“Recently, the New York Times relayed Tucker Carlson’s view that, ‘The most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we’re led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive, dumb, totally noncreative people.’ This is unarguable — and the Times made no attempt to counter the point. Indeed, this judgement applies doubly to the team of grifters and double-digit IQ Machiavellians who staff upper echelons of the Trump administration. Yet, a fascinating new book by the scholars (and brothers) William and Philip Taubman shows that even smart and impressive peopple can, if they lack vision, character and empathy, lead the country to disaster.” (12/22/25)
“The government shutdown made the November jobs report especially hard to read. There was not just the problem of missing a month of jobs data for the first time in many decades, but also the difficulty in trying to determine how much impact the shutdown had on the data. In principle, the shutdown should have had little direct impact on either the household or the establishment survey. In the household survey, people who had been furloughed should have been back at work during the reference period and therefore answered that they were employed. With the establishment survey, government employees were always on the payroll, so should have been listed as employed. But there are indirect ways in which the shutdown could have affected the data.” (12/22/25)
“President Donald Trump is a singular — and solitary — figure. ‘I alone can fix it,’ he solipstically declared in 2016, before his first presidential run. Now in his second term, he’s been a one-man tsunami, destroying decades-long global alliances, creating chaos in the global economy with his unilateral tariffs, and unleashing bitter partisanship domestically. … We can blame our national habit of venerating iconoclasts, a tendency Trump exploited to leverage himself into office. We like to lionize the man who speaks out — the brave rebel who defies the establishment. … But for every iconoclast, there’s a crank. For every visionary, a conspiracist. For every genius, a madman.” (12/21/25)
“Japan[‘s regime] took the final step to allow the world’s largest nuclear power plant to resume operations with a regional vote on Monday, a watershed moment in the country’s return to nuclear energy nearly 15 years after the Fukushima disaster. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, located about 136 miles northwest of Tokyo, was among 54 reactors shut after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Since then, Japan has restarted 14 of the 33 that remain operable, as it tries to wean itself off imported fossil fuels. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa will be the first operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO,) which ran the doomed Fukushima plant.” (12/22/25)
“A key reason that Russia went to war in Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO; a key reason that Ukraine went to war with Russia was to defend their right to join NATO. On December 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave up Ukraine’s right to join NATO. He presented the concession as a compromise. But it is not really a compromise. Zelensky may intend the non-compromise to leverage concessions from Russia, but it may not really change anything.” [editor’s note: There was never any chance that Ukraine would join NATO … and Putin knew that. A manufactured excuse is not a real reason – TLK] (12/22/25)
“In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past doesn’t punish or terrify. Instead, it reminds. The haunting is less mystical than moral, illustrating how history lingers when its lessons go unlearned. The tale remains especially relevant in the White House today, and not just because of the holiday season. Besides, Melania hates Christmas. Every presidential administration wrestles with its own ghosts. President Trump and his Cabinet of Scrooges are shadowed by two figures whose failures stemmed not from circumstance but character: Herbert Hoover and J. Edgar Hoover.” (12/21/25)
“The US Food and Drug Administration today approved a pill version of the blockbuster anti-obesity drug Wegovy. Made by Novo Nordisk, the pill is taken once a day. The company’s original version of Wegovy is a weekly injection. Both drugs contain the same active ingredient, semaglutide. ‘This allows patients with obesity who want to lose weight to have a choice between a once weekly injection or a daily tablet,’ says Martin Holst Lange, chief scientific officer at Novo Nordisk. With the soaring popularity of injectable GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies have been racing to make effective pill versions that could be preferable for some patients. These drugs mimic a naturally occurring hormone in the body that acts on the brain and gut to promote a feeling of fullness.” (12/22/25)
“As generative AI is embedded into search engines, email, and word processors, it will mediate ever larger parts of the information ecosystem that people rely on. Governments are discovering that they can pressure companies to censor what may be the most consequential communications technology since the printing press. Recent efforts go well beyond combating clearly illegal content such as child sexual abuse material. From Brussels to New Delhi, Warsaw to Washington, officials are wielding regulations, threats, and public shaming to shape what information, ideas, and perspectives billions of people can access through AI.” (12/22/25)
