Lost and Found

When my teeth bite down I can see the blood
Of a thousand men who have come and gone
Now we grieve 'cause now it's gone
Things were good when we were young
--Von Bondies

In some ways the holes in my heart still feel as large as those twin holes in the ground.

In other ways, those holes have been filled with knowledge and love.

As terrible as that day was, I am grateful for the positive changes it has brought. 

Like today's gospel (Luke 15:1-32) that tells us of the lost son who has been found.

Be Poor and Like It

"Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage and pious action, we do sugar o'er the devil himself."
-V (quoting Shakespeare) (V for Vendetta)

Another version of the 'suck it up' message. Euro leaders tell their people that 'abundance' is a thing of the past. Be poorer and like it.

One has to wonder how long a people is willing to endure hardship in support of a bureaucratic ideology.

Hiroshima Myth

"The principle of law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime...is guilty."
--Judge Dan Heywood (Judgment at Nuremburg)

On August 6, 1945, a United States B-29 dropped the world's first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered later that month to end WWII.

An estimated 120,000 perished in the two blasts with hundreds of thousands subsequently maimed or killed from radiation exposure. The lion's share of casualties were civilians--mostly women and children.

The popular myth trotted out to justify this carnage is that, by bombing the Japanese mainland and inflicting death and destruction to a degree that forced a surrender, the US subsequently avoided more than a million additional military casualties that would have resulted from the ongoing conventional war campaign--including an inevitable invasion operation of Japan.

As discussed in this article, this amounts to little more than the rationalization of atrocity.

The fact is that Japanese officials signaled their willingness to conditionally surrender earlier in 1945. Their condition was that Japanese emperor Hirohito would remain in power and not be subjected to criminal investigations after the war. The idea was to preserve as much Japanese culture as possible, and to provide continuity to facilitate economic and social functioning in post-war Japan.

Sadly, President Truman and his lackeys were unwilling to accept anything other than unconditional surrender--quite ironic since after the war Hirohito was indeed permitted to remain as emperor until his death in 1989. 

Why, then, were the bombs dropped?

The answer is that Truman and his staff, particularly his confidante and future secretary of state James Byrnes, had their eyes on Russia. Using atomic weapons would demonstrate US military strength to Russia and keep Stalin & Co at bay as the superpowers entered a 'cold war.' A secondary reason was that Congress could be assured that its secret appropriation for the Manhattan Project was bearing fruit that created near and longer term benefits.

Following the bombings, however, many officials, including Commander of the Third Fleet Admiral Bill Halsey, Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William Leahy, and atomic theorist Albert Einstein, condemned the action. 

This is when the propaganda machinery got into gear. Editorials and articles began to hit the pages of newspapers and magazines about the military necessity of the bombings. The myth has been continually reinforced, usually around this time of year, by political leaders and a complicit media. 

Perhaps in a brief moment of conscience, Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war at the time and chief propagator of the subsequent Hiroshima myth, wrote in his memoirs, 

"Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is not what actually happened but what is recorded as such." 

Indeed, Mr Stimson. My sense is that you and many of your contemporaries will face, quite literally, the trial of your lives on Judgment Day.

Blatant Lying

"Richard, it profits a man to give is soul for the whole world...but for Wales?"
--Sir Thomas More (A Man for All Seasons)

An administration bureaucrat looks straight into the camera and claims that it is "factually not true" that gasoline prices were rising prior to the Ukraine conflict.

These people will use any means when attempting to manage narratives. Blatant lying included.

Not Adding Up

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
--Buffalo Springfield

Something doesn't add up about Nancy Pelosi's provocative trip to Taiwan. Leftists have long expressed open admiration of the Chinese communist system. They have been silent on blatant human rights violations of the CCP for years, including the use of concentration camps for dissenters.

More recently, leftists sat idly by during the pro-freedom and independence protests in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019--protests that were ultimately put down by the Chinese government.

Now we are to believe that leftists like Pelosi are suddenly on the side of people seeking self-determination? Not only does this fly in the face of their affection for the Chinese model, but any reasoning mind realizes full well that leftists believe in authoritarian rule and collectivism, not self-determination. 

As the Chinese military incircles the island to conduct live fire 'military exercises,' one has to wonder what is really going on here.

Keep Him Out

But you won't get too far
'Cause you got to blame someone
For your own confusion
We're on guard this time
Against your final solution
--Red Rider

Interesting thesis about why leftists, including many on the conservative side, cannot let Trump back in the Oval Office. The primary answer is that it is not Trump, but the tens of millions of 'country class' that he represents. 

The elite cannot afford to have give those rubes, Clinton's 'deplorables,' a voice in the political process. And to keep that from happening, the ruling class will stop at nothing to keep that from happening.

The author suggests that leftists have a string of plans in the queue to keep Trump out of office.

Plan A. Use the Jan 6 show trials to keep Trump from running/winning. By most accounts, however, that isn't working.

Plan B. Indict Trump for 'seditious conspiracy' using the DOJ and other machinery of the deep state. Of course, it will be difficult to convince a large fraction of Americans that any such charges hold a modicum of legitimacy.

