Eisenhower built the interstate highway system while also running budget surpluses 4 of his 8 years as POTUS - which allowed him to solidify US finances after the huge expense of WW2.

Lean, competent government can achieve a lot.

https://twitter.com/kurt_steiner/status/2020174767903695190

The general trend - which you see most clearly in Minnesota and California - is to talk about the ‘general welfare’ while looting the state and stealing from taxpayers to pay for huge scams run by your foreigner constituents. Doesn’t have to work like that.

‘Woke’ will not be ‘put away’ because it isn’t a movement - it’s a manifestation of what happens in a diverse society that lacks social cohesion, any real sense of itself. It is groups of people using race, ethnicity, religion, identity to gain advantages in what they perceive as a zero sum game. So the word ‘woke’ might go away. But the phenomenon isn’t going anywhere any time soon because the problem is structural. It will pop back up under a new brand. If Gavin Newsom wins in 2028 we will find out what that is. German students in Vienna who forcibly removed Czechs from a university cafeteria in 1910 represented a kind of ‘woke.’ We see a flavor of ‘woke’ in the UK because they have the same issues of diversity as the USA, just different groups and percentages.

Ross Perot was the most successful third party candidate in recent memory. He had personal quirks that derailed his candidacy - had he not dropped out and then reentered the race in 1992, it’s not inconceivable that he could have won.

The basis of his appeal was a mass propaganda effort to put the deficit/budget/debt problems before the American people. This meant spending millions of his own fortune to buy TV time, 30-60 minute spots, where he walked through the problems. This had a real impact on the discourse. Both Clinton and Bush were forced to reframe their campaigns around budget discipline - and it was then Clinton, forced by Gingrich and the GOP, who actually balanced the federal budget. Internet productivity gains were enormously important too - tax receipts went up. So there was some luck. But none of this would have been a focus without Perot.

So while third parties almost never go anywhere (although the GOP was itself a third party that displaced the Whigs) they can shift the discourse in good directions. But it requires discipline, monomaniacal focus, and a huge informational/propaganda effort that is engaging and not offputting - and to the extent they work, it’s usually by forcing the dominant parties to pay attention. It’s a tall order.

Though getting out of our fiscal problems may require another round of luck with AI driven productivity gains, a massive focus on fiscal discipline - and frankly some focus on wealth inequality that is becoming unsustainable unless we want to be Brazil - so some people are going to have to pay up. For the people saying ‘he got Bill Clinton elected’ - that’s probably true but misses the point. Clinton under the thumb of a GOP Congress was better from a fiscal standpoint than GW Bush with a GOP Congress. It was the Bush presidency and its disasters that gave us Obama, not Clinton.

A lot of hedge funds and other large institutions that trade securities use borrowed $$. If the equities/stocks/securities they buy fall below a certain value - they get a margin call. Meaning they have to pay up. A lot of screeching is b/c some people are losing real money here. Of course the reason they've been doing this in such large amounts is because low interest rate environments mean they can get basically free $$ and then gain a higher return. They might borrow at 1% and hope to gain 8% on a trade. This has gone on for years.

Reading this college applications, essays - it's all pretty ridiculous. 4.5 GPAs. 1580 SAT scores. This club and that club. Volunteer work at the hospital or homeless shelter. Math competition.

What a complete waste of a childhood. It's not just that this is unnecessary, just part of an arms race to get into "the good school." It's that we are completely directing every aspect of someone's life, snuffing out their own potential creativity, so they can get a "good job."

Immigrants "do the jobs Americans won't do" not just because of low pay - but because immigrants do them. It becomes a class marker, and Americans feel embarrassed to do them even at reasonable pay. The pay and class thing become a spiral downward. This will be a tough nut to crack - reinvesting jobs Americans haven't done for a long time with some dignity. It might not even be possible at this point. But I remember driving west years ago and seeing white teenagers working fast food restaurants in North Dakota, which hadn't been a thing in NY for a while. So it's not totally impossible.

I don't think there is a "woke left" or a "woke right." I think there are bizarre reactions to conducting an experiment of throwing people together from all parts of the world in the name of economic expediency without ever asking how people would react to it. Multiculturalism isn't natural, doesn't make people happy, and is a challenge to overcome. When it comes to "racism" - this goes in both directions. People who are the main inhabitants of a place will have racial reactions to feeling that they're being overwhelmed - and the "newcomers" express very similar sentiments. Anti-white rhetoric is every bit as common as "racism" against people who come in.

1/McDonald’s has had an interesting trajectory. If you watch a film from ca 1980, there are scenes of trim privileged white kids hanging out there (Ordinary People). Kids of doctors and lawyers. Well into the 90s it was still a place that middle class kids held a birthday party. 2/Somewhere around 2000, the marketing shifted to blacks. They showed teens on stoops in Brooklyn calling it ‘Mickey Ds.’ This coincided with the total disappearance of the white middle class birthday party - and the set aside party room.

The unipolar moment resulted in nearly all American foreign policy officials believing they can just go around the world and do anything they want. They were not challenged in this thinking, and now they mostly are incapable of thinking in a new multipolar world. They've become mediocrities trapped in groupthink, despite all the obvious failures. Something similar seems to have happened in the political parties. An America on top of the world produced the same kind of politician in both parties who thinks we can just borrow $$ endlessly, bully the entire world endlessly, that the debt doesn't matter. And all the real disputes have centered on fairly trivial social issues. Boys in the girls bathroom is important, but not as important as $35 trillion in debt.

