Caption: To ride about. VM Checking in from the road.
Bullet Points:
** When asked in the Oval Office why he did not want the “best and brightest from around the world” at Harvard, President Donald Trump said the university is “going to teach remedial math” and questioned how students who “can’t add two and two” get into the Ivy League school.
** Chicago needs a massive bailout. Illinois is broke. Kamala isn’t there to save them, nor is the US Congress. Senator Dick Durban, reading the tea leaves, is jumping ship like a rat sensing rising water in the bilge. As a recognized expert in Chapter 9 bankruptcy (read my book), I can suggest that their problem is far deeper than that which a reorganization can manage. Chicago must sell their assets to pay creditors (public employee unions stand first in line). Midway Airport, the City’s parking meters, the parking garages under Millennium Park, and the Skyway will have to go on the auction block. The City owns about 10,000 parcels of land, mostly ghetto, on the South and West sides. Much of the land has been in the City inventory since the early 1980s. The City has acquired that land through the foreclosure of demolition liens, the Cook County tax scavenger sale, property condemnation, and sometimes direct purchase. It would all need to be monetized and sold to satisfy creditors. The public employee union contracts could be forced to be renegotiated by the bankruptcy court to reduce the city’s overhead. The loss of income from the parking meters and the airport will impact the city post-Chapter 9. I have no idea what Chicago will look like when they’re done with it. It will have to be DOGED completely. The bankruptcy court can oversee that process.
** This looks like cheating, MRSBRM. And I wonder if it works as advertised.
** Huygens landing on Titan – a cool video when you consider what you’re seeing. It would be nice if it also had some scale reference, but even so.
** (zerohedge) There’s been a noticeable frustration and impatience coming from the White House at the lack of progress toward peace. At first, more of the pressure seemed to be on Zelensky and the Ukrainian side, but recent weeks have seen Trump’s rhetoric shift to more pressure on Putin and the Kremlin.
Russia (and Vlad) didn’t get the memo. The Russian “long march” will be more difficult to stop than President Trump thought it would be, because they want to take back the Warsaw Pact countries, and they’re threatening WW3 if they don’t get what they want. Putin made a calculation when he invaded Ukraine, and it didn’t go to plan. Old Europe is just as rotten as he thought it was, and Pedo Joe and friends started the money laundry in Ukraine, which he might have considered because it’s the same game they played in Afghanistan.
US sanctions on Russian oil (not just crashing the price) are one move that the US has, and so is continuing the arms and money flow to prop up the Ukrainian mafia/government. The Euros might spend a trillion to save Ukraine – and then again, they might not. The problem is not so much arming Ukraine and continuing tactical strikes into the Russian borderlands that disrupt logistics, it’s manpower (or in this modern age, person power). The Russians don’t care how many of their people die in a forever war, and the Ukrainians are running out of meat.
** The Swamp is frustrated—To get a sense of how desperate President Trump’s opponents have become, consider the rallying cry issued by Hillary Clinton to her fellow travelers last Friday on the eve of Memorial Day Weekend. They trotted out Hillary, the Bitch of Benghazi: “I want you to talk to two people — friends, neighbors, cookout attendees — about why Trump’s proposed budget would be a disaster for American kids.”
Imagine yourself sitting down to enjoy a hot dog and a beer in the warm spring weather, only to be accosted by your progressive brother-in-law who insists on boring the bejabbers out of you with a rote recitation of talking points thoughtfully provided by HRC. It’s difficult to imagine a better strategy for chasing more “normies” away from the Democratic Party, which is already hemorrhaging voters by the millions. That Clinton thinks sending pushy progressives out to harass their friends and neighbors is a helpful tactic for killing the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” is indicative of how clueless she and the rest of the Democrats are about how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the last decade.” (more at the Spectator)
Punting the Ball
The Administration is not opting for severe spending restraint, which is disappointing but not entirely unexpected, and not necessarily fatal. Instead, it’s going all-in on growth, fueled by deregulation, favorable capital conditions, and the storyline of competent economic stewardship.
Will it work? It might. It wouldn’t be shocking. One could even draw a comparison, without irony, to “The Reagan Revolution.” I think this was the plan from the beginning.
