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When you don’t know anything, it doesn’t make sense to go into a room and just start talking. Over the years, I sat back and I listened. I watched. I noticed. I asked a lot of questions.
— Warrick Dunn
Reading Time: 5 minutes 10 seconds
Today is Thursday, January 5th, 2023. It is National Whipped Cream Day, National Bird Day, National Keto Day, and National Screenwriters Day.
On This Day
In 1781, Richmond was burned by British naval forces commanded by Benedict Arnold.
In 1914, the Ford Motor Company announced an eight-hour workday and minimum daily wage of $5 in salary plus bonuses.
In 1919, the German Workers’ Party, which would become the Nazi Party, was founded in Munich.
In 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began.
In 1949, in his State of the Union Address, President Harry Truman unveiled his “Fair Deal” program.
In 1957, in a “Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East,” President Dwight Eisenhower announced that countries in the region could request economic assistance and/or military aid if they were being threatened by armed aggression. The policy came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.
In 1976, the Khmer Rouge proclaimed the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea.
In 1991, Georgian forces entered Tskhinvali, sparking the First South Ossetia War.
In 1998, U.S. Rep. Sonny Bono (R-CA) died in a skiing accident in Nevada at age 62.
In 2005, Palomar Observatory-based astronomers discovered the dwarf planet Eris, later motivating the International Astronomical Union to define the term “planet” for the first time.
Today's Birthdays
Actress Diane Keaton is 77. Ohio Governor (and lockdowner) Mike DeWine, a Republican, is 76. Actress Pamela Sue Martin is 70. Dancer and choreographer Carrie Ann Inaba is 55. Marilyn Manson, born Brian Hugh Warner (not Josh Saviano) is 54. Actor and filmmaker Bradley Cooper is 48. NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year (1997) and three-time Pro Bowler Warrick Dunn is 48. Actress January Jones is 45.
The Links
A Bright Shining Disappointment (D. Dowd Muska, in National Review)
“In the ‘70s, it all seemed so simple.”
The ideology of lockdown lingers on (spiked)
“People worry about Long Covid. I think we should be more worried about Long Lockdown — the baleful onward march of the idea that liberty must occasionally be curtailed for the greater good.”
So long, Richard Shelby, and thanks for all the pork (Ars Technica)
“Shelby was a senator from Alabama for nearly four decades, starting out as a Democrat and then switching parties to become a Republican in 1994. But his jam was never partisan politics. Shelby preferred dealmaking and working with lawmakers in both parties to fund the government in general and his priorities in particular. And over the years, Shelby brought home the bacon to Alabama, delivering large contracts to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the Army's Redstone Arsenal, and large companies that agreed to do business in Alabama.”
Texas, Florida top destinations in one-way U-Haul rentals in 2022 (The Center Square)
“Ranking behind Texas and Florida as top growth and destination states were South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Idaho. California ranked last, followed by Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts and New York as the bottom growth states in 2022.”
This State Could Be the Last One (for a While, Anyway) to Expand Medicaid (The Pew Charitable Trusts)
“As to the federal government backing out of its commitment on the federal match, Berger noted that it hasn’t done so under Democratic or Republican presidents, or with either party in control of Congress. ‘It ain’t going to happen,’ he said.”
15 areas of common ground in the abortion debate (Secular Pro-Life)
“1. Evidenced-based informed consent for women seeking abortion, including information regarding contraindications, physical and mental health issues, and accurate fetal development information, and including offering women the option to view the ultrasound.”
An Opportunity to Reinvent an Obsolete Industry (Randal O’Toole)
“[I]t’s beginning to sink in that transit ridership is not going to recover to more than about 65 percent of what it was before the pandemic.”
“Environmentally-Friendly” Hybrid Car Catches Fire, Causes €500,000 Property Damage (NoTricksZone)
“When it comes to overall highway safety, experts and data suggest that there’s nothing safer on the road than the good old internal combustion engine vehicle.”
The New Pause lengthens: 100 Months with No Warming At All (Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley)
“How long will the current Pause last? The UN, getting desperate now that this second Pause is beginning to look rather serious, is saying — probably rightly — that the next el Niño will bring the Pause to an end, just as the last big one ended the previous 19-year Pause. But the fact of these frequent and prolonged Pauses provides a striking visual demonstration of the fact that the world is simply not warming at anything like the originally-predicted 0.3 K/decade.”
