Fall. Texas. Equal Earth.

Fall

Today is the first day of Fall with the equinox arriving at 8:05 p.m. Eastern. The equinox is an exact global event being the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator. I marvel that Hipparchus of Nicaea, the Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician made this discovery of the precession of the equinoxes – the gradual cyclic wobble of the Earth’s axis – around 130 BC.

Goodbye summer! I knew that Fall was on its way by all the leaves falling (no pun intended). Almost every day, I am having to blow the leaves off my driveway. I live in east Tennessee, which is one of the most scenic places in the country. It is not as spectacular as parts of California, but as a friend of mine said when he moved from California to Knoxville: here the scenery is accessible. It is right out the front door not someplace on the horizon. The changing colors at my home and in the Smokies, along with deer hunting and college football, make this my favorite place to be in the whole wide world. BTW, the first week of deer hunting (bow) in Georgia was a total bust, marked by days in the mid-90s. The mornings were tolerable, but the oppressive heat later in the day made hunting completely out of the question. If I had stayed in Knoxville, I would have seen many more deer who enjoy relaxing near my carport and wandering through my backyard. It is also college football season, and games should not ever be played in 100+ degree weather. Maybe that is why my Ohio State Buckeyes lost to the utter embarrassment of us all, withering in the Texas heat. Speaking of which…

Why Texas?

Texas has experienced stunning growth over the last 40 years or so. Its population has increased by 86 percent, to 31.7 million, since 1990, making it the second-most populous state in the country after California. Texas will overtake California as the most populous state by 2050. Its population growth has mostly been due to domestic migration from other parts of the U.S. (especially California), rather from outside the country. Apparently U-Hauls leaving California have basically become the new state symbol. If current voting trends continue – which is a huge assumption – the country would be affected by California losing many of its 53 congressional seats (46 Democrats) to Texas, which currently has 38 (24 Republicans).

Why are people leaving California to head to Texas? It certainly isn’t for Texas’ scenic beauty. California is one of the most spectacular states in the union. It is geographically diverse with a wonderful climate. Mountains, oceans, beaches. It is the nation’s largest agricultural producer and is resource rich. Texas – not so much. Its idea of scenic beauty is a Buc-ee’s on the horizon. Texas has crappy weather and unspectacular scenery. Okay, there may be some isolated spots that are not so bad, but they are rare and far between. But Texas’ mere existence as a growth leader demonstrates the power of less government, fewer regulations, and more freedom overcoming the desire to live amid breathtaking beauty. Can you imagine what the consequences would be if California’s stifling economic climate were suddenly transformed into Texas’? Here we clearly see the superiority of economics over aesthetics. To somewhat quote the Temptations: Beauty is only skin deep but a favorable tax code is forever.

This more points to the stupidity of California than to the genius of Texas. Sometimes winning is just showing up while the other guy trips over his own shoelaces. Me? Given the choice of California or Texas, I’d rather live in east Tennessee.

Equal Earth

A while back I wrote about the Mercator map was used by European ships’ captains because it allowed navigators to plot a straight-line course from point A to point B. That was awfully important in the days of rickety sailing ships navigating oceans especially when worried about sailing off the edge of the planet. But when the map translated a three-dimensional shape like the Earth into a two-dimensional projection like a map, it distorted size and distance as you got closer to the two poles. As a result, Greenland and Antarctica look huge. Greenland looks bigger than Africa, even though Africa is fourteen times larger. I made the conjecture that the wrong-sized map was part of the president’s obsession with Greenland. He said in 2021, “I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’” Nothing says diplomacy like coveting a piece of ice because it looked big on a map.

Oops.

For centuries, the Africans were rightly miffed and wanted a more accurate picture of their continent. Well, the UN just adopted a map called the “Equal Earth projection,” created to show more accurately the sizes of the continents and intended to replace the old Mercator map in schools and on government websites. The map is a mathematical projection of the land and sea, without human-made borders. I had mentioned earlier an alternative – the Gall-Peters model – which was more accurate than Mercator but is not very esthetically pleasing, looking somewhat elongated, with some saying that it looks like clothes hanging out to dry (something that we can appreciate in here in East Tennessee). The Equal Earth map is more esthetically pleasing, but would not be very useful to navigate by for a 16^th century captain of a sailing ship. Watch out for that edge! Somewhere, Columbus is refusing to update his GPS. 

Oh, and the vote at the UN for adoption? It was 124-1, with only the US voting against. The US deputy UN representative, Yaryna Ferencevych – a good Irish name – said resolutions such as the “correct the map” effort were “barnacles on our work here.” Here is her statement: 

“This resolution mocks the work and purpose of this institution. While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions, the United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to – as its most vocal and committed proponents plainly and openly state.

Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century, and their role in promoting reparations and “cognitive justice.” Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote, are barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility. When the United Nations questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world, and is not taken seriously, time and again, we point to resolutions such as this.”

Huh? What does that mean? Did the US vote against it because the US appears smaller on this map than on the Mercator? Was it because Greenland is significantly smaller, belying Trump’s idea that it is “massive”? No. The statement is clear: the US voted against it solely because it is called the EqualEarth projection.

Is Donald Trump Herbert Hoover?

In 2024, Trump said that if there was a crash, he hoped it would be before he took office because he did not want to be another Herbert Hoover. He said, “The one president—I just don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.” Hoover is, of course, rightly or wrongly, blamed for the Great Depression simply because it began on his watch. Hoover had been in office less than a year when the market crashed, but nevertheless history puts the blame on him. Until now, Hoover wore the mantle as having the worst economic record of any president. Yet an aide to Franklin Roosevelt said that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started,” arguing “his (Hoover’s) policies were substantially correct.”