Make no mistake: this is a high-stakes trade. The wager is that a robust Trump-GDP engine can outrun the gravitational pull of structural deficits. Economic Growth and Compounding are the two most potent forces in the human sphere. If this works, they’ll call it visionary. If it fails, they’ll say the administration rolled the dice with America’s fiscal soul. History has an odd way of sorting credit and blame. But growth?
Have you forgotten about Cuba?
Christopher Columbus visited Cuba in 1492. In the early 1500s, it became a Spanish colony. In 1898, the U.S. military occupied it following the Spanish-American War. In 1902, Cuba became an independent nation heavily influenced by the United States. Following the revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro installed a Marxist government, and so began the long decline characteristic of all Marxist states. Today’s average income is about the equivalent of US$17.oo/month.
By comparison, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported median weekly earnings of $1,192 for full-time wage and salary workers in the first quarter of 2025, which equates to roughly $5,166 per month.
When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, Cuba lost most of its economic subsidies and around 80% of its foreign trade. This resulted in widespread unemployment and cutbacks in electrical generation and food production.
A 24-fold devaluation of the Cuban peso occurred in 2021, sparking an inflation rate between 174% and 700%. Inflation has declined thanks to the population’s inability to pay higher prices, but is expected to run close to 28% in 2025. It is estimated that 89% of Cubans live in extreme poverty. Add political repression, plus the open border policies of the Biden Regime, and this may explain why 850,000 Cuban immigrants entered the United States from 2022 to 2024. They don’t want to go home, and almost all claim asylum. Asylum requires a well-founded fear of persecution. Living in a communist hellhole as they do, it’s not so much persecution as it is poverty.
Systemic failures are numerous. Due to a roughly $3-billion trade deficit, Cuba has little money to buy food, medicine, spare parts, or maintain its infrastructure. In the six months between October 2024 and March 2025, the national electric grid failed four times, leaving the country without electricity for stoves, lights, running water, hospital equipment, or refrigeration.
Agriculture is in decline due to a lack of gasoline, lubricants, fertilizer, and pesticides. Sugar production has declined by 85% since 2019, from 1.3 million metric tons to only 200,000 in 2025. This is a level not seen since the late 19th century. In conjunction, the production of sugar-based alcohol used to make rum dropped by 70% during the same time, reducing Cuba’s ability to earn export dollars.
In response to Cuba’s economic plight, its elitist president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, said, “We will make more Revolution and more Socialism.” Exactly! Double down on stupid. When you find yourself in a Marxist hole, keep digging.
Will Cuba end up in the Chinese Orbit? A satrap of Beijing? They could put IRBMs there aimed at us! What a concept.
From the Mail Bag
Q – LL, how do geologists accurately date rocks?
A – Not all rocks are equal. There are three general categories: Metamorphic, Igneous, and Sedimentary. Sediment is more difficult to date because of the way it accumulates. If you can find things in the sediment that were once living, you can measure carbon-14 decay. Igneous (and some metamorphic) rocks contain zircon crystals formed in volcanoes. Encapsulated within those crystals is uranium (U), and we can accurately judge the decay rate of uranium to lead (Pb). The uranium decay chain, also known as the uranium-radium series, is a sequence of radioactive decays that starts with Uranium-238 and ends with the stable Lead-206. This chain involves a series of alpha and beta decays, resulting in various daughter isotopes, including thorium, protactinium, radium, and radon
Zircon U-Pb dating is a radiometric dating method used to determine the age of rocks, particularly those containing zircon crystals. This technique relies on measuring the ratio of uranium to lead isotopes in zircon, which are products of uranium’s radioactive decay. Zircon is a mineral that strongly rejects lead during its formation, meaning any lead found in zircon is from the decay of uranium.
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- Uranium-238: Starts the chain, decaying through a series of steps.
- Thorium-234: Uranium-238 undergoes alpha decay to become Thorium-234.
- Protactinium-234: Thorium-234 undergoes beta decay to become Protactinium-234.
- Uranium-238: Starts the chain, decaying through a series of steps.
-
- Uranium-234: Protactinium-234 undergoes beta decay to become Uranium-234.
