Archive for 2024

BRILLIANT:

It’s much better than my suggestion that annual returns on endowments that don’t get spent on maintenance, construction, or (preferably) student aid, be taxed at 100%.

PROBABLY NOT VERY: Is Putin happy with Trump’s comeback?

When Donald Trump won the presidential election last Wednesday, one leader’s message of congratulation was conspicuously absent. It took the Russian president Vladimir Putin more than twenty-four hours to pass comment on Trump’s win. He eventually praised the president-elect as “courageous” and said he had “nothing against” Trump trying to resume contact with him. Putin, however, wouldn’t be calling him.

Well now it appears Trump may well have made the call. It has been reported that last Thursday, the president-elect picked up the phone to Putin, warning him “not to escalate the war in Ukraine” and reminding him of the American military’s “significant presence” in Europe. The two are also said to have “briefly” touched on the idea of a possible peace deal that would see Russia hold on to some of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies.

Intriguingly, this morning the Kremlin denied the call took place. Speaking to journalists, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the reports “completely untrue. This is pure fiction, this is simply false information.” Such denials should, as always though, be taken with a pinch of salt.

Trump enters office with a reputation as a peacemaker and without Biden’s baggage of empty warnings, counterproductive demonization, and aid that’s usually been too little/too late — not to mention likely graft.

If anyone can negotiate a decent both-sides-win-a-little/both-sides-lose-a-little deal, it’s him.

#JOURNALISM: (Thread).

WHY SO MUCH HATE FOR AUTOMOBILES FROM URBAN PLANNERS? A federalist approach to anti-car urbanism.

Back in the early 1990s, anxious about long-term regional decline and hoping to put my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, back on the map, local leaders embarked upon constructing a totally new light rail system that was to provide living proof of our dynamic vision for the future. The MetroLink promised to unite the diffuse bistate area like never before.

But three decades and billions of dollars later, most St. Louisans except the starriest-eyed of rail boosters would probably say that the money might have been better spent on road repair and expanded bus routes. However noble the ambition, the system has proved an underutilized and crime-riddled vanity project that, for the foreseeable future, is more trouble than it’s worth.
More recently, a smaller-scale St. Louis project, The Loop Trolley, burned over $50 million on a 2-mile vintage-style streetcar line along one of the area’s main commercial corridors, worsening traffic and hurting small business. The system ended up an embarrassing failure that brought in roughly a tenth of projected revenues and shut down after just a year of service.

The appeal of light rail is the graft, not the service.

WHAT DO THEY NEED THOSE FOR? AREN’T THEY GIVING UP SEX WITH MEN?   Liberal Women Are Stocking Up on Abortion Pills After Trump’s Election Victory.

Also for the record, those are extremely dangerous and taken unsupervised by a doctor, or sometimes even supervised can kill you. Every non-crazy woman has heard stories. Those who haven’t don’t want to hear. Because they want to believe.

LITTLE VOTING DIFFERENCE AMONG GOP LEADER RIVALS: Only five points separate senators John Thune, John Cornyn and Rick Scott, according to CPAC ratings. So no matter which man is elected the new Senate Majority Leader today, he will have a solidly conservative voting record.