In August, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the long known but rarely acknowledged fact: “During WW I, Turkey committed genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, killing roughly 1.5 million Armenians, and another 1.5 million Assyrians and Greeks,” (Israel HaYom, here).
Why now? Why not in earlier?
Continue readingOn June 26,2026 Yechiel Leiter and Nada Hamadeh Moawad, the Israeli and Lebanese Ambassadors to the United States, signed an agreement with the United States outlining a framework for security and joint cooperation between the countries. (US Dept of State, here, AP Here)
History was made.
Beneath the surface, this demonstrates the loss of power and influence that the Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced since October 7, 2023.
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Source: Google Maps
Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, recently made a joke comparing Israel and with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and suggesting that Israel was worse. Stewart should know that while Israel started fighting back in 2024, Iran has been threatening Israel since 1979 and and attacking Israel via proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the so-called “West Bank” since the early 1980’s.
So to offer reasonable and accurate comparisons, Iran is roughly the size of Alaska, and roughly 2.4 times the size of Texas. Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey.
Iran is a nation of 90 million people, 88 million of whom are Muslim, none of whom are free.
Israel is a nation roughly the size of New Jersey of 9 million people, including 2 million Arabs, all of whom are free. (Including the Druze of the Israeli Golan Heights and excluding the Arabs of Gaza or the area between Israel and Jordan, who are not citizens of Israel.
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Benjamin Netanyahu (center), Nikos Christodoulides (left) and Kyriakos Mitsotakis (right) in Jerusalem on December 22, 2025. (Abir Sultan / Pool / AFP)
Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, flanked by Greece’s PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides said, “To those who fantasize they can reestablish their empires and their dominion over our lands, I say: Forget it. It’s not going to happen. Don’t even think about it.”
(Times of Israel, here).
They are talking to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
This is chutzah.
Erdogan is dreaming that he can recreate the Ottoman Empire.
This is hubris.
And when it’s chutzpah v hubris, bet on chutzpah.
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According to CNN, here, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is “promising” a tariff dividend to households making less than $100,000 per year. In 2024, this was 57.3% of households. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, here, as of Nov. 12, 2024, there are about 132.2 million household in the US. This means about 74.67 million households earn less than $100,000. Giving each of them $2,000 would require about $149.3 Billion, plus enough for logistics and overhead.
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As noted on Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, here, Kazakhstan joining the Abraham Accords is partly symbolic. Kazakhstan recognized Israel and has maintained diplomatic ties with it since gaining independence from Russia and the Soviet Union in 1991. But this begs the question
Why did the Muslim majority nation recognize and seek ties with Israel in 1991?
Look at the map. Kazakhstan is south of Russia, west of China, and while separated by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, north of Iran and Afghanistan.
Ah-ha. But by this logic a rational person would expect Azerbaijan, India, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan to have ties with Israel. And they do.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, here, “The U.S. has collected tens of billions of dollars in tariffs.”
The Journal also quotes Pres. Trump, on Truth Social, saying,
People that are against tariffs are fools! We are now the richest, most respected country in the world, with almost no inflation, and a record stock market price.”
“A dividend of at least $2000 per person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The current rate of inflation, as of September, 2025, is 3.00%, according to “USA Facts,” here, and based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, here, which also states that inflation was up 0.3% in September. I’m not an economist, but 3% inflation is not “almost no inflation.”
Now, let’s do the math.
Here’s the text of the Emoluments Clause:
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.“
⁃ US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9.
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Elon Musk seems to believe that we – humans – particularly the subset known as Americans – and the smaller subset known as Elon Musk – can and should create a colony of one million people on Mars.
And why not? Raised on the Technocratic wet dreams of his grandfather and perhaps the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein, Musk knows, or rather believes, that there is nothing that man generally and men who are engineers specifically can not do or invent; that there is no problem that we can not solve, including terraforming Mars. After all, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Scotty terraformed planet Genesis – quickly – on Star Trek.
