What’s needed is a generous defined-benefit pension plan without option of withdrawing the principal

Why use hackers? It’s all public because Americans were brainwashed into believing that making your private information public on Linkedin and Facebook is chic.

Some of those social media companies aren’t even based in the US. For example, MyHeritage, a leading family tree website, is headquartered in Israel. Coincidence?

As philosopher John Locke said “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

Pay no attention to what immigrants say. Most of them are not going back to their old countries.

I am an immigrant myself and although I see some things which could be improved (for example, food,) I view them as minor nuisances.

The whole thing reminds me of how the Soviets continually tinkered with their agriculture, which produced less grain than before the Bolshevik Revolution. They next fix they tried was no better than the previous ones, but they sure looked busy.

This was nicely summarized by Srdja Trifkovic in Chronicles Magazine:
” The Soviet Communist Party used to devote a lot of attention to the problem of inefficient agriculture. The party’s Agrarian Policy Commission debated endlessly, throughout the final quarter-century of the Soviet state’s existence, how to improve the system. Should the state farm (sovkhoz) be made self-financing? Should the collective farm (kolkhoz) have its own heavy equipment, or should it depend on state-operated tractor stations? How to reconcile the principles of the command economy, with its procurement quotas and state-fixed prices, with the need to motivate peasants to produce more? What should be the maximum area of the private plot on which farmers can produce food for their own use and to supplement their incomes: a quarter-hectare or a half-hectare?

The notion that both state and collective farms should be abolished, the price of produce determined by the market, and the land given back to peasants whose holdings should be limited only by their ability to work the land never entered the discussion. To make such a suggestion would have marked the end of an apparatchik’s political career and exposed him to all manner of unpleasantness. The solution to the problem of collectivized agriculture lay outside the ideological parameters of the decisionmaking community.”

The real story is bigger than apocrypha you mentioned. Within COMECON (the trading bloc of Soviets and their satellites) they traded using prices which were set as moving averages of capitalist prices on world markets. So, behind the rhetoric, they were quite pragmatic.

I would say that their pricing policy was more pragmatic than our housing policy.

Fred is right.

I did some googling, looking for phrase

sexual arrestado “de 13 años” site:.mx

and I found a recent arrest

http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2015/05/04/1022344

A Mexican singer, Omar Valenzuela Rivera was arrested for what looks like statutory rape:

“aunque señalan que existe el delito de violación equiparada cuando se mantienen relaciones sexuales con un menor de edad que no cuenta con la capacidad para comprender el significado del hecho.”

So it looks like at least in this case the age of consent was 14 or more.

Dean would have beaten Kerry in 2004 were it not for the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. This was followed by public enthusiasm and it (sort of) seemed like the war was going well. Democrats were in panic and realized they needed someone with strong military credentials. Strictly speaking, none of Democratic hopefuls had strong military credentials, but John Kerry, who at least commanded a gunboat, was a one-eyed man in the land of the blind, which is why he won the Iowa caucuses.

Well, Nordics can also be dumb. It makes perfect sense that Iceland is the country where all banks went bankrupt.

Tests should be carried out on volunteers or lab rats. And if Icelanders want to be lab rats, why not? Better to destroy a small country, which can serve as a warning to bigger ones.

Trump is an exception, but the rest of them are like McCain. As bad as Obama is, at least his Middle Eastern meddling is done on the cheap, without sending ground troops.

When a president wants to start a war, no Congress can stop him.

The technique was designed and tested by Clinton: you start a war without congressional approval, then you accuse your of opponents of being unpatriotic. Next, you give the sheep orders to bleat “we must support our troops!”

If you’re an average middle class person, then your encounters with police consist of paying a speeding ticket every five years or so. Taking a risk is not worth it. Just pay it.

Now the medical bills, that’s quite another story. The health care industry, with its unwillingness to disclose prices is a racket and deceiving them is not immoral IMHO.

“You can’t take advantage of EU benefits while simultaneously rejecting its obligations.”

What obligations??? Under the terms that were negotiated when being admitted into EU, there is no obligation and nothing to reject.

What is happening is that the likes of you want to unilaterally modify a contract after it was signed.

“Bigotry and intolerance are endemic to the cultural history there and the ethnically-cleansed societies are now even less willing, though morally obligated, to make amends for their past indiscretions”

At one point, majority of World’s Jews lived within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even though they were free to go elsewhere. Poles fulfilled their diversity requirement a long time ago, but you need to make amends for your ingratitude.

I predict that if Alexander Hamilton is replaced with a vibrant hag, lots of Americans will arm themselves with markers and cross her out. It’s illegal, but the law is unenforceable unless only a small number of people do it.

