You can't be more elitist than Robert Rubin but bring your view and efforts down to your local community and the future of country is enhanced

 

If You’re Worried About the Future of Our Country, Do Something About It

By Robert E. Rubin

Mr. Rubin is a senior counselor to Centerview Partners and was the U.S. Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999.

This opinion about the state of China's electronic chips has a whistling past the graveyard sound to it

 

A Look Inside Huawei’s Phone Shows How China’s Chip Advance Has Stalled

An analysis of Huawei’s latest series of smartphones, the Mate 70, found chips that showed little progress from those used in last year’s devices.

By Meaghan Tobin

Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

Dec. 17, 2024

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Christ’s life began in a manger, and it ended on a cross. He warned his followers that a cross could come for them as well. An upside-down kingdom began with an upside-down birth. When Jesus himself is humble, how do we justify our pride?

 

Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?

By David French

Opinion Columnist

That Pope Francis can repeat this joke about himself makes him divine

Pope Francis: There Is Faith in Humor

By Pope Francis

Pope Francis is the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the bishop of Rome.

And I’ve been told one that concerns me directly, the one about Pope Francis in America. It goes something like this: As soon as he arrives at the airport in New York for his apostolic journey in the United States, Pope Francis finds an enormous limousine waiting for him. He is rather embarrassed by that magnificent splendor, but then thinks that it has been ages since he last drove, and never a vehicle of that kind, and he thinks to himself: OK, when will I get another chance? He looks at the limousine and says to the driver, “You couldn’t let me try it out, could you?” “Look, I’m really sorry, Your Holiness,” replies the driver, “but I really can’t, you know, there are rules and regulations.”

But you know what they say, how the pope is when he gets something into his head — in short, he insists and insists, until the driver gives in. So Pope Francis gets behind the steering wheel, on one of those enormous highways, and he begins to enjoy it, presses down on the accelerator, going 50 miles per hour, 80, 120 … until he hears a siren, and a police car pulls up beside him and stops him. A young policeman comes up to the darkened window. The pope rather nervously lowers it and the policeman turns white. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, and goes back to his vehicle to call headquarters. “Boss, I think I have a problem.

“What problem?” asks the chief.

“Well, I’ve stopped a car for speeding, but there’s a guy in there who’s really important.”

“How important? Is he the mayor?”

“No, no, boss … more than the mayor.”

“And more than the mayor, who is there? The governor?”

“No, no, more.”

“But he can’t be the president?”

“More, I reckon.”

“And who can be more important than the president?”

“Look, boss, I don’t know exactly who he is, all I can tell you is that it’s the pope who is driving him!”

At a county fairground in Wise, Va., I witnessed people standing in lines that stretched out of view, waiting to see physicians who were stationed in animal stalls. The event’s organizers, from a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical, told me that of the thousands of people who came to this three-day clinic every year, some had health insurance but did not have enough money in the bank to cover their out-of-pocket obligations. Maybe that is what medicare should cover, the fixable!

I Was a Health Insurance Executive. What I Saw Made Me Quit.

By Wendell Potter

Mr. Potter is a former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna.

No you fucking morons. Drill for and export as much gas as possible and save the planet from the more deleterious burning of coal and oil

 

Gas Exports Pose Some Risks to U.S. Economy and Environment, Study Says

By Brad Plumer and Rebecca F. Elliott

Dec. 17, 2024

Not a fan but if Elon can cut down the government like he did with X then I'm all for it

 

Elon Musk’s Playbook for DOGE Has a Precedent: X

Mr. Musk is wielding his X account to single out federal employees and agencies for cuts. He has used this method before.

For this bagel shop's closing to make the New York Times first listed domestic event it must of really been something!

 

A Bagel Shop Closed, and the Upper West Side Is Absolutely Losing It

The neighborhood reaction to the sudden closure of a Manhattan bagel shop was intense: “No no no no no no no no no no no!!”