Chevron CEO Pushes Back On Biden Claims Of ‘War Profiteering’ (Oilprice.com)
“The oil market sets the price of oil and gasoline, not producers, Wirth said.”
Economic Reality Is Far Too Complex to Be Improved By Trade Restrictions (American Institute for Economic Research)
“How can tariff-imposing officials know from which other industries, and in which specific quantities, all the resources drawn by microchip tariffs into microchip production will come? They can’t know such a thing — at least not beforehand, which is when such knowledge is necessary. Further, even if by some miracle tariff-imposing officials were able to gather this knowledge beforehand, they would still not know whether or not the gains to the home economy from its enhanced capacity to produce microchips will outweigh or fall short of the losses to the home economy from its diminished capacity to produce steel, wheat, pharmaceutical products, medical care, and other goods and services besides microchips.”
RC-26 Condor Surveillance Planes Meet The End Of Their U.S. Military Career (The War Zone)
“[T]he Air Force decided to retire all 11 of the RC-26Bs across its fleet as a cost-saving measure, replacing the piloted reconnaissance assets with drones, some of which are increasingly being freed up from overseas combat missions. In this way, the Air Force argued that there will be no capability gap, although that remains to be seen.”
Substations: The Weakest Link in America’s Power Grid? (The Heritage Foundation)
“The answer is fairly simple: when the power goes out, everyone is affected. That is the appeal: scrambling chaos. What’s more, it can be done with minimal effort and planning. There’s nothing complicated about shooting up a substation and rendering it useless.”
Conflicts to Watch in 2023 (Council on Foreign Relations)
“Notably, for the first time since the PPS began fifteen years ago, the possibility of a foreign terrorist organization inflicting a mass casualty attack on the United States or a treaty ally was not proposed as a plausible contingency for the coming year. The 9/11 era, when foreign terrorist-related threats dominated the results of the PPS, appears to be over.”
Against Fertile Remains (The American Conservative)
“‘Saving the planet’ and ‘healing the climate’ are noble, but notional, goals. We cannot confuse the good end of creating soil health with the bad means of reducing the human body to fertilizer. The ends that green burial undertakers reference to justify their practice — moving away from toxic practices, improving the health of our natural surroundings, and so forth — are good, though largely theoretical, desires. They often use spiritual language in reference to an event that they would also dismiss as a merely physical one, and we certainly can’t blame them for that. But, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Your Turn
1. Is the “9/11 era” over?
2. Ever tried the keto diet?
3. What are your thoughts about “human composting”?
4. Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Radio Days, or Manhattan Murder Mystery?
5. Betty Draper or Joan Holloway?
1. Is the “9/11 era” over?
Yeah, they'll make up a new name for the next impending attack!!
2. Ever tried the keto diet?
I don't believe in diets......just eat less of the Bad stuff, more of the Healthy stuff and exercise more!
3. What are your thoughts about “human composting”?
Let's start the process in DC and especially in Delaware!!
4. Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Radio Days, or Manhattan Murder Mystery?
Not a big Woody Allen Fan!!
5. Betty Draper or Joan Holloway?
Bud Abbott or Lou Costello?
Thanks for the article by Mr. O’Toole: do I remember correctly when I say you interviewed him a number of years ago, back when you weren’t the intrepid Lone Wolf you are now?
While I do have sympathy for the folk in my country of residence who still rely on trains to get about, I’ve been watching the news about the severe U.K. train strikes with utter astonishment at the level of absolute denial that the unions hold about the way the world works now. The Rona and its results of world wide government mismanagement seem to have completely passed them by.
On a Friday I often drive down to our local train station to park at the (at best) ten percent full lot and the puppy and I walk down to a Friday street market nearby. I’ve seen trains stopping or going through the station, both toward Edinburgh or headed north, with one or two people on a carriage. I’m still waiting on a MSM interviewer asking the big question to union leaders -- how are these strikes going to engender faith that there will be ‘training’ options for people should they utilise this method of transport? A wonderful 80+ lady I know did not travel south to her own daughter’s funeral (a victim of the NHS’s closing of cancer treatments during the worst of the ‘plandemic’) because she feared her train being cancelled mid-trip (a common occurrence) and getting stuck in the midst of nowhere. Now that your brother in law has more in person business get togethers in the city, I need to always plan on fetching him there late because of the unreliability of late night trains to our rather big town on a main line. The less said about the London trains we tried to get back when a few inches of snow shut down London in early December the better.
Bring on Trek-like transporter technology!