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What happens with private credit is a story that really needs watching. Sounds very like 2008.

I liked this video too, NYT. President defying Judiciary, President defying independence of the States, for no reason anyone can discern.

Derek Thompson: Whoever wins the next few elections will face the same arithmetic. The U.S. cannot grow through native-born fertility alone. As immigration collapses, the US population will stagnate and even shrink. Urban economics will buckle. Fields will go unharvested. Homes will go unbuilt. Sick Americans will go untreated. Life-saving medicines will go undiscovered. Many voters hated the era of record immigration. They might hate the era of record deportations even more.

Roger coughed, said something to himself, and cleaned up a spill. He thought of something he had thought of before. He noticed, while he walked to wring out the sponge that he had used to clean the spill, that there were other spills and irregularities that needed to be dealt with; and having wrung out the sponge he made those areas he had noticed orderly and regular, while thinking this thought he had had before.

Roger said something to himself, articulating a thought, and he thought the thought must be a pleasant one since he liked to have it and since he would resist being without it, although there were times, he considered, too, when the thought he believed to be pleasant would suggest another thought he believed to be not, and at those times he would not resist being without it. He might even start humming.

Roger wrung out the sponge, hummed, coughed and thought of something. Then he said something to himself and started moving away from the sponge, which was moist and mainly clean now but not entirely clean yet. He went farther and farther from the motionless sponge, sometimes quickly, sometimes haltingly, but never at a uniform rate. Roger didn’t tend to grumble and he didn’t grumble now. He didn’t say anything or think anything but continued to move away from the sponge until he began to get near the cart. When he got near to the cart, about a stone’s throw away, he began to move more and more slowly. He didn’t grumble. He thought briefly of the thing he had thought before and he thought also of a thing he had thought about it, which made him grumble then he coughed and opened the door.

He saw the cart and exchanged words with a person who stood by the cart. Some of these words were perfunctory and yet most involved the cart, which now Roger, coughing heavily, pushed away from the person who’d been standing beside it. The person said something. Roger replied to the person with something uttered and speedily started pushing the cart to a location where he found materials.

He thought of one thing while pushing the cart down to the location, and of another thing pushing the cart, which was now laden with some materials, back up to the original location; and of the same thing he had been thinking when he pushed the cart down a second time as he had when he pushed it back up the first time; then of something entirely different when he pushed the cart back up a second time. It was only after he had pushed the cart down for the fifth time that he thought again of what he had thought when he pushed the cart down for the first time.

Now he was coughing heavily and staring at a still and empty cart. Now he was moving farther and farther, sometimes in a vehicle, from the motionless cart.

Mark Lee Greenblatt: The first red flag is apparent enough: Mr. Homan and the White House gave inconsistent responses to the allegations. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that Mr. Homan never took the money — a flat, categorical denial. Mr. Homan has said only that he did nothing wrong and nothing illegal. Notice the difference.

[i.e., Homan himself hasn’t denied taking the money, but the Whitehouse has denied that he has.]

Not that it matters, but my guess as to what the President means here: he’s reducing the markups by these amounts. So if the markup is 1000%, he’s taking 100% or 500 % out of that.

You have to give the devil his due but I’m not sure I can agree with this assessment of Kushner just yet. As someone says in the replies to this post, Kushner was largely responsible for the Abraham Accords, which as I recall badly shunted the Palestinians aside during the negotiations, and contributed significantly to the discontent that resulted in October 7th. Additionally, we’ve yet to see what will come of the current cease fire. So I am reserving judgment.

Meanwhile, a real foreign achievement for the United States would I think involve pivoting away from the Middle East toward Asia, which has been the case for decades.

Wondering if Measure for Measure might be the Shakespeare play for this American moment: Society was too lenient with lawbreakers under the Duke, so an Angelo was needed to prosecute Justice harshly and to the letter, so as to restore balance and respect for the law.

However, Angelo himself has proven to be a bit lawless and in need of leniency. And now the Duke, we hope, our true ruler, will take off his disguise, and return society into a place where both law and mercy can prevail.

Interesting: Until the early 1930s, the Supreme Court had never once used the First Amendment to block the imprisonment of dissenters.

David French: The combatants in the culture war have a voracious need for political ammunition. It’s important to constantly prove that “they” are evil, and “they” want you dead.

Rereading about Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely

Looking into the status of the Gulf of America controversy. It seems that the executive order the president signed establishes only that the executive branch of the government is required to use the term — and that’s where the matter stands. Something I didn’t know: “Mexico” is a word meaning Aztec.

On the new ballroom of the White House, Debbie Millman, NYT.

Sir Walter Scott, 1829, July 7.—I was rather apprehensive that I might have felt my unusual dissipation this morning, but not a whit; I rose as cool as a cucumber, and set about to my work till breakfast-time. I am to dine with Ballantyne to-day. To-morrow with John Murray. This sounds sadly like idleness, except what may be done either in the morning before breakfast, or in the broken portion of the day between attendance on the Court and my dinner meal,—a vile, drowsy, yawning, fagged portion of existence, which resembles one’s day, as a portion of the shirt, escaping betwixt one’s waistcoat and breeches, indicates his linen.

Hanania: it’s just the little things that remind you we’re now being ruled by savages

Relevant news: local law enforcement working with I.C.E. (NYT)

I was noticing the Times kind of blundered its initial coverage of the Quanitico speech to the generals. Trump buried his lede — that the United States had an “enemy within” that the military would need to address — a recurrent strategy of his, and the Times missed that in their initial story (while Laura Rozen was right on it in real time, and called the speech “horrifying” in her substack.)

Noting that Hegseth doesn’t apparently consider tattoos to be “superficial, individual expression” — just long hair and beards. Similarly, the drinking culture is fine for military readiness, but not fat guys.

Interesting prologue to Cervantes’ Persilis and Sigismunda (Cervantes in the first person here):

“As we travelled we spoke on the subject of my ailments, and the good student immediately pronounced my doom, saying, “This malady is the dropsy, which all the water in the ocean would not cure, even if it were not salt, you must drink by rule, sir, and eat more, and this will cure you better than any medicine.” “Many have told me so,” I answered, “but I should find it as impossible to leave off drinking as if I had been born for no other purpose. My life is well nigh ended and, by the beatings of my pulse, I think next Sunday at latest will see the close of my career, you have therefore, sir, made acquaintance with me just at the right moment, though I shall not have time to show myself grateful for the kindness you have shown to me.” […] Adieu to gaiety, adieu to wit, adieu, my pleasant friends, for I am dying, yet hoping to see you all again happy in another world.”

Fareed Zakaria: a complacency that may prove deadly.