What about Trump? Are his economic policies “substantially correct.” They are now focused on protectionism and not the economic wellbeing of the economy even though the president thinks that they are one and the same. Trump seems to think that protectionism will bring back jobs and increase prosperity. That is contrary to economic history and his only advocates are those on his payroll, hardcore MAGA, and Fox News. Just as many have said that Biden replaced Carter as the worst president in history, some are now wondering if Trump a worse economic president than Hoover. Although Trump gets high marks for closing the border and stopping the Green New Gift and DEI, he now gets negatives for overkill in all those areas. But his economics are threatening to make him the second worst economic president in history. I actually credit Lyndon Johnson as the worst economic president because of his inflationary recession. 

Trump’s policies have not resulted in a severe recession like Johnson’s – yet. But he is obsessed with tariffs – which are border taxes – that reduce real consumer household income. His war on Iran has driven up energy prices and disrupted access to life-giving fertilizers and other products moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite what Trump says, tariffs are taxes, and the estimate is that during the first year, the tax-equivalent increase for American households was $1,745. This year that has increased 43% to a tax-equivalent $2,500, according to the Joint Economic Committee. Of course, the president keeps telling the lie that exporting countries pay his border taxes and that they are making us “rich as hell.” 

Last year, Trump claimed that the US was earning “trillions of dollars” from his border taxes when, in fact, the government collected only $195 billion – which it is having to rebate to the importers.  On July 28^th in an interview on Fox – where his statements are never vetted – Trump again stated that the border taxes have made the US a “fortune.” Well, with an additional tax burden of $2,500, Americans are certainly not feeling rich. This was ahead of his third attempt to impose his illegal border taxes on the world. These taxes of 10% and 12.5% are also imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows temporary border taxes for 150 days. These tariffs are replacing the ones that are expiring. 

Trump saying that the border taxes are making us rich is akin to only looking at the revenue coming into the Treasury rather than looking at the source of that revenue. But there is bad news for the president. For the first time, border tax revenue was negative due to refunds ordered by court rulings. In June, $166 billion was reimbursed, and the U.S. government’s customs duties receipts showed a negative balance of $25.6 billion. This is despite the president threatening those who seek a refund, saying that he would “remember” those who asked for one. In essence, the president is saying that if businesses don’t seek a refund, they will be in his good graces and can expect positivetreatment from the White House.

By the way, why can’t the president see the contradiction here? If the foreign exporters were paying his border taxes, then the American importers would not have to seek a refund.

Anyway, taxes of the amount imposed by the border taxes reduce household real income and stifle economic growth. In fact, GDP grew at only 1.5% last quarter – well below Treasury Secretary Bessant prediction of 3 percent. Some of Trump’s supporters are asking him revive the flagging economy and to reconsider his new border taxes, drop them and return to Reagan’s example of supply-side economics. Fat chance.

The border taxes, the increase in the cost of energy caused by Trump’s war on Iran, and the prospects for an inflationary recession increase. Currently, regular unleaded is over $4 nationally, with diesel over $6 a gallon. At that price, many small truckers will go out of business, and the price of virtually everything will rise. The Wall Street Journal reported that one long-haul trucker spent $1,800 on diesel during a week on the road. This was 40% higher than before Trump’s war on Iran. I sort of feel his pain, having spent $180 on a tank of diesel for my F-250. I was shocked when a close friend sent me a picture of a gas station in Texas that was out of diesel. This should never occur. Texas should be awash in diesel. “Out” happens in socialist countries not market economies. Is that what Trump is turning us into?

Small truck drivers — many of whom own their rigs and pay their own fuel bills — are hit hardest. Eventually, the higher diesel prices will show up in consumer goods, intermediate goods, and final goods. What will Warsh do as the CPI and PCE start to rise even more? Fed models estimate that every $1 increase in diesel prices typically translates to a 0.3% rise in core goods inflation within 90 days.

Diesel is also used to power machinery used by the fishing, farming, and construction industries, and those price effects will eventually show up in rising prices as well. The indirect effects of higher diesel prices are enormous, flowing through to essentially all goods, at a time when supply chains are already stressed by Trump’s border taxes.

One analyst stated the obvious: “Until we see a meaningful resumption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, upward pressure on fuel prices is likely to persist.” But the war has damaged capacity in the Gulf, with Iranian drone attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Persian Gulf hobbling operations in oil-producing nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Some experts say that even if the war ended today, it would take months before normal operations could resume.

Economic research indicates that sustained diesel prices above $5.25 a gallon historically correlate with recession probability increasing above 40%. This is because diesel fuel serves as the backbone of modern industrial activity, powering everything from heavy manufacturing equipment to long-haul freight transportation networks. Moreover, as one source puts it, “The global economy operates within an intricate web of energy dependencies that extend far beyond simple supply and demand calculations. Industrial economies rely on complex fuel distribution networks where disruptions in one geographic region can trigger cascading effects across multiple continents.” So Trump’s war has worldwide spillover effects – not just in the US. It affects our trading partners, which will increase the price of our imports even more – and recall that half of our imports are intermediate goods.

The border taxes have made Americans worse off – despite the propaganda coming from the White House. The immediate impact has been to raise consumer prices. Now, with the president’s ill-considered war on Iran, prices will rise even more. Energy price shocks have historically preceded major economic downturns, with diesel prices serving as particularly reliable recession predictors. This points to an inflationary recession caused by the president’s policies. Whether this will rival the inflationary recession of 1979-1982 remains to be seen. Inflation was as high as 15 percent, unemployment was 10 percent, the prime rate was 21 percent, and the 3-month T-bill rate was over 17 percent. I was at the heart of that episode, having been appointed to the National Credit Union Administration Board, serving on the committee chaired by Paul Volcker to address the problems while keeping financial institutions afloat. It wasn’t pretty, and I hope history does not repeat itself.

But as to the question whether Donald Trump is Herbert Hoover? His policies make him worse.

Is the world too much with us?

For some reason, without any conscious effort, out of the blue I remembered that at my high school graduation way back in 1962 from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, the poem The World Is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth was on the program. At first glance, the poem, written in 1807, might seem more apt for today’s world than for the world of 1962 or even 1807. I still remember the words:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Wordsworth was one of the most influential poets in Western literature. His most famous work, The Prelude, is considered to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism.