- Uranium-234: Protactinium-234 undergoes beta decay to become Uranium-234.
-
- Thorium-230: Uranium-234 undergoes alpha decay to become Thorium-230.
- Thorium-230: Uranium-234 undergoes alpha decay to become Thorium-230.
-
- Radium-226: Thorium-230 undergoes alpha decay to become Radium-226.
- Radium-226: Thorium-230 undergoes alpha decay to become Radium-226.
-
- Radon-222: Radium-226 undergoes alpha decay to become Radon-222.
- Radon-222: Radium-226 undergoes alpha decay to become Radon-222.
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- Polonium-218: Radon-222 undergoes alpha decay to become Polonium-218.
- Polonium-218: Radon-222 undergoes alpha decay to become Polonium-218.
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- Lead-206: After several more alpha and beta decays, the chain eventually reaches Lead-206, a stable isotope.
By measuring the amount of each element in uranium’s decay process, you can accurately date when the zircon crystal formed. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, this chain is vital for understanding the natural radioactive decay processes and geological dating. The Uranium-238 decay chain is also a long-lived chain, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Cover Up
I’m working on some concepts for the cover of the new book of short stories, Conduct Unbecoming. This is a SISU take-off, and it may be too simple. What do you think? I’m looking for feedback. The guy who offered to do a cover for me flaked on me.
Identify the Aircraft
1
2
3
4
5 – 6 – 7
8
Only one of these aircraft was built – it may be a tougher ID.
End
IDA:
1. Nakajima A2N
2. Fokker T.VIII
3. Sikorsky R-4
4. Vought OS2U Kingfisher
5. McDonnell F2H Banshee
6. McDonnell F3H Demon
7. McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
8. Beechcraft YAU-22A
(1) A4Ns and Jeans.
(2) Fokker T VIII
(3) Sikorsky R-4
(4) Kingfisher
(5-7) Phantom, Demon, Phantom II
(8) IDK
– Kle.
This past Memorial Day, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson wished everyone a “Happy Africa Day”. That kind of put me off my feed. Voters in that city continue to elect scallywags, reprobates, and downright thieves so they are beyond ripe for an intervention and it won’t be pretty. Will it “save” Chicago? Who knows but I doubt it will make any reasonable difference until voters decide their city is worth saving.
Chicago has diligently dug their hole for a century; they’re in the “Find Out” portion of history.
why does he have to drool?
OK, otherwise.
Nah, better ‘n OK, though I haven’t read any of the stories – yet.
I did not notice the drool until you mentioned it.
I used to buy record albums based on the cover art. That generally worked for me.
But I don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Anymore.
As long as the cover doesn’t repel me. This does not.
Thought it was a stylization detail…but yeah, lose the drool…and maybe add an ‘Old Guys Rule’ ballcap (heh).
x2
Drool, or blood?
—
“buy record albums based on the cover art”
One should buy wine based on the ferocity of the animal on the label. “Yellowtail” wine from Australia is thus very good by this metric, because a kangaroo can disembowel a man with a good kick. (I suppose it’d be a very BAD kick from the perspective of the guy picking his intestines off of the ground.)
I no longer by record albums. I don’t purchase much music at all anymore.
But when I did, I typically did not have the opportunity to be exposed to the content a prior.
Thus, I bought a lot of stuff that totally blew me away when I listened to it for the first time.
Yes first album, ELO first album, JoJo Gunne, The Climax Chicago Blues Band, etc.
I might have bought that wine.
Hey, nothing wrong with Yellowtail… altho might have to stick with our preferred Hess after the tariffs take a $7 bottle of YT cab to $8.
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Nakajima A4N
2. Fokker T.VIII
3. Sikorsky R-4
4. Vought OS2U Kingfisher
5. McDonnell F2H Banshee
6. McDonnell F3H Demon
7. McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
8. Beechcraft YAU-22A
About Cuba – insert tongue in cheek…if they keep digging, won’t they end up in China anyway?
When you posted a comment yesterday saying that there’d be something new today I thought this would be a good time for Snoopy doing the happy dance.
Please note: I did not say the Sloopy happy dance – that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.
RIP Rick Derringer.