You hit the nail on the head.

In the former Yugoslavia, soccer games were one of few occasions where nationalism was expressed openly. It is no surprise that many soccer fan clubs later evolved into paramilitary militias.

I disagree with Krugman on many things, but he hit the nail on the had with his characterization of Republican establishment’s bait-and-switch:

But there is a strong element of bait-and-switch to this strategy. Whatever dog whistles get sent during the campaign, once in power the G.O.P. has made serving the interests of a small, wealthy economic elite, especially through big tax cuts, its main priority — a priority that remains intact, as you can see if you look at the tax plans of the establishment presidential candidates this cycle.

Sooner or later the angry whites who make up a large fraction, maybe even a majority, of the G.O.P. base were bound to rebel — especially because these days much of the party’s leadership seems inbred and out of touch. They seem, for example, to imagine that the base supports cuts to Social Security and Medicare, an elite priority that has nothing to do with the reasons working-class whites vote Republican.

Recent collapse in the price of oil (of which Mexico is a major producer) must have a negative impact on the Mexican economy. How does that affect American expats?

Actually, two Democrats – Matthew Yglesias and Paul Krugman wrote about Trump’s postion on Social Security and how he is the only Republican candidate who does not want to gut it, while other Republican candidates are pretty much extremists.

Yglesias and Krugman are exceptions, others genuinely believe the “Rubio and Bush are moderates” meme.

They should be able to afford summer camps, but in practice their personal finance skills are often even lower than their incomes. They often buy houses bigger than they can afford, waste money in numerous ways such as bounced check fees and high interest and so on.

I did some research into ethnicity of Royce Mann. A Google Images search links him to his brother, Tendal Mann. Next, IMDB links Tendal Mann to his father, Barry Mann.

Now, Barry supposedly is a Celtic name, but in the United States it is mostly a Jewish name. Some web pages claim that Jews use it as a substitute for Baruch.

This rejoinder is typical of people who do not see any need to improve anything. Such as South African minister Charles Nqakula who said “they can simply leave this country” in response to complaints about South Africa’s rate of rape.

“Well humans and bananas shared 50% of the genetic makeup do you think a banana is half a human?”

This issue was addressed in the past by John Derbyshire himself:

The BBC reports that 75 percent of our genetic makeup is the same as that of the common pumpkin. Presumably this is why the word “pumpkin” ends with “kin.” But wait — what is that fluttering of gossamer wings I hear! Why, it’s the Muse…
Lines in Appreciation of Genetic Propinquity by John Derbyshire
A certain young hillbilly bumpkin
Was caught having sex with a pumpkin.
When arrested he swore:
“What’s all this fuss for?
Where I’m from, it’s okay to hump kin!”

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/82353/down-pumpkin-patch-john-derbyshire

There is no need to deport them. If we make life hard for illegals, they will self-deport.

One might also offer them a half-amnesty, half-deportation deal: they reveal themselves to the US government, in return they receive a two year work permit. After that, they must go back to their home countries, which will be verified by reporting in person to a US Consulate. Once that condition is satisfied, they get back the Social Security taxes they paid.

MSM’s way of dealing with this question is to use the term “Immigrants” when they have illegal aliens in mind. Which is dishonest because a green card holder is also an immigrant. Heck, a foreign-born but naturalized US citizen is still an immigrant!

Here are some typical headlines I just collected from Google News:

“TRUMP DUMPS DUE PROCESS TO TARGET ANY AND ALL IMMIGRANTS”
“Fearful immigrants are offered anti-deportation training”
“Toledo area immigrants, exiles feeling unsettled in Trump era”
“This Agency Created a ‘Panic Button’ to Help Immigrants”
“Bridgeport immigrants learn to evade ICE”
“Advocates Educate Immigrants on Raids, Travel Ban”
“Workshop aims to calm fears of immigrants”
“Fearing deportation, Bay Area immigrants rush to make U.S.-born kids dual Mexican citizens”
“Immigrants and their allies gather for ‘out of the shadows’ rally at State Capitol”
“Border mystery: Where are the immigrants?”

“Fearing deportation, Bay Area immigrants rush to make U.S.-born kids dual Mexican citizens”

By the way, this article says one of reasons they get Mexican citizenship for their kids is that without it the children would not be allowed to attend public schools in Mexico.

I don’t think the authors intended to show how anarchic the US immigration policy is compared to Mexico’s, but they did.

Border skipping tax?

The technique is so routine that it’s almost boring.

Whenever they want to brainwash their readers, they come up with an ambiguous headline. For example:

“Violence at Trump rallies”.