Something for the Nixon fans. Back in 1974 Jack Margolis, after listening to the Watergate tapes, compiled a slender pamphlet titled "The Poetry of Richard Milhous Nixon." He presented Nixon's remarks as though they were profound ruminations on the issues of the day. Very funny. I will excerpt a few below. This one deals with the complexity of the times, called "Mixed Emotions"

Being a night owl isn’t about staying up late for whatever reason, to drink or party. It’s about feeling a release of tension, an ease in the dark, that lets you do the work and study that makes you happy. Something about broad daylight creates a pressure to be involved with things, move with the hustle and bustle of people in the streets, when really you need solitude and silence. I’ve spent my entire life trying to be an early bird, even following Kant’s schedule of waking each day at 5am. But it never took. I still try for pragmatic reasons and have to do it for work etc. But in the middle of the night - that’s when I’m really awake.

There is this debate about obesity. People trying to pinpoint the cause. Seed oils. Chemicals. But really it’s just obvious massive overeating, over consumption. People who are very bored, who have little to live for, and seek distraction. Obesity is a disease of abundance. I think this is obvious, and that the search for conspiratorial causes (which are not always without merit) is also a sign of a lazy society where everyone has what s/he needs and simply doesn’t care very much. It’s a society without any deeper meaning.

Men of true principle - who take their racism seriously - will not go anywhere near this woman. Brown eyes are just a deal breaker… This woman is also beyond the pale:

1/Let’s do a recipe, haven’t done one in a while. This is a simple Croque Madame, a simple French bistro dish. It’s just a glorified ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg. But it’s very good, and you can do it at home relatively fast and cheap.

2/this is for 2. Take four pieces of sturdy white bread, spread 2 tbsp of butter total over both sides. Bake at 375 F for about 12 minutes, flipping halfway. Crack 2 eggs and put them in ramekins (any dish is fine of course) and hit with salt and pepper

1/Ok so let’s do Beef Bourguinion, cash in my promise. This is the finished product served over simple mashed potatoes, garnished with parsley. Directions…. 2/what you need. About 3.5 lbs of Chuck roast, cut into chunks and tossed with a tbsp of salt. 2 carrots, 2 onions roughly chopped, handful of thyme and parsley. A head of garlic cloves smashed. Tbsp of tomato paste, 1/2 tsp anchovy paste. 1 lb cremini mushrooms. 2 cups pearl onions

Teaching writing is an eye-opening experience. Those who have a certain facility for the written word take it for granted. And just because a person can talk well - doesn't mean much. There are people who just aren't good at writing, organizing their thought, putting it down. So when you read academic drivel, where the point often seems more to obscure a lack of clear thinking than to elucidate anything - this is just a lack of talent. And we see it a lot in professors because we have too many professors, and not all of them are going to be good.

The judge in Derek Chauvin’s case refused to allow the jury to see pages from a police manual depicting the hold that Chauvin applied, which specifically called the knee on the neck/back as non-lethal. The jury didn’t know Chauvin was following protocol.

If this isn’t reversible error I don’t know what is. There was a picture in the manual showing exactly what Chauvin did. I just learned this, and it underscores even more that Judge Peter Cahill manipulated the trial to get a guilty verdict. There are a whole bunch of PowerPoint slides you can see. They’ve been posted to a Google drive. But here are a couple examples.

1/Crème brûlée has a reputation for sophistication but is simple and easy. Good desert to make in advance. Directions if you want to do it below: 2/ this recipe is for 4 servings in shallow dishes of about 5 oz. You want two cups of heavy cream, and 5 tbsp of sugar. Place them in a sauce pan and bring to light boil, dissolve the sugar, and then pull from heat to cool for at least 5 minutes.

1/ Ok, as promised here is a recipe for doing a hearty Reuben Sandwich at home. Finished product below with a shredded Brussels sprout salad. Directions further down (this is for 2 sandwiches):

https://twitter.com/FischerKing64/status/1676407787436519424

2/ so I don’t buy sliced deli meat. I take a brisket (you can do it yourself or get one from the store) and prepare it. Later cut it into slices and chunks:

1/Ok, so I said I would give details. This is very easy, everyone does it his way, but see below if interested:

https://twitter.com/fischerking64/status/1719161227031777654

2/ I used a small red apple, small onion, 4 bratwursts (there will be leftover kraut for another 4), and 3 thick strips of bacon. Peel and dice the apple, slice the onion into thin strips, cut the bacon into 1/4 inch pieces

1/Haven’t posted a recipe in a while. Here is a simple shrimp roll - you can think of it as a poor man’s lobster roll. Relatively cheap, easy, nice for later summer. Details (this is for 2)…. 2/You small dice a stalk of celery and a green onion. Then chop a small bunch of parsley, dill and chives. Mix with zest of 1/2 a lemon and its juice. 2 large spoonfuls of mayo. 1/2 tsp of Dijon. Same of paprika. 1 tsp red wine vinegar. 1/2 tsp old bay seasoning. Cranks of salt and pepper. Stir together.