But what of this poem? It was written during the Industrial Revolution, a period of technological innovation that disrupted entire society and thoroughly transformed British life — and that of the Western world. The poem laments the withering connection between humankind and nature, blaming industrial society for replacing that connection with material pursuits. For Wordsworth we have lost the ability to connect with and find tranquility in nature. In exchange for material gain, we have lost the rhythms of the natural world. As a result, those rhythms no longer have an emotional impact on us.

In a more modern context, some would argue that this is the result of capitalism. But it is not. It is the result of technological change and would occur regardless of the political or economic system. The poem laments the loss of a more agrarian life for that of an urban one. It is a familiar refrain for some of us who have seen back-to-nature movements come and go.

What of the 1950s? Why the importance at a 1962 high school commencement? What were our teachers trying to tell us? Looking back, the 1950s were really disruptive. I remember our first color TV — a tiny screen in a 1,000-pound cabinet that required four men to wrestle it up the steps from the driveway to the living room. There was UNIVAC, the first commercially produced computer, there was Sputnik in 1957, the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the tensions of the Cold War. There were also innovations in the music industry, such as LPs and 45s, that revolutionized how music was enjoyed and distributed. I remember my first transistor radio, which made it possible to take my music with me instead of being stuck in the house listening to the R&B station at the end of the AM dial. (BTW, did you see where Congress is mandating that automakers keep AM radio in their vehicles?) Underlying all of it was an explosion in patent filings, reflecting an unprecedented pace of innovation that transformed entire industries and profoundly reshaped daily life. The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors made computers smaller, faster, and more reliable, and the introduction of integrated circuits in the 1960s advanced computing further still, leading to more compact and efficient machines.

So it is not hard to imagine all the disruption caused by the surge in technological change in the 1950s, and how that disruption would still be echoing at a high school commencement in 1962.

Now the world is all a-twitter over AI. Some have predicted a doomsday scenario much like the Terminator or Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL. Did you know that if you shift each letter of HAL forward one, you get IBM, the AI of the 1950s. How times have changed — yet somehow they haven’t. But regardless of any threat to mankind, AI is transformative and will be more so as it matures. Will a future generation look back lovingly on a world without AI and recall Wordsworth’s words? Maybe. But I am more optimistic. Technology has always freed mankind from the mundane. When peasants were pushed off the land and into the cities by the agricultural revolution, many said we would starve because agricultural production would fall as people left the land to the machines. They were wrong. Yes, life in the cities was simply awful during that transition period. But out of the Industrial Revolution came the wealth and prosperity that has practically eliminated the grinding poverty and hand-to-mouth existence of our ancestors.

I am not a Luddite. I bet AI will do the same – is there a prediction market for that too? Instead of fearing for the lives of my grandchildren, I am envious of what their future will look like. But somewhere in the back of my head is the story from The Twilight Zone about seemingly benevolent alien beings landing on earth, curing disease, ending wars, ending hunger and poverty. The humans find a book belonging to the aliens entitled “To Serve Man.” It was a cookbook.

The Mighty Trump: No Kings, Just a Wee Bit Bigger

Plenty of people assume the president wants to be king. His recent behavior suggests something bigger: he doesn’t want to be a piddling king. He wants to be god. His behavior radiates it. There are all the rants, curses and bellicosity of the past. He has exhibited narcissism and megalomania. How else to explain his obsession with putting his name on virtually everything and actions that included posting a picture of himself as Christ and declaring that he was the greatest president of all time? The thin skin, retaliation and vindictiveness. The grandiosity and constant need for admiration. If another president did this, Trump’s supporters would be indignant about the blasphemy of it all.

Because of his thin skin he has consistently tried to intimidate the media. His Department of “Justice” subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns regarding Air Force One. He banned three major news outlets from the White House and said more were to follow. “I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them ‘alive.’ Seems like corruption to me!) from the White House as a result of their constant “reporting” FAKE NEWS!” “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,”

Recently, he railed at the Federal Reserve for raising the fed funds target rate by a measly 25 basis points, insisting the rate should be 1 percent or lower. He threatened the Fed itself with a truly bizarre warning that if it didn’t lower rates he might just cut off trade with every country running a surplus against the U.S. and save $1.5 trillion in the process. He never followed through — so does that count as a TACO? He has, at one point or another, threatened nearly every country on Earth — except Russia, China, and North Korea, which perhaps not coincidentally are all led by leaders who even Trump’s supporters would say are narcissistic and megalomanic. 

He tried to bring Canada to its knees economically because Ottawa had the nerve to resist his tariffs and defend its own sovereignty. Now Canada is on the verge of becoming an associate member of the EU, and Trump is treating that as a threat to American national security. Huh? How is this a threat to our national security? Isn’t that pure hyperbole? And why should he care? But it just the latest evidence that has become harder and harder to miss that the president has grown intoxicated with his own power and he lashes out harder each time someone dares to question him.

Does he not realize that the only reason Canada is turning to the EU is that he pushed it there? Canada’s Mark Carney has put forth the idea of his country becoming the EU’s first associate member out of sheer necessity arguing that closer ties with the continent would keep any single country (the U.S.) from controlling Canadian markets or undermining Canadian sovereignty. What choice does he have? Would Trump rather see a closer embrace with China?  

Carney pointed to deeper integration with the EU across trade, defense, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, energy, space, research, and financial services, aimed at making Canada and the EU less exposed to economic and geopolitical pressure from Washington. EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen embraced the idea to bring Canada in as the bloc’s first associate member — a status that does not currently exist in the bloc’s treaties and would have to be created. She said Europe wants to take its relationship with Canada to “the highest level possible.” Canada’s economy depends on the U.S. for roughly 70 percent of its trade, which leaves it especially exposed to Trump’s tariffs and his moods. Contrast that with the EU, which — like most other U.S. trading partners — caved to Trump’s demands, accepting a 15 percent tariff on European goods while dropping most tariffs on American goods.

