Preparing for the unexpected

As regular readers know, I play the card game bridge and recently I happened to look at some aspects of the history of the game. It is not pretty because the main body that governs the game in the US, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), was infused with the racism that the country was steeped in, not allowing Black people to join and play, forcing them to start their own organization the American Bridge Association (ABA).

On October 4, 1949, members of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) voted to exclude Black players from competitions.

The ACBL was founded in 1937 and became the largest organization devoted to the card game in the U.S. White bridge organizations in this era strictly enforced racial segregation, forcing Black bridge players to create their own bridge association called the American Bridge Association (ABA). Racial exclusion was reinforced by laws in several states that officially banned card games between Black and white players.

In 1949, several Black bridge players applied for membership in the ACBL, challenging the organization’s “white only” policy. In response, the ACBL board of directors held a vote among its 28,000 members. Nearly 60% voted to reject allowing Black bridge players to be admitted.
[Read more…]

The reactions to the death of Charlie Kirk

I must say that I have been surprised by the reactions to the killing of Charlie Kirk. I had of course heard of him but he had been on the periphery of my political consciousness. I viewed him as a young right-wing provocateur among many other such people, spewing racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic rhetoric aimed at gaining a following among the population that shares such views, and currying favor with Trump and the right wing political classes. But he is now being portrayed by the right as some kind of messianic figure and his killing, rather than being just another episode in the political violence that is endemic to the US, is being viewed as some kind of major martyrdom for the Trump cause, akin to Jesus’s martyrdom for our sins.

I have also been surprised at what has been revealed about his alleged assailant. The initial information about the shooting made me think that the perpetrator was some kind of trained professional. To kill someone from a roof top with a single shot at a range of about 200 yards, even with a telescopic sight, and then jump down to the ground and escape pursuers made me think that it must be someone with some kind of military or paramilitary training.

It turns out that he seems to be just an ordinary college student from a Mormon family in rural Utah.
[Read more…]

Living in an alternate reality

Joseph Ladapo is the surgeon general for the state of Florida and is a vaccine skeptic who recently announced plans to abolish all mandates that requires parents to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio, and hepatitis, comparing such mandates to slavery. He also opposes gender-affirming care and counseling for transgender and nonbinary minors. He is a good example of how an education obtained at elite institutions (he obtained his undergraduate degree from Wake Forest and his MD and PhD from Harvard) does not mean that one cannot hold unscientific views. He has been publicly rebuked by the CDC and FDA for spreading scientific misinformation.

But extreme as his views are, they are nowhere close to those of his wife Brianna who is described as an “intuitive spiritual healer, movement therapist, and teacher”.
[Read more…]

The dilemma for the Federal Reserve

The US Federal Reserve has two missions: keep inflation under control and have full employment.

What should be the desired rate of inflation? If it gets too low, that might be due to the economy stagnating and heading towards recession. Too high and people and businesses start hurting and indulging in more short-term spending as a hedge against future price rises. The magic number that the Fed and the economic pundits have settled on seems to be around 2%.

In its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (PDF), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) judges that inflation of 2 percent over the longer run, as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent with the Federal Reserve’s mandate for maximum employment and price stability. When households and businesses can reasonably expect inflation to remain low and stable, they are able to make sound decisions regarding saving, borrowing, and investment, which contribute to a well-functioning economy and the well-being of all Americans.

[Read more…]

Bolsonaro gets 27 years in prison

The former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup following his loss in 2022 to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Justices Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha and Cristiano Zanin ruled on Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning four of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty.
…

On Tuesday two other judges, Moraes and Flávio Dino, also declared the 70-year-old politician guilty of leading what the former called “a criminal organisation” that had sought to plunge the South American country back into dictatorship.
[Read more…]

Why the shock?

The killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk has created an outpouring in the media and among the political classes about how terrible and shocking it is.

Terrible? Yes. It is wrong to kill someone except under extreme circumstances like self-defense.

But shocking? No. This is America where multiple people are murdered every day because of the ease with which lethal weapons like guns can be obtained. Statistically, prominent people like Kirk are a small fraction of the public and usually surrounded by security personnel that make them hard to get to. But as small as that probability may be, there will be occasions when, despite the odds, someone well known is going to be killed.

