Mudd. No More “Allies.” Xenotransplantation. More Bessent. Money and Campaigns.

First: A seriously proud moment

Time magazine has released its listing of the top schools in America. California’s Harvey Mudd College where my niece Dr. Harriet Black Nembhard is president, is ranked third. Stanford is first and MIT second. This is one of the proudest moments of my life. I truly regret that my brother, the late Dr. Charles Black and my parents are not here to share this moment.https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/americas-best-colleges-2027/

 

Allies no more

With Donald Trump, there’s no such thing as an “ally” anymore. Call them “strategic partners” instead.

Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantation: transplanting cells, tissue, or whole organs from one species into another.

Science fiction keeps becoming science fact. Take Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy — Butler is one of my favorite sci-fi authors, though I can only handle her in small doses. In Dawn, nuclear war has wrecked Earth, and the survivors are rescued by the Oankali, an alien race with three sexes: male, female, and Ooloi. The Ooloi splice their mates’ genes together and generate a hybrid Oankali-human offspring.

Now real life is catching up. The medical journal STAT reports that eGenesis, the biotech firm behind genetically engineered pig kidneys, says two of its first patients have since gone on to receive human organs — successfully. The whole point of pig kidneys is a numbers problem: there aren’t enough human organs, and people die waiting. The worry was that a temporary pig kidney might trigger antibodies that would sabotage a later human transplant. So far, it hasn’t. Xenotransplantation, anyone?

The story reminded me of something said by the late Lewis Grizzard who was the sports editor for Georgia’s campus paper the Red and Black while I was a student there. Grizzard had a series of heart problems and once related that he once got a heart valve from a pig named Jerome and afterwards teared up every time he drove past a bar-b-q joint.

Bessent in the spotlight

Treasury Secretary Bessent is chasing the president for airtime these days, and he’s clearly loving it — a faceless bond trader turned voice of the economy. He is charged with overseeing the so-called “Economic D-Day” that is supposed to sever economic ties with countries continuing to do business with Iran (China anyone?). He was the subject of some ridicule when he referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the “Strait of Vermouth”. He was acting head of the IRS and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He’s also taken heat for trying to strong-arm the bond market. At the G20 he insisted we can grow our way out of the national debt. We can’t. And he keeps parroting the economically illiterate line that “non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending stream of cheap exports is not sustainable.”

Not sustainable for whom? As Don Boudreaux wrote in a letter to the Washington Post: if non-market economies sell goods below cost, that’s a problem for them, not for us. We pay less; they eat the loss. Selling below cost is what’s unsustainable — for the exporter. Boudreaux calls it a wealth transfer straight into American pockets, with the damage landing on foreigners, not Americans. A real “America First” crowd should be cheering cut-rate exports, not jeering them.

Bessent almost certainly knows better. He’s just too busy enjoying the spotlight to let the truth get in the way. After Trump, does he run for office back home in South Carolina?

Money and politics

The media wants you to believe money buys elections. Republicans slammed Trump for dropping $800,000 to push political novice Darline Graham Nordone past veteran Ralph Norman in the South Carolina Senate race. Trump has now announced he’ll aim his $400 million war chest at select GOP midterm races.

But the evidence keeps telling us that money doesn’t always triumph. In Michigan, a Trump-backed candidate lost the primary to a rival who had suspended his own campaign the month before. In Florida, democratic socialist Angie Nixon was outspent 16 to 1 and won anyway. Ken Paxton was outspent by John Cornyn in Texas. Julia Letlow beat Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. Mike Collins beat Buddy Carter in Georgia. Bernie Sanders outspent Joe Biden. Jaime Harrison outraised Lindsey Graham $57 million to $28 million — and lost. Now James Talarico is outspending Ken Paxton nearly 200 to 1 in Texas, $31.6 million to $9.3 million. Money talks. Whether it wins is another story.