That way, the blanks are left for readers to fill. If the readers fill it with “Trump supporters attacked angelic Democrats”, The Lying Press accomplishes its goal without getting blamed. Same with NYT’s

“Berkeley Cancels Ann Coulter Speech Over Safety Fears”

I bet many readers will assume that Coulter or her supporters are threatening to beat up someone.
Things have gotten so bad that whenever I see an ambiguous headline, I assume bad intentions.

It is not clear whether we live in a democracy. The media have gotten too skilled at manipulating the common people, the politicians renege on their campaign promises the day after they are sworn in, and last but not least, we are kept in the dark as to the dealings between lobbyists and legislators.

Steve,

This might be of interest to you.
It’s “magic dirt” again. This time, at MIT.
The administration has convinced itself that if a dorm popular with minorities is closed and students are moved to other dorms, their academic performance will improve.
https://qz.com/1005761/mit-is-overhauling-senior-house-haus-a-dorm-beloved-by-poor-minority-and-lgbt-students-citing-drugs-and-late-graduation-rates/

Where do you find this stuff ?

I am the one who brought this to Steve’s attention. I actually found this accidentally on the Swiss version of Google News (no, I am not Swiss. I practice French in this way.) The story looked interesting, so I looked for news about Senior House in English.

Our government likes to say “If You See Something, Say Something™”.
I did and I encourage other readers to post interesting finds.

On the flip side, I am familiar with a couple of humanities departments that have hired gay males exclusively for faculty positions for about five years. At least half the faculty in both departments fit that description now. It’s hard to believe that some kind of informal networking is not at work.

Since the standards are intentionally vague (“holistic”,) homos can easily make up an excuse in order to justify rejecting a heterosexual candidate. Supposedly that’s how they dominated some Catholic seminaries.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, I was told by a well informed source that in 2013 the administrators of Saint John’s Seminary (in Archdiocese of Boston) hired a private investigator in order to identify homos (one of them was easy to identify since he got caught making love in the parking lot) and carried out a Night Of Long Knives by expelling all five of them. I’m surprised they had the will to pull it off. I pretty much wrote the Church off, perhaps I was wrong?

Add Hungary, Czechoslovakia and possibly Austria to the list of nations who protect their people

Apparently, Bulgaria is trying to do that. During the peak of the migration crisis, the illegals avoided the Turkey to Bulgaria land route, preferring to cross by sea to Greece because the word got out that Bulgarians frequently beat up the illegal immigrants.

Japan’s GDP per capita growth has been around 0.63% annual for the past 25 years – about when their stock and real estate bubble popped.

That compares to ~1.5% for the U.S. and ~1.0% for Germany. However, Japan continues to have a higher GDP per capita than Germany so some of that sluggishness may be been due to starting a higher level. Also, over the past decade, Japanese GDP per capita growth has been at least as good as the U.S.

And perhaps most importantly, GDP is only an approximate measure of living standards. For example, in some places in the United States, private schools and gated communities are a necessity. Both of them increase GDP while lowering living standards.

How awful of the Japanese to have good public schools everywhere!

Oh no, not again. Just recently Brooks made up a male blue collar friend (“I have a friend who is an avid Trump admirer. He supports himself as a part-time bartender and a part-time home contractor, and by doing various odd jobs on the side.”) Now he claims to have a friend who has a (sic) “high school degree”. I don’t believe any of it. Among the likes of Brooks having a Trump supporter or a high school graduate among friends is almost as bad as being friends with a child molester.

Here is a French word for Brooks: Canard. And I don’t mean Terrine de Canard.

Communists also harassed homosexuals and were not ashamed of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hyacinth

The Cheap Labor Lobby, in addition to being evil, is also stupid. I mean, as soon as illegal immigrants are given green cards, they will look for jobs better than picking crops. In other words, it is in the economic interest of the Cheap Labor Lobby to keep them illegal.

Off-topic but Steve may find it interesting.

Ronald Reagan talked about defunding the left.

Without much fanfare, it’s happening right now. When a university has to reduce budget deficit, the fluffy majors go first:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/04/02/umass-boston-budget-cuts-target-academic-research-centers/Nsl3PSQa1FmmOJa7W8hBDI/story.html
“The other centers set to have their funding cut include the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture, the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, the Institute for New England Native American Studies, the Labor Resource Center, and the Center for Social Policy.”
also of interest:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/04/09/purchase-mount-ida-insult-umass-boston/iWdcquCvzZDdm0AsuDaNJJ/story.html

Are winds of change blowing at the BBC?
Their reporter recently interviewed Swedes about the link between crime and immigration and those Swedes who think immigration is not so great were portrayed in a sympathetic light.
It’s on BBC’s youtube page, definitely worth watching:

Video Link

Notwithstanding Capuano’s support of the usual far left cocktail (sanctuary cities, gun control etc.) he was one of few congressmen who were opposed to overthrowing Syria’s Assad.