In fact, when I get up in the morning and read the news headlines, I almost expect to see some ghastly story about people being killed. I just don’t know who the specific victims will be.

So I was not shocked by the killing of Kirk. Deadly violence is the norm in the US. Acting shocked tends to result in such events being seen as anomalies not requiring any serious response, rather than as signs of an endemic problem that calls for systemic action.

Meeting the deportation quotas drags in ordinary people

That Trump is struggling to have his ICE goons meet the quota for detaining and deporting people (reportedly the target is about 3,000 people per day) is clear from the fact that they are now doing so for the most minor of offenses.

An Irish grandmother who has lived in the US for most of her life and holds a green card is facing deportation because she wrote a bad cheque for $25 in 2015.

Donna Hughes-Brown, 58, was detained in July after landing in Chicago on a flight from Dublin and is being held in isolation in a detention centre in Kentucky. She has lived in the US since 1977, has five children and grandchildren, and ran a horse farm in Troy, Missouri.

Her husband, Jim Brown, a US citizen and military veteran, told reporters his wife was not a criminal and that he “100%” regretted voting for Donald Trump as president.

He said she had been detained on a misdemeanour relating to a $25 cheque she signed a decade ago and for which she made restitution and received probation.

She was detained under legislation amended on 4 July as part of Trump’s sweeping “one big beautiful bill” act. The couple visited Ireland that month for a funeral. When they landed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on 29 July a police officer was waiting for her on the ramp.

[Read more…]

The dumb blonde stereotype

While idly surfing the internet, I came across an item that began “This reminds me of the joke of two blondes sunbathing in Missouri.” I immediately knew that the ‘joke’ would be based on the stereotype of blonde women being stupid and/or ignorant. And sure enough, here is the full item.

This reminds me of the joke of two blondes sunbathing in Missouri. One of them looks up and sees the faint outline of the Moon in the blue sky.

One asks the other, ”Which is closer, the Moon or Florida?”

“Obviously the Moon. Can you see Florida from here?”

[Read more…]

Complicity in Israeli genocide is Starmer’s shame

British prime minister Keir Starmer and the governing Labour party have shown themselves to be utterly complicit in the Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza, doing nothing except make largely meaningless statements. But their latest actions are jaw-dropping. After members of a group called Palestine Action were accused of vandalizing tanks, the government took the extraordinary step of not only banning the group but going to the extreme of also making it a crime to publicly support the organization. This blatant attack on the right to political speech has infuriated people and brought them out in defiance, challenging the government to arrest them. Here is one report from August 9th.

Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the United Kingdom over the past month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression.

More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” That was enough for police to step in.

But as the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers sparred over the number of arrests as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable.

“The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing ‘terrorism’ offenses, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home,” Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said in a statement. “This is a major embarrassment to (the government), further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government’s own crimes.”
…

On Friday, police said the demonstration was unusual in that the protesters wanted to be arrested in large numbers so as to place a strain on police and the broader criminal justice system.

[Read more…]

Labour government in disarray in the UK

Over in the UK, it looks like prime minister Keir Starmer is blowing it big time. It was just a little over a year ago that the party swept the Conservatives out of power, winning 412 seats in the 650 member body, a gain of 211 seats from before, giving them a massive majority. The Conservatives had held power for 14 years and the public had clearly had enough of them. But as soon as three months after the election, the popularity of the Labour party had cratered and it has not recovered since, as it lurches from one self-inflicted would to another, accompanied by a feckless leader who seems to have no vision, other than to be a slightly less right-wing version of the Conservatives. The government, rather than improving the condition of those in need, has refused to do so, keeping in place some of the former harsh anti-poor policies and even adding to them. Adding to that have been image-damaging shabby scandals about Starmer and other party leaders accepting gifts such as clothes from wealthy people, cementing the idea that they are on the take and in the pockets of the plutocrats. Just yesterday, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner was forced to step down over allegations that she had evaded paying the appropriate amount of taxes on her properties.

Before the UK election, I linked to a very interesting interview given by Rory Stewart who was at one time an ambitious and upward bound insider Conservative politician before becoming disillusioned with Boris Johnson’s Brexit policies and quitting parliament. He described Starmer as conducting a ‘Ming vase’ election strategy.
[Read more…]