Chicago, and a few other junkyard dumpster fire cities who continue to vote for morons and downright scallawags to run their cities into the ground…then ask: “please sir, may I have another”: Heard a blip on SALT (re:BB Bill)…why are WTP paying for state deficits by this asinine back door? When this “program” gets threatened, those asphyxiating cities and the rest of state by extension whine and cry like the crybaby’s they are because their grifter teat is being taken away. (A little farmer alliteration there having watched a few episodes of Clarkson Farm where British government geniuses are actively destroying food production…and critical village pubs…for the exact reason WTP left England in the first place). I will never go back to Chicago, just landing at O’hare gives me the heebee jeebees, starts with the laundry list of tacked-on city and state taxes to rent a car for a few days knowing it’s thieves at work.)
***
Our Money, and waste & fraud by officials: Trip to town yesterday, roads still suck, worse actually…curious where my fuel and registration ‘road and bridge’ etc. taxes are going? Certainly not the roads or bridges. But hey, we have mental health “services” for the homeless. Went to pre-buy propane for a Fall refill, $4.93 per gallon!!? Need PDJT to hurry up and get us back on energy independence, propane should be around $2 per gallon…it’s gas for heaven’s sake, not lithium.
***
Love the book cover…it does have a SISU “feel”. A few of those male cheaters competing in girls sports should be forced to stand there while he scares them straight with “the look”. Might work. Include the complicit idiots running school districts, could use a dose of ‘don’t mess with me’ maleness staring them down. Toxic masculinity is all that keeps the bad from overrunning the good. This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cllhJGMVsYs
I abhor driving through Illinois.
The backroads are very nice, small towns, farms, and decent places…but the major highways – constantly under grifter construction – are a nightmare, all the time, everyday…plus tolls.
It’s not the roads, it’s the regime.
Chicago – selling off the cash generating assets to BlackRock or City of London is a bad idea, and just what the WEF acolytes keep creating with these bankruptcies Greeceanyon? The public pension plans will have to take a bigger hit especially the teachers union.
Russia will take the entire Black Sea Coast to include Odessa. Congratulations Zelensky and company. Trump won’t get us involved in Europe’s war in the east. Macron, for all his belicosity, can’t even fend off his elderly wife’s right hook. He won’t be leading the EU to military victory. Neither will all the roaring mice on Russia’s border. Trump didn’t start this war but the borg (foreign policy establishment + neocons) sure wants to pin it on him if they can’t get WW3 going as an excuse to wipe out all that debt the EU and member states can’t pay off.
“selling off the cash generating assets to BlackRock or City of London is a bad idea”
Don’t be silly, Fredrick! We already belong to BlackRock and CoL. It wouldn’t be “selling off –” it’d be a sort of ritual/kabuki transfer of power they already have. Does the bee own the honey in her hive? Does the sheep grow wool for his own benefit? Of course not! Actual human beings, the beekeeper and the shepherd, own not just the honey and the wool, but hold the very lives of the bee and the sheep in their hands. I for one welcome the continued depredations of our Eternal Overlords.
—
“elderly wife’s right hook”
It wasn’t a punch, it was a full-on, two handed shove to the face. But Candace Owens asks, “at what age does it become inappropriate for a father to physically discipline his child?” Not that Brigitte is actually Emmanuel’s biological father, post sex-change and terrible wig. Not at all. What errant nonsense. Brigitte has always been a woman. A married, 39-year old woman who groomed her then 15-year old student, true, but a woman.
If you recall your history, Emperor Tiberius told his son that money does not stink, and just as importantly, you are supposed to shear the sheep, not skin them.
I did not know that. Thanks!
Doan know much ’bout Chi; I like to think I know about Manhattan. ‘ticularly from the mid-60s up to the early 90s when I. like many others, skedaddled.
From the late ’50s when Manhattan was vibrant up ’til Lindsay when it began on the downslope (and then Beame when it went over the cliff) people were flocking in from all over: every state (even Cali) and all over the world: vibrant and verdant, made so by Uncle Sam’s greenery.
Today everybody’s said their good-bye to Broadway; it’ll be a very long time (if ever) ’til, like the Phoenix, it’ll rise from its ashes.