Trump was apoplectic, calling Canada’s possible EU associate membership a potential “hostile act” and threatening additional tariffs on European countries if Canada was admitted. Someone explain to me how that makes any sense at all. His words: “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things. So, if they do that, if Europe does that, with a bad intention — if it’s a good intention, that’s fine — if it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.” This sounds a lot like the warning I gave some while back, that Trump’s America First policies were moving toward an America only policy. Trump has trashed our alliances. He has reneged on our treaties. He has threatened to leave NATO. He thinks the world cannot manage without America and now that it is trying, he appears to want to hasten that rupture.

Von der Leyen, meanwhile, told the European Parliament that as democracies confront a “fracture in the international rules-based system,” Brussels and Ottawa need to draw closer together. “This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength.” France’s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, added that Washington has no power to veto EU decisions: “It is not up to the United States, or anyone else, to choose the political and geopolitical direction of the Europeans.”

In other words: go pound sand.

Increasingly, the president talks as though he’s been handed divine authority over the rest of the world — Russia, China, and North Korea excepted. To his most devoted supporters, he has become something akin to a cult leader and they are drinking the Kool-Aid. To everyone else, he increasingly sounds like a man unraveling. His pseudo-populism — what I’d call neosocialism — has morphed into something closer to a collective pathology darker with emotional and seeming mental unwellness playing out on a global scale.

But what I find particularly sobering and damning is that Donald Trump is still preferable to almost anyone the current democrat party has to offer. Back in 2018, Paul Volcker warned us that the United States was descending into a plutocracy, suffering from a crisis of good governance. The former Fed chairman said that he feared the skill and reputation of the U.S. government had been corroded by self-interested elites shaping law through lobbying and campaign donations. He said “Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone. Even respect for the Federal Reserve. How can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country?” Volcker then said the country was “in a hell of a mess in every

direction.” What would he say now with presidential approval ratings in the mid 30s, the Supreme Court in the low 30s and the Congress in the mid-teens?

Again, the Athenian sortition seems to be a great idea.

Texas Politics and Alabama’s plea for tariff relief

Texas Politics

Rove is right

I feel sorry for Texas voters. In the Senate race, they’re choosing between a rather strange socialist on the democratic side and an ethically challenged republican. Texas republican voters clearly don’t care much about ethics, since they voted for Paxton over John Cornyn by overwhelming numbers. But what has gotten interesting is that Karl Rove, a prominent republican voice, has come out and said he won’t vote for the republican candidate for railroad commissioner (it’s a Texas thing) and will instead vote for the democrat, calling the republican candidate a “racist.” Right-wing media blew up, and so did the president. Here is what the president posted on “Truth” Social:

Rove is just one of many despised by the president simply because he has the nerve to question Trump’s behavior and decisions. But millions of voters cross party lines every election. We’re about to see this in my home state of Georgia, where I suspect Jon Ossoff (D) will win his Senate race while Rick Jackson (R) wins the governorship. Do you always vote a straight ticket? I voted for Phil Bredesen for governor but not for Senate. The fact is that not every politician deserves my vote simply because of party affiliation. Attention! I will never vote for JD Vance under any circumstance. I cannot imagine a worse president.

Cornyn is right too

John Cornyn is also under attack from right-wing zealots for posting this:

It is the truth and he is only stating the obvious and quoting the Wall Street Journal. Yet he’s getting pilloried for it. Vance’s populism is hardly distinguishable from Bernie’s. It’s just one of many reasons to disqualify Vance. The MAGA press insists that Vance isn’t out to upend our political system but implies that Cornyn must feel otherwise. That is idiocy and misses the point. Both Bernie and Vance favor government interference in the marketplace and government control of resources. Both would have government meddle in private business and dictate its decisions. Yes, MAGA-folk, JD and Bernie are basically bros and Vance may be one of the least knowledgeable presidential candidates ever.

Here’s the one I want the MAGA media to explain. The vice president was discussing the impact of artificial intelligence on an appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast when he was asked about wealth inequality. “We already have crazy, crazy inequality. How do you think about redistributing that wealth? Bernie Sanders is saying people need to own 50% of these AI companies,” podcast host Stephen Bartlett asked the vice president. “Which the president, by the way, likes that idea too. He likes that idea,” said Vance. “I don’t know that he would say 50%, but he does like that idea.” So now Trump wants to seize private wealth and redistribute it too? Good grief.

I call this “neosocialism” and is the bridge linking Trump and Vance on the “right” with Bernie and the socialists on the left. Now will Bernie show up at a Vance speech and raise his hand too?

Alabama’s Britt’s tariff plea

Hey, Mr. President, your tariffs are wonderful, but could you make just a small exception? So says Alabama Senator Katie Britt, who some readers consider the best-looking senator — a low bar indeed. The senator has said, “What the media won’t tell you is that President Trump’s tariffs work. We are not going to return to the status quo of allowing American jobs and manufacturing to be sidelined in exchange for cheap junk from foreign adversaries.” There’s little reason to parse those words closely, since I find little truth in them — they’re simply political talk meant to stay on the president’s good side in a state where he remains hugely popular. Even so, the senator is seeking private exemptions for Alabama businesses to ease the pain her constituents are feeling.