Paul I am sorry to see you go because your top down editorials were such an easy counter to the Libertarian bottom up view

My Last Column: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

The number of Sanders supporters who have gone MAGA is most likely a sliver of the electorate. But they illustrate an important pattern in American politics, political scientists say, one that might help explain Mr. Trump’s success with young men in particular. For certain voters, political preferences are defined not by party, but by their attitudes about the ruling class — whether they trust people in power, or think they’ve rigged the system against ordinary people.

 

How Some Voters Moved From Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump

For some young men in particular, the populist pitches from Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump aligned with their attitudes about the ruling class.

By Claire Cain Miller

Dec. 9, 2024

Eliminating Jimmy Carter's Departments of Education and Energy is a real positive first step

 

Slash First, Fix Later: How Elon Musk Cuts Costs

Mr. Musk dug into his companies’ budgets, preferring to cut too much rather than too little and to deal with the fallout later. Under Donald Trump, he is set to apply those tactics to the U.S. government.

The Musk-Ramaswamy Project Could Be Trump’s Best Idea

The duo are convinced they have enough legal authority to pull this off in the executive branch. The legal theory of the case is that the Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPAand Loper Bright rulings reining in the administrative state mean that much of what the federal government now does is illegal.

Mr. Trump has set a laudable goal of eliminating 10 regulations for every new one, and there is no shortage of targets. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews says 217,565 rules have been issued since the Federal Register first began itemizing them in 1976, with 89,368 pages added last year.

DOGE’s first order will be to pause enforcement of overreaching rules while starting the process to roll them back. Mr. Trump and DOGE could direct agencies to settle legal challenges to Biden rules by vacating them. This could ease the laborious process of undoing them by rule-making through the Administrative Procedure Act. A source tells us they’ll do whatever they think they legally can without the APA.

The DOGE duo believe this will provide the legal justification for reducing the federal workforce. As we recently noted, the federal head count has ballooned by 120,800 during the Biden years. Civil service and union protections make it hard to fire workers.

Politics should reflect the divide between Libertarian, local rule versus Authoritarian national rule. Though Trump is Authoritarian I believe local Libertarian rule will flourish

 

Why We Got It So Wrong

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

Nick Jacobs, who worked in Peculiar government from 2005 to 2022, said the town was in need of an industrial project to fund new roads and infrastructure. But he described Peculiar as full of BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.

‘Don’t Dump Data on Peculiar’

The saga in Peculiar is playing out in small towns across the country as tech giants look to build hundreds of new data centers — often lured by tax abatements — to house the thousands of computers that would power the booming and energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry.

By Eli Tan

Photographs by Graham Dickie

Reporting from Peculiar, Mo.

• Oct. 29, 2024

 

Iran thinks it can make a deal with the Great Satan?

 

Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump

Some in Iran’s new, more moderate government think the result of the presidential election provides an opportunity to make a lasting deal with the United States.

By Farnaz Fassihi

Nov. 11, 2024

Worse yet for Democrats was that some nonbelievers in their identity politics like me I and Bret Stephens, who normally don't vote Democrat only did so purely to counter the clear and present danger of Donald Trump to our Constitution.

Democrats Play the Blame Game 

By Reid J. EpsteinLisa Lerer and Nicholas Nehamas

Reid J. Epstein reported from Madison, Wis., Lisa Lerer from New York and Nicholas Nehamas from Washington.

• Nov. 7, 2024

Wow! A second reference to "EL Caudillo" in a day this one after Spain's failing response to Valencia's disaster

 

Natural Disaster Destroyed Part of València. Populism May Take Us All the Way Down.

By Paco Cerdà

Mr. Cerdà, a journalist and the author of “Presentes,” wrote from València, Spain.

I understand the appeal of "El Caudillo" having spent much of my early years in Spain

 

‘An Earthquake’ Along the Border: Trump Flipped Hispanic South Texas

Donald J. Trump’s biggest gains were along the Texas border, a Democratic stronghold where most voters are Hispanic. He won 12 of the region’s 14 counties, up from five in 2016.

By J. David GoodmanEdgar Sandoval and Robert Gebeloff

J. David Goodman reported from the Rio Grande Valley in the weeks before the election. Edgar Sandoval reported from Starr County after the vote.

Nov. 8, 2024