Remembering the old lady at her finest, I can’t help thinking: Whadda shame!
I like the cover image, though the head should be lower in the frame such that the title and subtitle are above the head. Then try black for the font.
Good eye…Jule…our resident artist…would approve.
Oy…’Jules’
the “best and brightest from around the world” at Harvard
Well, it’s complicated. Putting aside institutional (i.e. Harvard’s) wants and needs and focusing on simple undergrad demographics first, Harvard does have a lot of bright people (for values of “bright”). It also has not so bright people, which we’ll get to. Ron Unz [1] did a study probably 15 years ago, looking at proportional student demographics versus “aptitude”. It’s difficult to quantify “aptitude” (or “potential”) so he used an objective proxy, namely PSAT scores [2]. If you ranked students by PSAT scores and then looked at their proportional ethnic representation at Harvard (and other Ivy League, plus a few other elite schools such as MIT and CalTech) as undergrads you found that two groups were UNDERrepresented by two to four-fold. One group was OVERrepresented by about the same proportion, and two groups were essentially INFINITELY overrepresented. Non-Jewish whites NJW were the most underrepresented at up to fourfold. Asians (I think this lumped East and South Asians) were generally two to threefold under. Jews were two to threefold overrepresented [3], versus their PSAT scores. Hispanics and blacks were overrepresented “infinitely” (because the denominator, the number of qualified, by high PSAT scores) Hispanics and blacks was zero, or close to it. As eny fule no, dividing by zero gives weird answers). Why the NJW/Asian/Jewish business I don’t know. But the reason for the overrepresentation of Hispanics and blacks is obvious.
—
[1] At least half the articles at unz.com are probably garbage, and the comments section is a mix of some surprisingly knowledgeable and erudite people, at least as many complete jerks, and a few serious nutjobs. But Ron Unz’s study on demographics and representation at elite colleges I think was well done. I think he did the study in response to the lawsuits alleging anti-Asian admission bias. (Which totally happens — not to me personally, but it happens. That said, we shall see if South Asians continue to be discriminated against now that more and more Indians are rising in leadership in Big Academia, Tech, and Government. East Asians are practically autistic compared to South Asians, when it comes to politics, power, and money. My bet is that in future, EAs and NJWs will continue to be underrepresented, and Jews and Indians will both be overrepresented. And we will still have the mandatory, if not-talented tenth.)
[2] PSAT is sort of a preparatory test for the SATs which everyone has heard of. Administered by the same company. Now PSAT scores are an imperfect measure of “aptitude” but they do have the benefit of being uniform across the nation (as in the valedictorian of Baltimore PHS #113 may be illiterate, whereas the 50th percentile grad of Scarsdale, NY, or Brookline, MA HS might be reading and mathing at a college sophomore level already, so class ranking or GPA are TERRIBLE measures of academic achievement/aptitude). And PSATs are objectively scored. This of course is why colleges disproportionately (IMNSHO) weigh “essays” and “life experiences” and so forth.
[3] “Jewishness” was imperfectly, probably very imperfectly, assessed. I don’t think that it’s part of a student’s admission profile, so Unz, if I recall, used something like surname and probably ZIP code to classify individuals. A guy called Cohen or a girl called Levine is almost certainly Jewish, but what about a guy called Grosskreutz? That’s where the ZIP stuff comes in. A Grosskreutz from say North Dakota? (h/t boron) Eh, who knows? A guy called Grosskreutz from Scarsdale, or Beachwood, OH, or Newton, MA? Different story. Anyway, this was probably the weakest part of the methodology of Unz’ study.
Punting, the BBB and an attempt to paragraph: Reagan faced the same problem that Nixon faced and went for economic growth instead of cutting out the corruption in our government. The Watergate plumbers weren’t after the DNC’s political strategy play book for the next election cycle. The plumbers went into Watergate to retrieve in whole the blackmail books with names, dates, individuals and their sex partners used for blackmailing Republicans and Democrats alike. Individuals in Congress, the federal government and the puzzle palace apparently were all being coerced in some manner. Had White House insiders not called the cops, the plumbers would have retrieved the material and the result would be a cancer cut out early before infecting the entire government.