First, there’s TNT Fireworks. We’ve all seen their stores off the interstates. As it turns out, they don’t manufacture their own merchandise — they source it from China. The senator writes: “Unfortunately, there is no domestic firework manufacturer, and over 99% of firework products are produced in China.” While TNT has tried other sources, “the quality and safety is not close,” and imported fireworks “pose no threat to America’s broader trade or national security interests.” TNT is also “preparing for the United States Semiquincentennial.” And what’s a semiquincentennial without fireworks? https://www.tntfireworks.com

Then there’s Novelis, an aluminum company “currently building a $4.1 billion recycling and rolling plant,” expected to “create 1,000 new direct jobs.” However, it imports from Canada, South Korea, and Brazil, and the president’s tariffs have created “cash flow problems” that threaten their not finishing their new plant in Alabama. Or take Kronospan, a maker of wood panels undertaking a $600 million expansion that requires “highly specialized equipment that is not available from domestic manufacturers.” The extra tariff cost? About $60 million — enough to threaten the project’s viability. Finally, there’s Airbus (yes, Airbus), which was “building its third final assembly line” in Mobile, creating 1,000 jobs. That expansion has been suspended indefinitely, with tariffs making the project financially unviable.

Senator Britt’s problems are hardly unique to Alabama — most states face the same squeeze. Tell you what: here’s a modest suggestion, didn’t Trump cut off FEMA aid to democratic states? Why not waive all tariffs for republican states since this is all political theater anyway? I’m sure Senator Britt wouldn’t object. And hey, if the president can go to Ireland and announce he’s suspending tariffs on Irish whiskey, why not have him travel to Alabama and announce the same? Is there such a thing as Alabama whiskey?

The Fed Raises Its Target Rate

Kevin Warsh and the Fed’s Open Market Committee just defied the president, raising the federal funds target range by 25 basis points, from 3.50%–3.75% to 3.75%–4.00%. The vote was unanimous, and committee members signaled that another increase is likely before year-end. The move came despite the president’s repeated demands to lower rates to 1 percent or less and his threat to cut off trade with every country the U.S. runs a trade deficit with if the Fed raised rates.

Good grief.

Warsh, the new Fed chairman, has said he favors a more rules-based approach to monetary policy — a stance consistent with his admiration for Milton Friedman (unlike our economically illiterate vice president). Friedman’s rule grew out of the Quantity Theory of Money, which ties the growth rate of the money supply to the economy’s long-run growth rate. That target wasn’t meant to be fixed forever — it could shift in response to sudden drops in economic activity or bursts of inflation.

The best-known modern monetary rule comes from Stanford economist John Taylor, who posited that the federal funds rate should be set at a long-run neutral level and then adjusted as inflation deviates from the central bank’s target, or as real economic activity deviates from the economy’s full-employment potential. When inflation runs above target or output exceeds potential, the rule calls for raising the target rate; when inflation runs below target or output falls short, it calls for lowering it. In its original form, the Taylor rule currently implies a federal funds rate of 6.02%. Now that would blow off the president’s head!

There are, however, several variations on the original rule, the two most common being the “forward-looking” and “smoothed” versions. The forward-looking variant uses expected future inflation rather than backward-looking data. The smoothed variant weights in the current fed funds rate itself. Combine both adjustments and the rule-implied rate comes out to 3.79% — within and just above the bottom of, the new 3.75%–4.00% range. See the Monetary Rules Report for the full breakdown.

Warsh, who has criticized the Fed’s sometimes slapdash decision-making in the past, says he’s committed to discipline. Friedman once argued that discretionary monetary policy — the opposite of rules-based decision-making — was itself the most disruptive source of instability in financial markets. Warsh appears to be taking that warning seriously. But we’ll see, because he still has to contend with a president who wants lower rates always and forever, regardless of the economy’s condition. As the president put it: “We should be paying — the United States is so strong — we should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world, regardless of their formulas.” Now he’s pinning the rising cost of financing the growing national debt on the Fed and its handling of the fed funds target rate — the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans of excess reserves. Here is the president’s posting:

“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” Trump wrote. “Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”

The president seems to be confusing the Fed funds rate with individual borrowing rates based on the individuals’ credit history. Where is Scott Bessent when we need him to explain the basics of finance to this president? Trump also threatened to cut off trade with the countries with whom we run a deficit if the Fed didn’t cut rates. BTW, saying that if we stopped trading we would somehow “make at least $1.5 trillion a year” is so idiotic it doesn’t deserve a comment — except to say that if that were really the case, he should adopt Nike’s old slogan and “just do it”.

Again: good grief. This is getting embarrassing.

But a relevant question is actually raised by the president: what is the statistical relationship between a change in the Fed funds rate and a change in the country’s borrowing costs, as reflected in the 10-year Treasury. The president seems to think it’s one to one. Research from the Dallas Fed is relevant here. In “What drives mortgage rates and their response to monetary policy changes” by McCormick and Ramaswamy, May 7, 2026, they find: “Historically, over the past 20 years, the 10-year rate has tended to move by a third as much as the fed funds rate (measured using the beta between rolling quarterly changes over that period). Co-movement of 10-year rates with the fed funds rate has diminished in recent years. Over the past five years, it has only been about 15 percent and has even turned negative the past one to two years. For the estimation that follows, we use the long-run average beta of 32 percent as a baseline choice.” https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0507

So there is a positive relationship, albeit a rather weak one. Now, since Warsh and the FOMC raised the rate, will the president now insult Warsh? Bet on it! One Kalshi prediction market puts only a 44% chance on Trump publicly insulting Warsh before year-end. I’ve said before that I don’t really understand prediction markets, but I’d bet against that number — insulting Warsh seems practically guaranteed if the FOMC raises rates again by year-end.

Kalshi had more than $85 million wagered on the FOMC outcome, with only 12% betting that rates would hold steady and 86% betting on a hike. A narrower market focused specifically on the September FOMC decision saw over $42 million in volume, with slightly more than half of participants backing a 25-basis-point hike and just under 45% expecting no change. Again, I don’t claim to fully understand this stuff, but that later prediction market was apparently pricing in a real chance the Fed would hold rates steady and defer a hike to a later meeting — even though the CME was putting the odds of a hike at 90.7%.

One thing that’s gone largely unremarked: if the Fed hadn’t raised rates, markets — which had priced in a hike — likely would have sold off sharply. In that sense, market expectations alone may have forced the Fed’s hand, regardless of political pressure.