Give him credit for opposing the “Invade” part of “Invade the word, invite the world.”

“a nation that is already, at full employment, running a deficit of $779 billion a year.”

As much as I dislike illegal immigrants, they have little to do with it.
The Republican strategy has been known for a long time: cut taxes and use the resulting deficit as a pretext to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

Slightly off-topic, but why do people refer to him as “Saddam” when that is his first name

It’s a traditional propaganda technique. Foreign rulers are referred to by their first name when our government decides to overthrow them. Thus, Saddam Hussein became Saddam, Slobodan Milosevic became Slobodan and so on.

Steve,

The links below are related the topic.

Trump’s Justice Department is mostly useless.
Until 2008, Bureau of Justice Statistics published an annual report, called National Crime Victimization Survey. It included two-variable statistics about race of victims and race of offenders.
See, for example, table 42 of the 2008 report
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf
That table raised the ire of SJWs because it implied that white-on-black rape is close to nonexistent.
Starting with 2009 report, nothing was reported about the race of offenders.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv09.pdf
(For subsequent years, you replace cv09.pdf with cv10.pdf, cv11.pdf and so on)
Moreover, the 2008 is not accessible through the “Data Finder” page
https://www.bjs.gov/latestreleases.cfm
not unlike certain books having been withdrawn from libraries in Orwell’s “1984” (or in the Soviet Bloc.)
How have we been doing since Donald Trump became President?
The 2016 report (published in 2017) has no data about race of offenders.
The 2017 report (i.e. the latest one) has only single-variable statistics about race of offenders.
Thus, one can find the percentage of Whites among rapists but one cannot find the percentage of Whites among rapists whose victims were Black.

We should loudly demand return to pre-2009 standards!

Being a Democratic politician is very stressful nowadays. As soon as the latest outrage happens, they have to interrupt their activities and virtue signal on Twitter. Then there is competition – what if another politician’s tweet is more virtuous than yours?

Thank you. I tried to make it humorous, but the reality is that our civilization is in reverse gear and accelerating. Any hoax, no matter how absurd, is instantly believed.

We are back to the days of Salem Witch Trials, Host Desecration and Blood Libel.

Some people say only a Pinochet-like dictatorship can save us.
I hope they are wrong.
Nevertheless, a significant proportion of the US population deserves to be declared legally incapacitated due to multiple mental diseases.

Google News is putting articles about the Jussie Smollett “possible hate crime” in the “Entertainment” category.

That’s like a Freudian slip.
Just another dumb algorithm.
Reminds me of that incident in which Google Images algorithms classified Blacks as gorillas.

George HW Bush and the US Congress passed a law in 1990 to attack and undercut American STEM workers by flooding the USA with foreigners on work visas.

Partly true. In the early 1990’s the annual limit was 65,000 and H-1B visas were issued mostly to foreign graduates of US universities and to employees of multinational corporations (think of an employee of Goldman Sachs moving from the London office to the New York one.)

Outcourcing to India took off after 1995.

My prediction is that Jussie Smollett will become unemployable.
Too many risks – bad publicity, a frivolous lawsuit etc.

“He also said that he was sure that the men in the surveillance images were the ones who attacked him that night.”

And the readers, who read prior NYT articles about Smollett, , will assume the two suspects are White (because according to prior articles the perpetrators were White.)

This is a classic propaganda technique – instead of lying, NYT tricks readers into drawing a false conclusion.

It’s even less than 0.7% if you exclude Black immigrants.

Anecdotal evidence: In the year I got my Math PhD, 1100 doctoral degrees in Math were awarded. Of those, two were awarded to Blacks. By accident, I knew both of them. One was an immigrant from Nigeria, the other was from Belize.

Yes, one of those two was Arlie Petters.
The discrepancy may be due to the fact that in the United States people who have some black ancestry are referred to as “Black”. Perhaps Belize does this differently?

Apparently, 27% of Black undergrads are immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean.
There is tension between them and those who descend from Southern slaves.

At Cornell, demands were made:
“We demand that Cornell admissions come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented black students on this campus. We define underrepresented black students as black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country.
 The black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students. While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America. Cornell must work to actively support students whose families have been impacted for generations by white supremacy and American fascism.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/10/09/cornell-students-revive-debate-whom-colleges-should-count-black

According to Google Ngram Viewer, “canard” is in decline while “fake news” is trending up.
The same can be observed on Google Trends, with “fake news” jumping up in 2016.

core, contributory social programs that they made payments to, decade after decade

Republicans call them “entitlements” – implying that they are a form of undeserved gift from the government. And the strategy is to cut taxes, which leads to a deficit, which they hope to use to justify privatization of Social Security and Medicare.

Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump are nostalgic about the 50’s but fail to mention that American middle class prosperity was made possible by the New Deal, strong unions, government involvement in the construction of housing (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were owned by the government) etc.

At the end, Steve says:

As a journalist, my guess is that the choices of smart rich guys like Slim and Bezos demonstrate that spending on journalists offers a better return than spending on politicians.

Great point.

Moreover, there is no transparency. Money spent on influencing the media does not have to be reported.

And most importantly, there is no law against bribing journalists.
In fact, there is a long tradition of bribing journalists. Joseph Kennedy used it to build the image of Kennedy dynasty.

If I wanted to live in Mexico, I’d live in fucking Mexico.

You’re not going to live in Mexico.
Most migrants hail from countries south of Mexico, i.e. Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
We are talking about countries whose GDP per capita is one third of Mexico’s.
Honduras has world’s highest homicide rate.
That’s our future.

Seriously, why the F aren’t we building tent cities for all these people and holding them there?

We have Guantanamo for that purpose.
In saner times (1991 and 1994) the Haitian boat people were shipped there.

Failing that, we should make life as inconvenient as possible for asylum seekers.
Allowing the asylum seekers to board airplanes without IDs is something Trump can stop anytime.
He can’t blame it on Democrats.

When we reached out to Portland Maine they said, ‘Please don’t send us any more. We’re already stretched way beyond our capacity,”

Utopias fail when Utopians run out of money. That’s why the Soviet Union is gone.

From Marantz’s book:

“the arbiters of palatable conservative opinion, such as the editors of National Review and The Weekly Standard”

I always thought liberal journalists (and recently, Social Justice Warriors) were the arbiters of palatable conservative opinion, The editors of National Review and The Weekly Standard were merely taking orders from them.

Marantz is lazy, he doesn’t even know what Chronicles Magazine is and that Steve Sailer published there.

This laziness is rather typical of liberal journalists who claim to be experts on Alt Right

The Slate article does not say anything about incomes of David Heinemeier Hansson and Jamie Heinemeier Hansson. Were they the same?

I will assume they were different, until proven otherwise.

If the incomes were he same, the article would have said so.

About twenty years ago, breakup off Russia was advocated openly, for example by Brzezinski.

I would guess that’s still the long term goal.

The problem, however, is with the fact that the United States has neither resources nor status anymore to do either:

I would add that if Russia were broken up, then very likely China and not the United States would capture the mineral wealth of Siberia. This would be a geopolitical blunder of biblical proportions, comparable to Germany’s decision to sponsor Lenin’s sealed train voyage.

[Digression: Andrei, I read your blog and I agree about Russian Math and Physics cirriculum. I followed a similar cirriculum in Poland and I got into MIT easily. Я согласен]

Another important piece of the puzzle is NATO’s Strategic Concept, approved at the 1999 Washington Summit. It included for the first time “possibility of conducting non-Article 5 crisis response operations.” Since Article 5 refers to a response to a military attack against a member country, this single phrase changed NATO from a defensive alliance to an offensive one.

This created a loophole. First, sponsor a separatist insurgency in a country you don’t like. When the government responds, claim that civilians are suffering. Mobilize the public opinion using photos of crying women (less than ten is enough, just show them frequently.) Follow up with accusations of “humanitarian crisis.” Claim that “genocide is unfolding” (this quote and the bogus claim of 100,000 dead Albanians was used in 1999). Frequently use the phrase “International Community”. Invade.

This scenario was implemented against Yugoslavia and Libya. Had Al Gore won in 2000, Richard Holbroooke would become Secretary of State and he would use Chechnya as a pretext for intervention in Russia. It almost happened – Madeleine Albright asked Russia to permit presence of “observers” in Chechnya. Putin wisely refused, perhaps because he knew that “observers” in Kosovo were used to provide a pretext for war against Yugoslavia.

Albright’s request happened soon after Nato permitted “non-Article 5 crisis response operations.”
Few people realize how close we were to a repeat of Yugoslavia-style scenario being used to break up Russia.

When Holbrooke died, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I find it odd how Eastern Europeans boast that they’re much more intelligent and capable than Westerners, yet it seems to me that those of them with any intelligence and capability move to Western countries as soon as possible.

