Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Today

Hallowe’en

As if to perform a Day of the Dead act, Josef Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb on October 31, 1961.

Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other nations celebrate Halloween on October 31.

The word Halloween or Hallowe’en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day). In Scots, the word “eve” is “even,” and this is contracted to “e’en” or “een.” Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en shortened into Halloween.

It is one of those darker-themed celebrations, often conjuring up images of death and horror. Randall Carlson notes that this autumnal celebration is ancient and global, and speculates that it originates in ancient comet approaches that had terrifying and deadly results on the surface of the planet.

crime and punishment

The Dorito Bandito Threat

A student at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County didn’t know what he was inviting when he munched on Doritos after football practice.

“They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me,” Taki Allen said of the police in about “eight cop cars” who surged to his location.

“They searched me, and they figured out I had nothing,” Allen recalled. “Then, they went over to where I was standing and found a bag of chips on the floor. I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun. . . .

“The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me.”

The school’s security system is “AI-powered.”

It “saw” a gun, not Doritos plus finger.

An alert went out before the security system’s finding had been confirmed. The alert was soon cancelled, but the school principal didn’t know this when she called the police, who in turn acted with leap-first/look-afterward brio.

We can’t blame AI. We cannot blame insensate artificial intelligence, so-called, any more than we can blame knives and guns for the way these inanimate objects “act.” The humans in this case bungled bigtime. They should reform.

Steps to take include never acting on the basis of unverified AI claims and never using drunken, hallucinogenic AI as one of your call-the-cops triggers to begin with.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags AI, crime, police, surveillance

Thought

G.K. Chesterton

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as used by Alston Chase for the epigraph of Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park (1986).

Today

Martha and Rose

Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, was born on October 30, 1748.

On the same date two hundred twenty years later, American journalist, novelist and author Rose Wilder Lane died. Lane is perhaps best known, today, for her editorial work — some say “ghost writing” — of her mother’s Little House on the Prairie books for children. Her non-fiction The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943, the same year as a similarly themed book, The God of the Machine, was published by her friend Isabel Paterson.

Accountability budgets & spending cuts national politics & policies too much government

Blame Rand Paul?

Rand Paul, CR, Continuing Resolution, debt, spending, Congress

“The Republican plan adds about $2 trillion to the debt,” Senator Rand Paul explained at the beginning of the month, referring to the Continuing Resolution (CR) which remains, to this day, unresolved. “I’m opposed to deficit spending,” he added, insisting that he would “vote for something with less deficit, but not a $2 trillion deficit.”

Most of the shutdown screaming blames President Donald Trump, but Trump’s a big advocate for the CR. Trouble is, it requires a 60 percent Yea vote in the Senate. All but three Democrats voting Nay ensure that the CR will continue to fail.

So, Sen. Paul’s continuing Nay vote isn’t the cause really; a switch on his part wouldn’t allow the bill to pass. The folks worried about losing their SNAP benefits (just about the only Americans not in government who’ve noticed the shutdown) shouldn’t blame anyone other than those nay-saying Democrats.

From the beginning, Paul has noted a different irony — his alignment with the bulk of Democrats in opposing the CR. He’s against its continuation of old spending expectations; Democrats, on the other hand, demand even more, especially securing the renewal of Obamacare subsidies.

While the CR failed a 13th time, yesterday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) said that lawmakers had set aside a USDA contingency fund “for exactly these kinds of purposes” — that is, to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The White House insists it lacks legal authorization for this, and, besides, November’s food subsidy requires $9 billion, and the fund falls short by four.

It appears that the tens of millions who may not get their EBT cards filled at the beginning of November remain unaware of what the battle is really about.

But they may be getting a clue: it’s not about them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Congress, Continuing Resolution, CR, debt, Rand Paul, spending

Today

Cyrus

On October 29, 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the exiled Hebrews, who were, not long after, allowed to return to their homeland.

On the same date in 1923 A.D., the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.

general freedom international affairs

La Libertad Avanza

Javier Milei, Argentina, freedom, bail out

“It’s a landslide victory compared to expectations,” Lizzy Burden announced for Bloomberg Television, going on to report that U.S. President Donald Trump has taken some of the credit for the successes, Sunday, of President Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances).

On Truth Social, Trump wrote “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei . . . He’s making us all look good.”

But how does this redound to Trump’s, er, biglyness?

Well, Trump provided a bailout.

That’s the term used in the news for a $20 billion currency swap plus $20 billion private loan facility — that is, private funds directed by the negotiating agents at U.S. Treasury. This stabilized Argentina’s peso after a September crisis triggered by Milei’s party’s losses at Buenos Aires polls a month earlier.

Regardless, Liberty Advance’s current win defies recent polls showing a dip to around 40 percent, in part because of hardship from Milei’s “austerity” drive — slashed subsidies, fired public workers, deregulated industries.

It also defied North American expectations. Leading up to October 26, we heard little good news from the land named for the element silver: major U.S. outlets such as the New York Times and NPR, and British media including The Guardian, emphasized Argentina’s dire straits reveling in the “irony” or “failure” of Milei’s “libertarian experiment,” often with a strong whiff of schadenfreude toward “Trump-lite” policies.*

But Milei’s biggest successes should not be ignored: inflation has dropped from 211 percent to under 5 percent monthly. Another factor in his victory is how rural voters, lives improved by freer trade, outweighed disgruntled government workers, newly disemployed.

Mostly, though, I bet Argentines were fearful of a return to Peronism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, Milei’s “shock therapy” and “austerity” (and other leftist bugaboos) were unmatched by anything Trump has done — if anything, Trump’s “Milei Lite.”

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Thought

Albert Camus

The defects of the West are innumerable, its crimes and errors very real. But in the end, let’s not forget that we are the only ones to have the possibility of improvement and emancipation that lies in free genius.
Albert Camus, as quoted in Beyond Nihilism: Albert Camus’s Contribution to Political Thought, Fred H. Willhoite, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968).

Today

The Statue of Liberty

On October 28, 1886, in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, despite the fact that the monument was not a federally funded project and that Cleveland was adamant in sticking to the private funding of the project.

ideological culture national politics & policies

Having a Ball

MAGA, The Washington Post, regulations, White House

Live long enough and everything will happen, at some point.

Even bizarre, incomprehensible things, such as Saturday’s Washington Post editorial, “In defense of the White House ballroom.” In short, a defense of, ahem . . . Trump.

The paper began by noting the ballroom was something of a Rorschach test, with Trump’s opponents viewing his actions as “reckless” while his supporters see “a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo.”

But the editors add that “it has become far too difficult to build anything in America,” before concluding: “Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”

Wait. The Post has been virulently, unrelentingly anti-Trump, until it relented last November by not endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president. Was that or is this a sign the Post editorially is moving toward Trump? Is this influenced by billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos?

I don’t think so. In this lightning-strike instance, the capital’s premier newspaper is offering non-TDS thought. Believe it or not.

As editorial board explains:

“Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating.”
Other presidents have demolished or built onto the White House: Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, Obama, etc.
“Preservationists express horror that Trump did not submit his plans to their scrutiny, but the truth is that this project would not have gotten done, certainly not during his term, if the president had gone through the traditional review process.”*

For this one shining moment, The Washington Post recognizes that America’s regulatory regime does not work. So broken, in fact, that MAGA must be embraced.

If only for one dance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The editorial also notes that “the White House is exempt from some of the required regulations that other federal buildings must comply with.”

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