Plan C. Declare Trump ineligible to run under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. The legitimacy issue still holds.

Plan D. Simply beat Trump at the ballot box. The trouble is Democrats have no obvious candidate that could compete with Trump head-to-head this time around.

Plan E. Cheat (again) in the election. There is no question that Democrats will do what they can get away with (again) this time around. The issue is, given the heightened public awareness about election process shenanigans, how much they will truly be able to get away with in 2024.

Plan F. Take to the streets and riot. Do this until the 'proper' regime is secured in the White House.

It is easy to see why leftists are husting to grab guns ahead of this cycle.

Institutional Confidence

Oh, but I gotta think twice
Before I give my heart away
And I know all the game that you play
--George Michael

New Gallup poll indicates confidence in many US institutions continues to decline.

Outside of small business and the military, the percentage of people expressing considerable confidence is below 50% and, in many cases, in the teens moving toward single digits.

Some institutions, including the presidency, are down more than 10 percentage points in a year.

While these results might concern members of those institutions, they are unlikely to surprise the average person on the street.

Rationing and Rationalizing

First, I thought we were fighting for God. Then, I realized we were fighting for wealth and land. I was ashamed.
--Tiberias (Kingdom of Heaven)

Germany has begun rationing energy-related resources to compensate for their self-imposed sanctions with Russia. Am sure German citizens are being told to suck it up. 

Unfortunately we know that if goods do not cross borders, armies will.

How long will it be before people of G-7 countries, absent power and heat, look longingly at Russian resources and rationalize war to seize oil and gas for the 'greater good?'

Ceiling Prices

We run though the day
And stare at the night
Is your head full of noises?
For me, well, it's just like
The Fourth of July
--Roger Daltrey

Among the dumbest of economic policies pursued by politicians is the price ceiling. The thinking is typical authoritarian. Think prices are too high? Then simply declare them lower. Set a maximum price for transactions on the market. Punish those who engage in transactions at a higher-than-mandated price.

What happens when producers are forcibly restrained from selling output at higher prices? Supply leaves the market. Shortages develop. 

Not only does present supply leave the market, but future sources do as well. Entrepreneurs are less motivated to develop marginal or substitute sources of supply when the profit signal of higher prices is suppressed.

Over time, prices are likely to be much higher--particularly if it takes a long time to replace capacity once it is taken off the market by the caps.

Cogitate on that as G-7 bureaucrats mull price caps on Russian oil.

Deep Church

Desolate loving in your eyes
You used to make my life so sweet
Step out like a God-found child
I saw your eyes across the street
--Culture Club

Interesting interview with an Italian Catholic archbishop concerning the state of the world and of the church. He suggests that events of the last couple of years have been perpetrated by proponents of the Great Reset. Moreover, he argues that officials of the Catholic Church have done little to stop these people and that some are likely complicit.

He draws parallels to what is happening inside the church to the secular political world. Just as we have a deep state, we also have a deep church, with officials sympathetic to un-Godly principles reaching the highest levels of the church hierarchy.

Ultimately, he believes, the Great Reset is destined for failure because "it is inspired by inhuman and diabolical principles." However, its end may take time, depending both on human capacity to oppose it and on God's plans for Divine Providence.

His views will certainly not win him a ton of friends inside the deep church contingent. But his forthright challenge of status quo corruption instills confidence that God is indeed positioning for victory.

Still Radical

Benjamin Martin: May I sit with you?
Charlotte Selton: It's a free country. Or at least it will be.
--The Patriot

Two hundred and forty-six years after our nation's first law, its founding principle of liberty remains radical. From his early days of social existence, man has been tempted to surrender liberty to earthly rulers. As God warned Samuel, doing so invites despotism.

In 1776, the United States startled the world when it chose to 'throw off' that despotism in pursuit of self-determination. Since then, the authoritarians have been seeking to extinguish that flame of liberty and reclaim their power.

Events of the past few years suggest to some that the tyrants have made progress.

Personally, I prefer to believe that the opposite is happening. People tend to wake up when their freedoms are being stolen. 

Nearly a quarter of a millennium ago, we learned that when enough people wake up, they--the true radicals--have the capacity to push back.

Suck It Up

"Whatever it takes is something that happens to somebody else."
--Jake Lo

As Americans increasingly question the logic of a distant war--an in particular the associated sanctions--that are jacking domestic cost of living higher, the administration is telling the citizenry to 'suck it up.'

When asked how long US drivers should be expected to pay a 'war premium' for gasoline, the president responded, "As long as it takes."

Hard to imagine replies like this will play well at the ballot box.

Commitment to Stupidity

"He chose...poorly."
--Grail Knight (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

The larger question for big government types is this: Have not the past couple of years demonstrated the sheer ineptitude of central planning?

Public health. War and sanctions. Economic and monetary policy. Et al.

Hayek called it the fatal conceit--the belief that bureaucrats in a room can choose better than billions of individuals.

Ongoing belief in central planning constitutes a genuine commitment to stupidity.