One more note: this Fed, true to form, moved in its usual 25-basis-point increment. Larger moves are rare because they risk sending a negative signal to markets and stirring up turmoil — exactly what the Fed tries to avoid. Circling back to an earlier point, Fed critics could argue that current inflation is transitory, driven by elevated prices tied to the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and that the right call was to hold rather than hike. I’m sure that argument came up at the FOMC meeting — and was apparently rejected unanimously.

The Houthis Advance

 

The situation in the Gulf continues to deteriorate. The Houthis have seized the Red Sea port of Mocha, asserting control over Bab al-Mandeb, one of two critical outlets for oil shipments from the Gulf. Saudi Arabia has fought the Houthis in Yemen for years without success, and this latest advance marks a serious escalation. The Houthis also struck Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline, which carries roughly 5 percent of global oil flows, and shut it down. Iran continues to back the Houthis, and Iranian strikes on U.S. regional bases have further destabilized the region. With Yemen’s government unable to contain the offensive and Saudi Arabia unable to reverse Houthi gains, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has requested U.S. military assistance. President Trump has said the United States will support Saudi Arabia in every respect short of direct attacks on the Houthis.

According to reports, the Houthis have taken Perim Island, which sits within Bab al-Mandeb and splits the narrow waterway into two shipping channels — a position that gives its holder significant leverage over vessels entering or leaving the Red Sea. Houthi forces have also reached the town of Dhubab, which lies directly on the strait. This raises the question of whether Washington will move to protect Red Sea shipping when U.S. forces are already struggling to end Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, already under pressure, saw crude production fall by 2.3 million barrels a day to 6 million barrels a day in August. The Houthis maintain that Red Sea navigation remains safe for shipping companies, with the exception of vessels operating under the Saudi flag.

The toll extends beyond shipping and oil. The Houthis are now within 20 miles of the U.S. base in Djibouti, America’s principal base in Africa. Saudi Arabia continues to back Yemen’s government against the militants, who now control the country’s north. Roughly 1,400 refugees have fled the Houthi advances, some by boat across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Djibouti, and at least 76,000 people have been displaced within Yemen since July. Yemeni government, Iranian, and regional sources say the Houthi advance along the coast has been carried out under direct guidance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, raising the question of how much further Tehran is willing and able to extend its support.

What triggered this latest offensive remains unclear, but its success has been striking. It also raises doubts about Saudi Arabia’s ability to respond. Can its air force and ground forces mount an effective campaign against the Houthis? Past experience suggests the answer is no. The Kingdom’s considerable military forces with its advanced jets and materiel have yet to translate into battlefield results. Experts say that the Kingdom’s large conventional war focused military is poorly suited to deal with modern proxy conflicts. We should have learned a lesson from Saudi Arabia’s conflict with the Houthis which relied almost exclusively on air strikes which have proved to be ineffective.

The consequences are already being felt closer to home. At the farm in Gray, diesel is now $6.36 a gallon, and regular unleaded is over $4 at many stations. Another bad sign is that Costco has begun limiting purchases of motor oil amid a rapidly worsening global lubricant shortage. A 10-quart box of Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil, previously $30, is now $58, and Costco has imposed a strict two-box-per-customer weekly limit. A six-quart case of Mobil 1 is now $44, with purchases capped at five per member to deter hoarding and scalping. 

A report says that the shortage traces back to Group III base oils, which are essential to modern synthetic motor oil. The United States imports nearly 44 percent of its Group III supply from three major Persian Gulf producers: Bapco in Bahrain, ADNOC in the United Arab Emirates, and Pearl GTL in Qatar. The conflict with Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have effectively cut off these exports. Making matters worse, Iranian missile and drone strikes in March 2026 caused heavy damage to the Pearl GTL facility in Qatar, crippling a major share of global production for at least a year.

One of my closest friends, who runs a working farm, saw this coming and began stockpiling (hoarding) supplies as soon as the strait was first closed. At some point, sustained high fuel and lubricant prices will begin to meaningfully slow economies around the world. What comes next is an open question. We have already watched the Gulf conflict start to spread into the war in Ukraine. Will it spread further still? To date, Washington has shown no exit strategy while the impact of this conflict continues to impact us at the farm and the rest of the world. What a mess.

The Dumbest Generation

 

Some time ago I noted that this generation favors socialism over capitalism without really knowing what socialism is but that is par for the course in that this generation seems sorely lacking in analytical skills. Most seem to picture socialism as just capitalism with a bigger safety net. One poll found that when young people were shown the actual agenda items of the Democratic Socialists of America, they rejected nearly all of them. A recent Wall Street Journal column went further and labeled these young thinkers the “dumbest generation.”

wsj.com/opinion/socialism-and-the-dumbest-generation-687024bf

If anything, that headline is generous. This generation has been fed a steady diet of socialist ideas from kindergarten through college, so it’s a small miracle any conservatives survive the process at all. Too many have simply never been asked to think for themselves. The Journal piece makes the point that these contradictions are sitting in plain sight and most of this generation are either blissfully unaware of them or simply don’t care.

Consider the numbers. Seventy-seven percent of registered voters under 25 believe pay should be based on the “merit and value” of one’s work — a distinctly anti-socialist idea. Sixty-eight percent want to own a home. The DSA says that home ownership is white supremacy. The DSA platform calls for seizing the means of production and nationalizing large corporations. Yet seventy percent of these same young people want to start their own business and 63% see America as the land of opportunity. So which is it — is this the dumbest generation, the most secretly entrepreneurial one, or just a generation of useful idiots repeating slogans they have never once questioned?

Holding a contradiction without noticing it isn’t a youth problem — it’s a human one. I have a friend of more than forty years, an avowed socialist, who hasn’t worked in years and lives comfortably off an inheritance — without ever connecting that comfort to the same capitalist system she condemns. I once asked her if she would donate that inheritance to a socialist government so it could be redistributed “more fairly,” in exchange for a modest “living wage”? She said “Are you crazy?” Would she hand over her house and rent it back from the state? “Hell no!” she said. Crazy? Not me. 