That’s only partly true. Polish software engineers seldom emigrate because they are well paid and the cost of living is lower, so they wouldn’t gain by moving to the UK or Germany. Scientists are low paid, but that’s a political problem.

My recollection is that back in the early years of the blog explosion one of the things that gnxp used to use to go after Jared Diamond was that he authored a paper that compared testicle weight to body weight ratios by race – with a conclusion that surprised exactly no one.

Diamond, J. M. (1986). “Ethnic differences: Variation in human testis Size”. Nature. 320 (6062): 488–489

The present conflict between Poland and Russia is more about style than about substance.
For most of last several hundred years Poland and Russia had territorial claims against each other. Now they don’t. And they are not trying to overthrow each other’s government.

At the same time the style is ugly and will continue to be ugly. That’s because angry rhetoric is mostly for internal consumption. In Poland, patriotism is centered around grievances and a general sense of victimhood. In a democracy, there will always be opportunists who will try to exploit those feelings in order to win votes. My guess is that something like 20% of Poles are truly paranoid about Russia and sooner or later some politician will try to use this paranoia to win votes.

It seems like a lot of Russian hostility towards Poland is also for internal consumption.

Disclosure: I am a Pole living in the United States. I am mostly indifferent to Russia, though I am glad Holbrooke and McCain are dead. If they went ahead with their fantasies of trying to break up Russia, only one country would benefit from the conflict – China.

Those in Poland who want the Smolensk crash to be an assassination complain that Russia refuses to turn over the wreck. Yes, the wreck is still in Smolensk but Polish investigators are free to access it. and to collect samples.
I am Polish but I am sorry to say that the Russian decision to keep the wreck is the correct one.
On the Polish side, the investigation (or the second part of it, after the current government came to power in 2015) was carried out in a Bolshevik manner. Instead of gathering the evidence and then drawing conclusions, the order was reversed. The outcome (Russia is guilty) was assumed at the beginning an then an attempt was made to fabricate evidence.
I know these people, they are quite willing to lie and if they got hold of the wreckage, they might plant residue of explosives.
There are people in Poland who are so obsessed with martyrdom that they are willing to create fake one, even though there was enough of real martyrdom. For example, some people invented a nonexistent concentration camp, read about this here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n09/christian-davies/under-the-railway-line
or google “KL Warschau hoax.”

One can get a good idea of where Polish-Russian tensions come from by watching an interview with Polish ambassador in Warsaw:
https://vod.pl/programy-onetu/onet-opinie-bartosz-weglarczyk-siergiej-andriejew-1602/d2fepgt
Both the interviewer (Bartosz Węglarczyk) and the ambassador (Sergei Andreev) behave professionally.
The ambassador is in fact fluent in Polish but in this interview, the journalist asks questions in Polish while Andreev speaks Russian. So a Russian speaker will understand the ambassador fully and the journalist partly.
One interesting moment is when they discuss the arrival of the Red Army in 1944-1945 and whether it was a liberation or not. The ambassador says:
“Если не освободили, тогда спасали”
i.e.
“If they (Soviets) did not liberate, then they saved lives.”
In my opinion, the ambassador got it right.
Whether other Russians would say the same thing, I don’t know. The problem Russians have is that the Soviet Union made the Great Patriotic War into a secular religion, which makes it very hard to speak of the Red Army as anything less than morally pure.

Let me add some personal anecdotes about the Red Army.
1) Before 1989. there were Soviet troops in Poland but they kept a low profile.
Most Poles (except those who lived near Soviet bases) never met a Soviet soldier in their lives.
This was very different from Czechoslovakia and Hungary where the Soviet presence was in-your-face. In Czechoslovakia they made themselves seen by jamming highways with long columns of trucks and armored vehicles.
One might say that Poland was treated slightly better than other so-called “fraternal” countries.
2) My father lived in a small town southwest of Warsaw and as a child, he witnessed the main column of the Soviet Winter Offensive of 1945 passing through. That meant an interrupted stream of men and vehicles for several days.
Like my father said, it was the biggest traffic jam he had ever seen.
3) I once spoke to a man who, in 1945 served with the Polish armed forces that were formed by the new pro-Soviet government. He commanded a small unit guarding the train station and his main adversary were Soviet marauders. On one occasion, he was in a deadly shootout against them and apparently the Soviet commanders had no problem with that.
Such incidents happened elsewhere but the sanitized version of history we learned in school excluded them.

This poll is fake if it identifies Smolensk as a major concern of most people.
Jarosław Kaczyński began distancing himself from the monthly ‘observances’ a couple of years ago and no one under the age of 25-30 cares.