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The “Car Assembler” calls the other guy a “Moron” … “Dumber than a sack of bricks.”
In Italy, Saturday, April 5, Elon Musk called for a “Free Trade Zone” between the EU and the USA. “At the end of the day, I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,” the tech billionaire told Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing League Party.” (See USA Today and NBC News.)
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On 25 May, 2023, Vogtle 3 came online. On 1 May, 2024, Vogtle 4 came online, US Energy Information Administration, here. The total cost was estimated “close to $35 Billion, $14.4 per watt for the 2.43 GW reactors, AP News, here.
On 24 January, 2025 the NJ Board of Public Utilities, NJ BPU, here, announced that during Phil Murphy’s tenure as Governor, we have:
New York, NY, 7/28/24. Updated, 8/30/24, 9/21/24. Allan Lichtman, whose model successfully predicted 9 out of the last 10 elections, has made a preliminary projection that Kamala Harris will win the Presidential election in November, 2024.
I agree with his assessment. However, I think there are a few things that he misses in his preliminary analysis. First: The polls. According to Fox News, Harris has a higher favorability rating in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“Favoribility” is not votes – neither are polls. However, the national polls, reported by TheHill.com, as of 7/28/24, show Harris closing but slightly behind the twice-impeached failed insurrectionist with 34 Felony convictions.
Update: according to The Hill, as of 8/30/24, Harris leads Trump, 52.6 to 47.4. This matches the NY Times, 49 to 46. According to the NY Times, here, as of Sept. 21, 2024, Harris leads by 2 points nationally, and leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada. According to TheHill.com, as of Thursday, Sept. 19, Harris and Trump were deadlocked nationally while Harris was up 4 points in Pennsylvania. (here). So the Polls are close.
Then, there’s Allen Lichtman.
Continue readingPresident Biden spoke eloquently in Normandy, remarks by President Biden on the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, France, honoring those who fought to free the world of the scourge of Nazism.
However, I believe he should have added four (4) observations.
In 1953 President Eisenhower nominated Charles Wilson to be his Secretary of Defense. Wilson, then the President of General Motors, had overseen GM’s war production during World War II. During his confirmation hearings he was asked if he could make a decision that was bad for GM. His response is remembered as a classic example of arrogance – “What’s good for GM is good for America.”
However, that’s not exactly what he said.
Continue readingWhat is certain is that improvements in wind, solar, battery storage and electric vehicles will continue these technologies’ march to dominance, while fossil fuels become niche. Concerns about the land needs of renewable energy are overblown; you could power the entire U.S. with solar panels on just one-third of the more than 30 million acres currently devoted to growing corn for climate-unfriendly ethanol. Indeed, solar doesn’t even have to displace farming. Agrivoltaics is already making solar and agriculture compatible and creating money-saving synergies.
I am sure she is correct. Consider the the logistics and life cycles of the PV Solar and Corn to Ethanol systems and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The 2nd law basically “The entropy of the universe increases.” (Entropy is randomness or disorder. And this is high school physics.)
Imagine a building w a solar roof. The sun shines on the roof, and it powers the building (except at night or when it’s raining or snowing). One stop shopping.
Imagine a corn to ethanol operation.
Not quite as simple.
Solar modules generate electricity by converting photons into electric current.
Ethanol farms convert photons into corn, which must be harvested, then processed. Growing the crop probably uses fertilizer and pesticides, because the corn to ethanol operations are probably not organic farms. The tractors required for planting, harvesting, etc require fuel, maintenance. The factories in which the corn is transformed into ethanol require power and maintenance, and if they have moving parts, lubricants. Transporting the ethanol requires tankers, pipelines, etc.
Solar is one step. Corn to ethanol is multiple steps. Entropy is created, energy is lost in each step. (Energy is also lost in solar when 1) the direct current generated by a PV solar module is inverted into DC and 2) the electricity travels thru transmission lines.)
And PV Solar works with low maintenance for 20 to 30 years. While corn to ethanol planting, harvesting, processing need to be repeated every year.