But this is the socialist leaders’ playbook: private ownership for me – collective control for everybody else. As I’ve said before, the world breaks down roughly into three groups: the 3% who make things happen, the 7% who notice what’s happening, and the 90% who have no idea what’s happening at all. Socialist movements recruit mainly from that last group. But intellectual laziness and unexamined ignorance aren’t new phenomena — we’re just more aware of them now, thanks to how loudly and publicly they’re expressed. 

Who said?

“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them.”

— Socrates

A bright exception to this generational dumbness comes from my niece’s school, Harvey Mudd College, where she serves as president. Mudd is a small STEM-focused undergraduate college, recently ranked third in the country behind only MIT and Stanford. It’s full of sharp, driven young minds working hard and pushing toward genuine excellence. This does not mean that they might reject socialism, yet. I’m reminded that Thomas Sowell entered his PhD program at the University of Chicago as a committed socialist. One of his professors said that he would not be a socialist for long. He was simply too bright.

The Mudd students strike me as cut from that same cloth. In the campus magazine, my niece, President Harriet Nembhard, described a course she recently co-taught:

Devices of Democracy

 

Some 2,500 years ago, Athenian democracy used the kleroterion, a sortition device that randomly selected citizens for public office and jury duty. In 2024, the artist Taryn Simon reimagined this ancient tool as a modern sculpture meant to spark conversation about democracy today. The course I co-taught with Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson Professor Ken Fandell, “The Game of Democracy: Art, Engineering, Chance, Choice, and Civic Life,” turned that conversation into an interdisciplinary learning experience. Together, we explored how aesthetics and structural design shape democratic life, and students shared their work in a campus exhibition that included Simon’s kleroterion sculpture, on loan from the Almine Rech Gallery in Paris.

hmc.edu/game-of-democracy

Now that’s a college-level course! With an education like that, Mudd’s graduates will land among the 3% or the 7% but not the 90%. They’ll be the thinkers, the innovators, and quite possibly the leaders. Some may even be socialists now but given enough thought, like Sowell, they will be too smart to remain socialists.

But given Harriet’s course, I am wondering whether we shouldn’t bring back the sortition? Given the presidential candidates we’ve had over the last twenty years, picking leaders by lottery could hardly do worse.

The Last Hunt

Bow season opened in Georgia on September 12. A few years back I had a total shoulder replacement, which meant giving up my beloved Mathews Solocam for a Wicked Ridge RDX crossbow. I like to tell people it was an upgrade. It wasn’t. It was just another concession to old age, one in a long line of them. Old age does not negotiate.

I have been hunting all my life. In the category of “If you could do something in your life again, what would it be?” It wouldn’t be graduating from the University of Georgia or even the birth of my children. It would be tagging along behind Pa, my grandfather, with my little .22, while he hunted squirrels. Pa kept hound dogs penned up at the farm, and they were not pets. I never once saw one in the house, not so much as a paw across the threshold. They existed for only for only one reason – hunting. Pa loved to hunt squirrels, raccoons, possums, but rabbits above everything else. The rabbit hunts were festive family affairs, with relatives showing up from all over the county. Now the grandchildren of those relatives have since grown far too sophisticated to hunt, a fact that saddens me. 

In those days it was all small game. There were no turkeys in Georgia — except the two-legged kind, and Pa had strong opinions about them too. if you ever saw a deer you would talk about it for a week.

When World War II came, nearly all of Mother’s relatives packed up for the auto companies in Detroit, selling off their land as they went. They tried to get Pa to join them. And so he did for a trial run. He went up to the big city, where he could make more money in two months than he’d make farming all year. However, within two months, Mother said, he was back in Gray. The reason? He couldn’t find a place to hunt rabbits! Detroit had a lot to offer a black man in 1943. Rabbits were not among them.

In 1971, for dietary reasons, I gave up eating meat entirely, determined to lose weight. I finished my dissertation while at the University of Konstanz am Bodensee, in Germany. By the time I joined the faculty at the University of Florida, I weighed 235 pounds. I quit eating all meat took up running and the weight came off. By the time I got to the University of Tennessee in 1987, I was down to 165 pounds and feeling fairly pleased with myself. That was also when a friend I’d been fishing with talked me into a deer hunt, and that rekindled something I didn’t know had left me. I agreed to go, out of love for the outdoors. I vowed that if I killed anything, then I would eat it despite not having eaten any red meat since 1971. Although I did not see anything that first hunt, I was hooked – so to speak. The peacefulness was intoxicating. My mind was clear and more than once I found myself academic problems that I had been wrestling with for weeks – without an conscious effort.

From that day forward, venison has been the only red meat I eat, although I’ve since developed a fondness for pork steak from the hogs I’ve killed as well. I rediscovered the farm around the same time, when my mother started asking me to drive her there once a month. I love her home house. It is full of memories of Mary (my grandmother insisted we call her that) cooking and my having to churn the butter and the ice cream. She used to put her arms around me and say “this is my boy.” Indeed, my brother Charles Eldred was named after Dad’s family – Dad’s father was Charlie and Dad was Eldred. And I was named after Mother’s: Harriet was my mother and Alonza Barfield her dad. I am Harold Alonza. When Mary suddenly died from a massive stroke when I was six, the mortuary brought her home to lie in the parlor until burial. I made them put me a cot next to her. I only left her side to go to the bathroom. I still remember the coolness of her forehead.

I told Mom that if I was going to keep coming to the farm then I was going to renovate the home with air conditioning, a new kitchen and bath. She said “No you don’t. We are leaving this house like Pa left it. Build your own.” So I did. I also put up tree stands strategically located around the farm and although I hunted Tennessee and all around the world, I always came back to the farm. Back to home, nothing was more satisfying that being on my ancestor’s land watching its animals move through ground that has always belonged to my family and, in some truer sense, to them as well.