That probably depends on how you ask the question.
Fortunately, most Poles have more important problems than Polish-Russian relations. Not only the Smolensk crash but Polish-Russian relations in general are not a major concern for Poles.
So if the Poles were asked to list all their concerns, Polish-Russian relations would not rank high.

But if the question already assumes that Polish-Russian relations are bad (which is true) and asks why, then the percentages will be different.

PS I like your blog.

I am Polish but I am sorry to say that the Russian decision to keep the wreck is the correct one.
(,,,)
I know these people, they are quite willing to lie and if they got hold of the wreckage, they might plant residue of explosives.

It seems to me that Russians have a more realistic view of international politics than other nations. The sad fact is that international relations involve a lot of backstabbing and reneging on promises.
This may have something to do with Russia’s being a major power and having many opportunities to backstab and renege. Which is what all major powers do.

Smaller nations don’t have that kind of experience.

Steve,

Check this out:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500268-st-paul-mayor-says-arrested-protesters-were-from-out-of-state
I would bet they were brought in by Antifa.
Or even by the DNC.
It’s hard not to notice that this kind of riots happens during election years.

I will make a prediction.

As far as gentrification is concerned, the upper middle class will hit the rewind button.
In the wake of the epidemic and looting, the suburbs will be back in favor!

In the former Soviet bloc, there was a joke that the government is working extremely diligently to solve problems that were created by the government itself.

Let us start by admitting that there exists a police brutality problem and that cops kill and beat people up with frequency that cannot be justified. The victims of that brutality are sometimes White, too.

In that sense, the cops about whom Mr. Buchanan speaks so respectfully, work extremely diligently to solve problems that were created by the cops themselves.

More about Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot
“If there’s an issue, call 911” – this is not a headline from Babylon Bee or The Onion
That’s what she said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot denounces vigilantism in Chicago after white men patrol Bridgeport streets with bats
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-chicago-bridgeport-lightfoot-opposes-vigilantism-20200604-jilfdhgmqjellfblozywe5iesa-story.html

1- the complete lack of shame, principle or even common sense of Democrats.

You nailed it.
In the past, many Democrats were quite realistic about Blacks, women and homos, provided they were speaking in private (Bloomberg would be an example.) What we now have is True Believers.
These people can’t be reasoned with. A small proportion will change their views after they become victims of Black crime.

OT: Steve, check this out
https://thetech.com/2020/06/11/math-department-diversity-inclusion
I especially like this example of satire writing itself:

Kelly Chen ’21, a math major, wrote in an email to The Tech that the math department’s annual end-of-year celebration, although designed to be an opportunity for socialization and to honor graduating seniors, “mostly celebrated those who did extremely well in math competitions like the Putnam, as well as a handful of students who received departmental/MIT awards or distinguished fellowships.”

“Aside from one professor briefly congratulating all graduating seniors, there was no mention at all of any of the students who had not won an award. This seemed to be a pretty clear indication of what kind of students the department recognizes and values,” Chen wrote.

I would make civil service exam compulsory for candidates in an election. There would be no threshold but the score would be disclosed to voters.

You can read Andy Grove’s article through its cache:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:du6MWMtE9wQJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-07-01/andy-grove-how-america-can-create-jobs+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

They did not allow readers to comment on this article.
Very telling.

The average reader of NYT is an upper-middle-class liberal, so their comments under the articles are not representative.

But one can still notice trends. Initially, the comments under the articles about demonstrations were supportive, even enthusiastic.
But the enthusiasm turned to hostility when the articles were about looting or defunding police or the Seattle police-free zone.
Even upper-middle-class liberals know that they are being gaslighted.

Haven’t most papers quit allowing on-line comments?

Many newspapers have eliminated comment sections.
But The New York Times has not. Sometimes they allow comments, sometimes they don’t. So there is an editorial decision there. And one can make inferences about editors’ biases. Also, which topics commoners are allowed to discuss and which topics are reserved for vetted MSM priests.

I called my friend in Cigar City and he said the Stars And Bars is still flying proudly for all to see.

It was taken down
https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2020/06/01/giant-confederate-flag-lowered-after-threats-to-set-it-on-fire/

You’ll see a lot of this in the coming years:

Also, a lot of:
“Without citing evidence, X says…”

They want permanent war.

As soon as their current demands are met, they will make new demands.

The only way to fight people with such mentality is to start taking stuff from them.

The phrase “gun violence” is used to trick the reader into thinking that guns are to blame, which is then used to justify “gun control.”

Rhetorical question:
In many places, the number of shootings has tripled since last year. Has the number of guns tripled during the same period of time?

In fact, Hindus were treated even worse than Christians. The reason for it was that Hindus, as pagans, were not “People of the Book.”