Oil's Embeddedness

Then one day, he was shootin' at some food
And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude
Oil, that is
Black gold...Texas tea
--Flatt & Scruggs

Couple of interesting oil charts. First, crude vs events:

Second, that same series alongside the CPI:

Many people don't seem to realize just how embedded oil is in our everyday lives.

No Reason?

There's a gun and ammunition
Just inside the doorway
Use it only in emergency
Better you should pray to God
The Father and the Spirit
To guide you and protect you from up here
--Mike and the Mechanics

Another example of left-wing gun grabber hypocrisy.

More recently, one could substitute into the first panel the thousands of 'assault weapons' being sent to Ukraine streetfighters over the past few months.

No reason?

War Fatigue

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
--Don Henley

Governments wanting to engage in war with foreign entities must win consent of the citizenry to do so. If they view the war as illegitimate, the people have capacity to shut the war down via several avenues, including voting officials out of office, withholding funds for military resources, or even overthrowing the regime prosecuting illegitimate war.

Consequently, governments must convince people that their war is just. They must do so at the outset of the conflict, and then continue to do so. Because war requires ongoing sacrifice in order to fund the war effort, it is possible that enthusiasm for war will wane as people increasingly regret what they must forfeit as conflict drags on.

It appears that support for US involvement in the Ukraine conflict is already waning. Surveys suggest that the American public is increasingly wary of US efforts to harm Russia in manners that hurt the domestic economy.

That, of course, is precisely what sanctions do. Any effort to restrict production and trade with entities abroad damages standard of living at home.

As more Americans realize that sanctions are not unilateral, this administration loses its public grant of legitimacy for engaging the country in war.

Art of Hybrid War

"War is a continuation of politics by other means--von Clausewitz."
--Captain Frank Ramsey (Crimson Tide)

Interesting post that fades mainstream media claims that things are going poorly for Russia in Ukraine. The central claim is that Russia is slowly and deliberately tightening the vise around territory that is strategically meaningful. 

Moreover, by keeping the pace deliberate, Russia puts more pressure on Western economic systems that have essentially sanctioned themselves into positions of peril. That peril includes long-term damage to a dollar-denominated financial system.

Russia may be honing the art of hybrid war.

New Detente

Anatoli Grushkov: I will miss so very much talking to William.
Jack Ryan: Me too.
Anatoli Grushkov: Perhaps, from time to time, you and I could talk.
Jack Ryan: Yeah, I'd like that.
--The Sum of All Fears

Statesman Henry Kissinger urges the West to cease trying to inflict crushing military and economic defeat of Russia, and suggests that negotiations should begin to head off a more serious, irreversible conflict.

The 98 yr old architect of detente diplomacy posited that these negotiations should shoot for a return to the pre-war status quo. This would include Ukraine accepting a peace deal that ceded formal control of Crimea and also tolerated informal Russian influence in the eastern Donetsk region.

Predictably, Kissinger's recommendations set off the blue check crowd that generally seems dead set on global thermonuclear war. This mindset has been reinforced by a US administration that has failed to talks of any kind toward a negotiated peace.

We can be pretty sure that, if Henry Kissinger were still secretary of state, he would be in the middle of peace talks, seeking to broker a New Detente.

Status Quo Changing

"The status quo has changed, son."
--Patrick Gates (National Treasure)

Interesting piece by Louis Gave on the possible impact of the Ukraine conflict and associated sanctions on the USD's reserve currency status. He suggests that, in an age of fiat currencies, military superiority strengthens a nation's currency and has gone a long way toward solidifying the dollar's reserve currency status.

However, cheap military technologies such as the drones that have been deployed en force in Ukraine are changing the game of warfare--to the extent that they might substantially reduce the impact of conventional weaponry that the US holds a lock on. Should this come to pass, then Big Defense loses value alongside the US dollar's status.

In addition to the impact of the war on the ground, Gave suggests that the weaponization of finance as reflected by the blitzkrieg of war-related sanctions is tutoring the world about the risks of depending on the USD. Developed country bonds have been getting pounded while developing country bonds have been strong--quite the turn from the lessons of the Asian Contagion in the late 1990s. Lesson: Why hold US/EU bonds in this environment?

Moreover, sanctions have demonstrated that the US and its allies can run roughshod over property rights at their discretion. If the wealth of Russian oligarchs can be confiscated so abruptly, then why not the assets of any entity deemed to be an adversary of the US? Lesson: Why depend so highly on a financial system controlled by the US?

The status quo may indeed be changing.

Diplomatic Immunity

Arjen Rudd: Diplomatic immunity..!
Roger Murtaugh: Has just been revoked!
--Lethal Weapon 2

EU leaders are increasingly calling for diplomatic solutions to end the Ukraine conflict. The leaders of France, Germany, and Italy have all spoken directly with Putin.

Meanwhile the US continues to be MIA on the diplomatic front. Biden has not spoken with Putin since the war began. The secretary of state has not spoken with his Russian counterpart either.

Instead, the US has been subsidizing Ukraine's military.

The message behind this behavior is obvious. This administration is declaring diplomatic immunity. It favors war over peace.