I bought a tractor and put in food plots. Every one failed, spectacularly and without exception. I genuinely cannot explain how my grandfather grew such beautiful crops walking behind a mule with a single-blade plow, while I, with diesel horsepower and a soil test, could manage to grow only weeds. It must be my brown thumb.

Still, I have lovingly tended those 126 acres for decades, and I know that Pa would be proud of me for it. I only kill sparingly and I hold myself to standards that occasionally cost me a season’s worth of meat. I never break up a family unit, and no buck under six points. This has meant some lean years. Last year I took only one doe in bow season, which meant Lili — my last remaining German shorthaired pointer — and I went most of the year without any red meat between us. I tried giving her lean ground chuck but she refused to eat it.

Now I am 81 and physically challenged by my arthritic knees. I no longer can walk to most of my tree stands. Even if I could, ladders have become a challenge and forcing me to only hunt out of two accessible ground blinds. That restricts my range of vision making the days of harvesting four deer (even though Georgia allows 10 does and two bucks) long past. It is now a challenge just to walk to those two blinds even though I now use a cane. Also last year it was also a challenge after I shot the deer and field processed it, to load it into the bed of my truck after dragging it with the ATV back to the house. I sat on the tailgate afterward longer than I needed to, not because I was tired, though I was, but because it felt like something worth celebrating.

So it goes, one day at a time. One hunt at a time. Pretty soon I will have only the memories. I guess I could always put out corn behind my house – Georgia now allows you to bait for deer – and sit on the back porch and shoot them. But that violates a family code. Pa gave sanctuary to any animal that wandered into the “yard” – including rabbits. That’s actually a little more than an acre of mowed grass. I do the same saying “In the yard they are safe but if they go behind the barn, then they are mine.” In Pa’s memory I won’t resort to violating the sanctuary of the yard. Some things I just won’t do, even when my knees would thank me for it.

When will it all end — my hunting days? I don’t know. But I feel it coming, the way an old person feels weather changing before it arrives. And I have a feeling it will be soon. Here is the home house.

Our Cut-Rate President. Wither the Senate?

 

Our Cut-Rate President

 

When the job market was faltering, the president pressured the Fed for a rate cut. Last month, the job market did better than expected — and the president called for a rate cut anyway. So: good economy, bad economy, indifferent economy, the president’s demand never changes — cut the rates! Let’s then to call him our cut rate president.

Speaking of cutting rates, it’s time for another Federal Open Market Committee meeting — it feels like we just had one. This one runs September 15–16, and all signs point, much to the president’s chagrin, toward a rate hike. The prediction market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange puts the odds of a 25-basis-point hike at 86.5%.

https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html

It’s the inflation that won’t go away. It has held steady at 3.4 percent, well above the Fed’s avowed target of 2 percent. Core inflation — excluding food and energy — rose 0.3%, which many speculate would be enough to trigger a hike. At the last meeting, three members dissented voting to raise the Fed funds rate. Others hinted that if things didn’t cool down, they’d support a hike too. Meanwhile, the tariffs have continued, as has Trump’s war with Iran. 

With gas prices over $4 and diesel over $6 nationally, a case could be made that the Fed should do the opposite — cut rates to ward off a recession, even at the cost of more inflation. That’s surely what the president wants. But having lived through an inflationary recession and having dealt with one as a member of the board of the National Credit Union Administration, I would not recommend it. Inflation has taken a real toll on consumer sentiment. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment has slipped to 47.8, the second-lowest level in the index’s history.

But yelling at the Fed is just a way of the president pointing a finger at someone else. The president isn’t about to admit that his own policies are largely responsible. He’ll blame the Fed. He’ll blame Joe Biden. But this time most of the public aren’t fooled.

Wither the Senate?

 

Trump’s economy may end up costing republicans the Senate — something unthinkable just a few months ago. Susan Collins is behind in the polls in Maine. Yes, I know, Susan Collins is always behind in the polls in Maine. She even trailed a candidate who was, in essence, a perverted, nazi-tattooed fake oyster farmer. Now she trails his replacement, Troy Jackson, who could only manage third placein the democratic governor’s primary. The Senate looks like his consolation prize. Collins is being dragged down by Trump’s peevish spat with Canada, Maine’s largest trading partner. Republicans may also lose Iowa, where tariffs have hurt agricultural exports and rising fuel, fertilizer, and equipment costs are pushing some farmers toward bankruptcy. Then there’s Michigan, where the democratic Senate nominee is an avowed socialist. This should be a slam dunk for the republicans but the trade war with Canada looms large over a state whose economy, especially its auto industry and energy sector depends on Canadian trade. Ohio ordinarily leans republican, but Sherrod Brown, who lost to Bernie Moreno, is back and leading incumbent Jon Husted in the polls. The president forced out North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and opened the door for former democratic governor Roy Cooper who will probably win. Then there’s Texas, where Trump attacked incumbent John Cornyn and endorsed the ethically challenged Ken Paxton, who beat Cornyn by an embarrassing 25 points. Now a distinctly unconventional democrat, James Talarico, is actually leading Paxton in the polls. Texas is now left choosing the lesser of two lessers. In Alaska, former representative Mary Peltola leads incumbent Dan Sullivan in what has traditionally been a Republican stronghold.

Trump himself deserves much of the blame for Georgia having two democratic senators, thanks to his fraud allegations and trashing the republican governor and secretary of state’s not aggressively pursuing his claims. He urged his supporters to sit out the runoff, which handed democrats 50 Senate seats — with Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. For the record, democrat Raphael Warnock won his re-election race against Herschel Walker, now ambassador to the Bahamas. The other Senate democrat, Jon Ossoff, is now well ahead against Rep. Mike Collins, who is fending off corruption allegations along with claims that his son-in-law is a white-supremacist influencer – you mean there is such a thing? Time was when virtually all of Georgia’s elected politicians were white supremacist influencers. Now of the state’s two senators, one is black and the other is Jewish. So much for white supremacy!