It occurred to me that the US loves to impose two-state solutions upon everybody except itself. When the US faced its own two-state solution -- the secession of the Confederate States of America in 1861, the federal government brutally suppressed the secession at the cost of roughly 3 million lives (my estimate of excess deaths, not the official ( Read more... )

I don't pay close attention to all the details of the EU/NATO/US alliance with Ukraine. But I ran across a detail that piqued my interest. And followed the thread ...

Germany’s decision to sign an agreement (Bundesregierung 2024) on security cooperation and long-term support with Ukraine neither represents an alternative to security guarantees ( Read more... )

I don't know whether younger people see it so readily, but I'm old enough to recall when the US was in favor of things like open markets and open borders -- and the US loved to paint its Soviet rivals as the ones who wanted to build walls and close markets ( Read more... )

Niall Ferguson, a conservative historian and public intellectual, claims that an empire's days are numbered once it spends more on interest payments than on its military. He calls this, rather boldly, Ferguson's Law.

"True of Hapsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to ( Read more... )

I'm hungry. But I should stretch before breakfast. After breakfast I have stuff to do before I head out around Noon, including work stuff, chores, and personal grooming. The more work stuff I do, the less I'll need to do on Sunday ( Read more... )

Awake 6:30am, should stretch at 7:00am, eat breakfast 7:30am, and either start telework early at 8:30am or take a walk break first. Undecided about weight lifting because my shoulders are bugging me, and with the 10K approaching on Saturday perhaps I shouldn't risk an injury, but we'll see how I feel this afternoon during class ( Read more... )

I play around with economic statistics for fun, and this morning I discovered something that surprised me ( Read more... )

During FDR's first term, as the US recovered from the Great Depression, federal tax receipts were always less than 5% of GDP. Since FDR's death in 1945 as WW2 was ending, federal tax receipts have ranged between 13-20% of GDP. Last year they were 16% of GDP, about in the middle of this 80-year range. Although marginal income tax rates have gone ( Read more... )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqDUaHdAqc

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On 28 January 2024, an attack drone, launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq-an Iranian-backed Shia militia group-struck U.S. military outpost Tower 22 in Rukban, northeast Jordan. The explosion resulted in the deaths of ( Read more... )

and the ONLY aspect of the election being reported on in the US media is how the outcome may affect relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States.