like the Oompa
Oompa Loompa do-ba-dee-doo.
I disagree. Perhaps your office was pretty cool but my experience as a contractor is that, while most bureaucrats were ok, there is and was a system in place that created dysfunction and corruption sometimes on massive scales–not the fault of the workers usually but baked into the System which was/is largely the fault of the House of Bribery (aka Congress). I met many hard-working professionals and also grifters which the System seemed to like. We contractors had to deal with perverse incentives and keep our mouths shut.
JFC … never thought I’d see the day the NC commentariat was reduced to interpreting the entrails of a 2000 yr old morality play.
Kinda the nature of the beast. There is no religion w/o the attendant ambiguity necessary to maneuver politically.
…not all of us require invisible means of support
Well, as The Bard would say, the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose ;)
I like to think that the regular NC commentariat are goodly apples with hearts of gold though, not with rotten cores.
Something like 3/4’s of NFL QB’s are evangs, and many are quick to thrust a hand upward- with an index finger pointed to their deity when they make a good play, but how come I never see that same appendage thrust downwards when they throw a pick-6?
“I like to think that the regular NC commentariat are goodly apples with hearts of gold though, not with rotten cores.”
As do I. I’d have a hard time showing up for the links every morning if I didn’t.
“There is no religion w/o the attendant ambiguity necessary to maneuver politically.”
Machiavelli, is that you?
Nah. I just trained my AI on him ;)
On the contrary, I could entirely predict members of any online community shifting from being health experts and foreign policy experts to experts in theology and cultural history.
That said, I prefer the discussions of the gospels led by my favorite internet rabbi to those on this finance focused site.
“What Would a Trump Grand Bargain With China Need?”
Yep, this is a Foreign Policy article alright. Here is the guts of it-
‘A grand bargain with China does not mean compromising on important security issues; the U.S. government should not grant Beijing access to sensitive technologies or turn a blind eye to state subsidies that unfairly advantage Chinese industrial products. The goal of a grand bargain should be to keep China firmly embedded within the U.S.-led global economic system while sharing more of the benefits of bilateral trade with American workers.’
See? So long as those coolies know their place on the plantation, they will be allowed the privilege of loaning their hard-earned wealth to American capitalists. They just have to know their place and accept any DC directives that come their way and accept any attempts to hamstring their development. And ‘turn a blind eye to state subsidies?’ Is that like when Trump was announcing total Federal support for US AI for example? Do American farmers get any subsidies for export crops? I am no parts Chinese but even I was highly offended by this sanctimonious piece of Foreign Policy crap.
RE: US Navy confirms drone ‘hellscape’ for use against PLA in Taiwan Strait is on track
In other news, China just announced a square-mile sized, light weight netting suitable for corralling drone swarms that it 3D printed for $19.99.
ad Vance:
Jesus’ message was an eschatological one. Anyone who was not willing to believe in him and that means in the end of this world could not be one of his followers.
For this reason, it is simply nonsensical to base a concept for this world on it.
Defense spending has reached $1.108 trillion yearly and increasing:
https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDNdLCJkYXRhIjpbWyJjYXRlZ29yaWVzIiwiU3VydmV5Il0sWyJOSVBBX1RhYmxlX0xpc3QiLCI1Il1dfQ==
January 30, 2025
Defense spending was 57.6% of federal government consumption and investment in October through December 2024 *
$1,107.8 / $1,922.0 = 57.6%
Defense spending was 21.7% of all government consumption and investment in October through December 2024
$1,107.8 / $5,096.6 = 21.7%
Defense spending was 3.7% of Gross Domestic Product in October through December 2024
$1,107.8 / $29,700.8 = 3.7%
* Billions of dollars
Through December 2024, defense spending had climbed to almost $1.108 trillion yearly. Defense spending had increased by almost $194 billion yearly or by 21.2% during the Biden presidency, and was increasing still by December 2024.
$1,108 trillion to short change veterans health care, to produce crappy hardware, to bankroll a collective monopoly, to keep the congressional slush fund overflowing, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
How many ways can you say scam?
“D E F E N C E, what’s that spell…”
Austerity.
“Go Team!”
Defense spending does not cover spending on veterans health care. Veterans Affairs (VA) is a separate department from Department of Defense (DOD).
I appreciate the comment.