Whenever you read propaganda, find out which facts go unmentioned.

Politico Europe and other media say nothing about the The American-Polish Claims Agreement of 1960. In that agreement, Poland paid the US government $40 million (in 1960 dollars) and the US agreed that any claims related to World War II would be paid by the US government.

Poland settled this rather cheaply, but the country was broke, so both sides were satisfied. It often happens that debt is settled for pennies on the dollar.

What is happening now is that Jews 1) regret having signed this agreement 2) pretend there is an unresolved issue there.

And when did Poland and Israel “become allies”?

Speaking of alliances, there is a phrase “exotic alliance” which was coined by Stanislaw Cat-Mackiewicz, who was one of Poland’s leading journalists, and briefly, a Prime Minister of Poland’s government-in-exile.

An exotic alliance is an alliance which is not based on common interests, or is even contrary to interests.
For example, the alliance between the United Kingdom and Greece was not exotic despite the distance because the United Kingdom had a strategic interest in controlling the Mediterranean Sea.
But the Alliance between France and Czechoslovakia was an exotic one and the Czechs learned about it the hard way, in Munich in 1938.

The “alliance” between Poland and Israel is an exotic one.
It is good for Israel, for example, Poland blocks anti-Israeli proposals in the European Union.
In return:
– Israel meddles in Poland’s affairs
– Poles get accused of running Auschwitz
– outlandish financial demands are made

In Druid’s case, phrase “dumb_redneck” has some meaning.

Should We Cancel Aristotle?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/opinion/should-we-cancel-aristotle.html

… and the author is Agnes Callard. I immediately googled “Agnes Callard Jewish” and I found that in her own words

“I was born in Budapest, Hungary and left there with my parents (illegally) at the age of 5 by way of a “vacation” to Vienna. From there we continued to Rome, where we spent a year before coming to the US under the auspices of a Jewish organization that focused on bringing Russian Jews to the USA.”

So predictable.

And canceling Moses.

Torah explicitly endorses slavery.

Is there a Jewish prophet not worthy of canceling?

It’s happening because Woke Jihadis are not risking anything. The worst that can happen is that their attempts fail to succeed.

What’s needed is to make them feel pain and make them afraid of feeling pain so that they think twice before they attempt to cancel someone.

Your suggestion would be a good first step, but more ideas are needed. We need to make them personally suffer.

Also, conservatives must go on the offensive. Let’s start taking territory from liberals. That way, they will have to put effort into defense.

Steve’s reply is still on Steve’s twitter. You’ve just discovered shadowbanning.
It’s not exactly difficult to notice that Twitter sorts tweets according to secret priorities. There is no “show chronologically” option. Nobody’s even calling Twitter out on that.

You are missing the fundamental point: the unforgivable offense of the great men of the past is not whatever they are being criticized for, but that they were white.

Also, they were non-Jewish. Statues of Jewish scientists are not being removes and buildings named after Jewish donors are not being renamed.

What’s happening in Oakland and Chicago is good. The sooner they abolish police, the better. I want the cities run by liberals to look like Dresden in 1945 and the best thing is, liberals are willing to do the job themselves.

But that will solve only some of the problems. We still need to come up with countermeasures to guarantee that those who think of disemploying or demonetizing fear consequences.

an uncontrolled explosion of fresh spending

Well, at least they will match new spending with new taxes so that the deficit will not go up.
That’s not good but compare that to harebrained Republicans who lowered the taxes on the rich and on corporations, thereby increasing the deficit. The corporations expressed their gratitude by enthusiastically endorsing every possible woke insanity.

Having said that, the biggest problem with Democrats is that they want to elect a new people (to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht.) Republicans could have done something about this during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, when they controlled the House and the Senate but instead, they focused on tax cuts.

a hundred million real Americans spread across the eastern half of Europe

At first glance, this seems like good idea. But will they import homomania as well?

I don’t think “bi-racial” children are inevitable or particularly desirable. I’m Somali, I want my children to look like me. No joke my aunt just sent me a picture of a gal I might marry, 21. Inshallah after Trump leaves I will be able to bring my wife and start working on my brood. But thank you for that analysis, I agree with a lot of it. Alas I’m one of those not willing to move from a concentrated East Coast area.

But if we take her at her word that she will turn 64 in September

This seems like her real age. I looked at Intelius and Mylife, which seem to work off credit histories and they confirm this number.

Getting rich at 62 is not that great. For most of her life she probably drove cheap autos and did not travel overseas.
It’s harder to enjoy money in one’s sixties – a lot of people have health problems at that point and become fatigued easily.