Links 8/21/2025

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1. The Rev Kev August 21, 2025 at 7:22 am

   “Why is the US sparing China, but not India, for importing Russian oil?”

   Does it have to be said? Trump can punch down on India and there is only so much they can do to hit back. But Trump tried to punch down on China earlier this year but who pushed back hard enough to make Trump’s economy go wobbly. Plus right now China still has Trump by the short and curlys over refined earths. And the lesson is that bullies only punch those weaker then themselves, not those stronger than themselves as they are at heart cowards. And he can’t sue his way out of this dilemma.

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2. Victor Sciamarelli August 21, 2025 at 7:24 am

   Perhaps AI with its data center water and power demands, as well as being a potential bubble, should be discussed together with global warming.
   The staggering level of investment in AI by US companies, I’m estimating ~$1/2 trillion and counting, is hard to appreciate because I haven’t heard a compelling explanation about what we’re actually going to do with it. China’s AI investment is a far distant second to the US.
   Supposedly, markets know best. Yet, it should be obvious that global warming is a more pressing problem than the AI race, and China is out front with their electric cars, solar panels and such.
   Even if Americans remain safe indoors from the rising temperatures, plant life can only tolerate so much heat stress and sustained temperatures in the 35C-50C (95F-120F) range will kill or diminish food crops, trees, and other plant life. It’s getting harder to defend the so-called market and remain excited by the AI race.

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   1. The Rev Kev August 21, 2025 at 7:42 am

      Is it too late to pull all investments out of AI and to put them into tulip bulbs instead?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

      If there is a downturn in AI right now, maybe it is because all the smart money is being pulled out.

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3. griffen August 21, 2025 at 7:42 am

   Whistleblower report from ex CIA. I can’t even and it’s early yet….So every polling indication on election night 2024 was polling well outside any margin of error? Not a polling statistician myself but I can follow most math….seems like she Did Lose and it just wasn’t too close on the electoral college. Desperation on delay it appears, and I never accepted this crock of shite from Trump in early 2021.

   “Losers whine about their best….winners go home and date the prom queen”. The Rock, film version circa 1996…in that excellent tone and delivery by Sean Connery.

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   1. The Rev Kev August 21, 2025 at 7:55 am

      You and I remember that quote very differently. With that film “The Rock”, I wondered at the time if Sean Connery played the John Mason character as if it was his earlier James Bond character that had been in prison all that time.

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4. Henry Moon Pie August 21, 2025 at 7:52 am

   City of prisons: Leavenworth KS–

   I grew up across the Missouri River from Leavenworth. The town and its suburb, Lansing, house the famous Federal Penitentiary, the largest of Kansas’s state prisons for men and the Army’s DB at Fort Leavenworth. What can one more hurt? /sarc

   My spouse’s relatives are big in politics locally with a brother who’s been mayor and a nephew who’s sheriff. Big Trumpers all.

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5. OIFVet August 21, 2025 at 8:08 am

   Seems to me that Stephen Walt is guilty of some of the same things he decries in his article, namely, lack of realism about the mechanism by which continuing to provide material and financial support for Ukraine to prosecute the war will achieve more favorable peace terms for it. Spilling more Russian blood using US money and weapons has so far resulted only in Russia escalating the costs of peace it wants to impose upon Ukraine and the West. All in all, he could have saved himself falling into the sunk-cost fallacy. It’s exceedingly obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Trump and his team’s are amateurs and that he’s a terrible negotiator to boot.

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6. DJG, Reality Czar August 21, 2025 at 8:08 am

   Heidi N. Moore, natch, is on the mark.

   A bigger question: What is causing the breakdown of trust in electoral results in 2016, 2020, and 2024 in the U S of A? Is it that the U S of A, which never was a high-trust culture, is now drowning in zero-trust culture?

   Is it that politics as a team sport, which is now the dominant metaphor / process in the U S of A, has wrecked politics?