Blackmail or other forms of impressing upon others is why so many good things don’t happen.
Eggsackly.
Chicago stands out, so does New York City, and all the other major cities. Unfortunately, even small towns are facing the crunch of bureaucratic madness. They face a starker future, since their debtors have larger resources to recover debts, and a loss of a good credit rating is a death sentence for a city without revenue or hope for any in the future. Pensions from those cities might disappear, and the honest public sector folks will find poverty their future. Infrastructure decay will be rapid. The roads first, then the water. Sewers will fail and the most basic need of sanitation will become a major concern. Those with money will flee, and the first will probably be those that were major contributors to the disaster.
Hillary Clinton
Does anyone in the Dimocratic Party think she has any relevance? Or, their current poster child, Jasmine Crockett? She was recently on some talking head show boasting when they win the midterms she will become the chair of the Oversight Committee and go after Trump.
Remember Big Mike saving some should give up a little so other can have more? Much of the “more” gets gleefully siphoned off by the party insiders as their just reward for all their hard work. DOGE is crippling their gravy train; that is what is creating all the outrage.
———–
Conduct Unbecoming
Not an art critic but I like it. Agree with others that black font would look better. Maybe a cauliflower ear? Facial scar?
——–
What will happen when RFK Jr. comes up with a way to kick Big Pharma advertising off television? The networks will go broke. To survive, they will need to provide content people will want to see including real news, IMO. Not that I care; I haven’t owned a television for years.
———–
Russia/Ukraine
Two psychos on each side in charge. How does PDJT handle that? One or both need to be taken out by their own people, IMO.
“Russia/Ukraine” IMHO
Vladimir Vladimirovich is crazy like a fox; I wouldn’t even attempt to estimate his IQ – nor his goal(s) now that he’s been threatened
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych is a little big-mouth who was promised certain monies with a protected exit and safe house; now, all he has to do is live long enough to collect
neither is psycho
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych can dress up like a woman and play the piano with his penis. True it was his lounge act. I’ve never seen Putin do that but maybe the video has been suppressed?
Glad I already ate…didn’t need that visual. Heh
“Will Cuba end up in the Chinese Orbit? A satrap of Beijing? They could put IRBMs there aimed at us! What a concept.”
~~
A replay of JFK’s Cuban missile crisis? What a concept! Will the same things work today? Heck if I know. Growing up in Miami at the time, for the rest of school through high school graduation, my world included people who practically gambled their lives to get away from Cuba. From today’s perspective, I’m not sure anyone came over in the “anything that will float” group, but a lot of friends and neighbors were Cuban. Funny how a lot of the kids born in the “paradise” their parents brought them to seem to swallow the crap about socialist paradise. Not all, but not zero.
Chiraq will be the ‘tip’ of the iceberg. It will be interesting to listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the fed refuses to bail them out. And yes, the Chapt 9 bankruptcy will open up a host of renegotiations, not the least of which will be pension funds. I think Illinois will be next, followed by either LA or SFO, or the state of California. The dominoes are starting to line up preparatory to a fiscal fall…
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-still-haunts-citys-finances-16-years-later
Wow.
‘Quick fix’ my rear end…more like a ‘quick bank account filler upper’ for Daley’s pals. At least when the mob did it you knew, didn’t hide their thievery so much. Today politicians of every stripe act like they are doing us a favor while robbing us blind.
The header photo of the Beechcraft looks very similar to Marchetti sf260 my uncle used to have. It was camo and it was fast.
1. Link was broken, so can’t see what looks like cheating.
.
2. Cover:
2A) Add a dropshadow behind your letters, so they stand out. Red will work fine if you make the background darker, but you need a lot more contrast for the letters to be readable.
2B) A chunkier font, and making all words larger, will also make it more readable at thumbnail size once you’ve put in a dropshadow.
An excellent post, as always, and I especially enjoyed this, “Senator Dick Durban, reading the tea leaves, is jumping ship like a rat sensing rising water in the bilge.”
Congrats on the book.
Durban didn’t want to ridt the Titanic beneath the waves.
Cover… drop the long hair and drool… looks too much like a street miscreant. Bald doesn’t work either.