Wrt the concentric ring, there is an alleged Arab saying to that effect (I’ve seen a number of variations.):
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/744666-there-is-an-old-arab-bedouin-saying-i-against-my#:~:text=There%20is%20an%20old%20Arab%20Bedouin%20saying%3A%20I%2C%20against%20my,That%20is%20jungle%20law.
Via ovicipitum dura est
There powers that be might be doing diddly squat in regards to bird flu, but the marketplace is practically yelling out loud.
Yesterday @ WinCo supermarket, an 18 pack was $11, with a limit of 1 carton per customer, and I’ve been shopping at WinCo for donkeys years, and always there were stacks of hundreds of cartons of eggs, but yesterday they were down to 17 cartons.
I’m still more fortunate than you. My 18 egg carton was only $10, but damn, if the “large” eggs didn’ seem smaller than usual. I neglected to measure them previously. Somethimg else to keep an eye on!
Ten dollar 18 packs of local eggs for me, limited supply. Duck eggs went up to 7.50 a dozen this week (from six bucks) yet are still a better deal.
i havent bought a new chick in more than ten years…all mine are home hatched.
so…while i do feed them a lot of scratch during certain lean times of the year…my eggs are essentially free.
and far superior to anything that comes from Big Egg.
they quit laying in late summer, and in december…but then start up again.
i also hafta confine them periodically to remind them to lay eggs in whichever chicken house they’re staying in, rather than off in the bushes, somewheres.
theyre currently ramping up production, after the december strike action…up to 18/day.
when the last batch of teenagers get up to speed, i expect 2-3 dozen per day(theyre doing those little yolkless practice eggs, atm)
needless to say…i eat a lot of eggs,lol.
and the surplus, i sell for just below whatever the local store is doing…which is helpful at the end of the month when im skint.
yesterday, in anticipation of the rain that woke me,i planted pasture turnips, rye and wheat in the big run across the road to give them something to do, come the end of march, when the next big migration happens.
i sold a dressed, frozen and vacsealed rooster the other day to one of “my mexicans”(Tam and the boys’ term)…$16.
he kept asking how much…and i kept laughing until i got it across that i havent actually bought chicken in the store in many years…rarely even wander through the meat section, save for bacon….so i had no idea how much to charge.
didnt take much effort to process the bird(unlike a goose)…so i just made up a number…and he was happy to peel off the bills.
he’s coming saturday to buy 3 live chickens(12/each), 4 live geese(20/each) and 2 large cut live male sheeps(200/per).
i have spent quite a bit of time with him over the last 3 months convincing him how good goose is for Mole….and theyll mow his yard, too.
re: Trump as seen by German Left
This appears to be an erroneous longer text on what to expect under Trump written by German scholar Ingar Solty.
This in part failure of an article is noteworthy because Solty is not anyone.
You can be sure what Solty writes here is representative for many German progressives in the political arena.
For once the machine translation did work.
So I offer an archived link of that translated version (and yes Volcker is mentioned too in one quick instant):
Trump’s power is built on sand
Donald Trump’s second term will be bleak: he will stir up new conflicts on the outside and show authoritarian harshness on the inside. But his ostentatious strength is a facade. In reality, he is a president without popularity.
By Ingar Solty
https://archive.is/BVSdN
p.s. on Solty:
“Ingar Solty has been observing and writing about the United States of America for more than twenty years. In the next few days his book Trump’s Triumph? Divided States of America, Authoritarian State Restructuring and New Bloc Confrontation will be published by VSA-Verlag in Hamburg. He is also the author of the Marxisms Edition, which has been published by Brumaire Verlag since this year.”
p.s. Above Ingar Solty piece is of course by JACOBIN Germany.
The Dawn of PolicyFi
The best Bezzle evah! The guy should start a Substack…”Musings From The Couch In My Parent’s Basement”
That X post about the carnival is pretty spot on but looking at the responses makes it clear one of the biggest challenges is all the American mythology that were indoctrinated with.
People just can’t except that the game is rigged.
So many people chime in with “anybody can start a business” and other clichés.
They don’t realize if your poor, as well as not having money you don’t have time either, which is even more important when starting a business.
Just keep believing capitalism is infallible as you drive by the homeless incampment.
Jimmy Dore. utube, ~31+ minutes.
“They Ended My Career To Hide The Truth About 9/11!” – Fmr Congressman Curt Weldon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Q9WqtASRA
Curt Weldon? Really? Did you research him?
Shooting the messenger?