   Is it caused by too much media and its effects? “Here comes everybody,” with everybody having a “theory” and announcing “kabuki” and opining on social media and “doing their own research.” I have nothing against research, having done scads of it for many projects, but when Candace Owens is “doing research” to prove that Brigitte Macron, who has borne three kids, is a man, one wonders if USanians simply cannot think rationally anymore.

   Yet having watched that clip of the execrable Dorothy Shea posted here a couple of days back, I also see that USanians have very flexible principles, easily corrupted.

   The article at This Will Hold, “Receipts Attached,” contains this big load of bullshit:

   “In December 2024, I was personally involved in an NSA‑authorized forensic audit of the 2024 election. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won—by a wide margin. Trump lost dramatically. There are multiple layers of complexity to this cover‑up, including transnational organized crime syndicates that extend far beyond the United States and our elections. To that point, I work in the human trafficking sector, which intersects with the stolen election(s) and has ties to Trump and Epstein—not to President Biden, Vice President Harris, or Governor Walz, but to the Democrats and other allied interests responsible for burying the audit.” — Adam Zarnowski, ex-CIA agent and author of Jörmungandr

   It’s important to distinguish between public hand-counts and cyber forensic audits: the first verifies paper ballot accuracy, while the second examines digital pathways that could compromise election outcomes.
   Again, this was not a “hand-count”—it was an NSA-authorized audit

   Former “paramilitary operations officer” for the CIA. If you believe the method and the results, you’ll believe anything.

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7. Wukchumni August 21, 2025 at 8:24 am

   Major heatwave to bring increased wildfire risk, and (finally!) a substantive monsoonal surge to California & Southwest Weather West
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   Daniel Swain-the majordomo of Weather West is quite simply a weather savant, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

   I’ve never seen a weather forecaster anything close to him, and although its pretty much California-centric, what makes his blog even more valuable is the comments section which is full of like-minded weather geeks, who are only too happy to share their takes on what’s what from all corners of the state and beyond.

   The oncoming heart wave is more of a pinner, only supposed to last a few days, no biggie.

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8. griffen August 21, 2025 at 8:37 am

   Shari Redstone wanted out of Paramount much the same way a wealthy elite American wanted to get off the sinking HMS Titanic. Screw optics the rich bail in a way that suits them…Rules are for someone else lower on life’s totem pole as sorted by who owns the gold and who doesn’t.

   CBS news used to be a real standard bearer, it seems, in those eras that feature a Murrow or a Walter Cronkite but those days are a long time ago. To bang on a drum but most of US major media outlets were not covering the Biden administration but rather they were employed as it’s stenographers and lackeys. I can’t turn the TV on a single day in 2025 and a Trump appearance is nearly a constant. Could not make the same statement for Joe Biden in oh 2023.

   Former reporter and journalist at CBS, one Scott Pelley, can go suck a rotten egg.

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9. Otto Reply August 21, 2025 at 8:46 am

   Starting my day with Monk always puts me in a good mood. A new type of antidote du jour. Thanks Conor!

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10. kriptid August 21, 2025 at 8:52 am

    Just a few words on how the MAGA battle is playing out on Wall Street…

    Yesterday, Jerome Powell came under direct fire from one of the presumptive candidates for a seat on the Fed, David Zervos, on CNBC. Mr. Zervos indirectly asserted that Mr. Powell has politicized the Fed and that he has secret left-wing allegiances that are causing he and others to maintain artificially high interest rates.

    Mr. Zervos is Chief Market Strategist at Jefferies, a mid market investment bank that has been on the relative come-up in the time since the Fianancial Crisis. Jefferies and Cantor Fitzgerald (the firm linked to Trump favorites Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent) are alike in the sense that they are both smaller, scrappier banks that serve non-blue chip companies and companies in riskier sectors than the traditional bulge bracket banks.

    For those who may not be up on lingo, the so-called bulge brackets are akin to the TBTF banks: think Citi, Bank of America, JP Morgan. These banks, whether by virtue of size or connections, have always been at the political forefront (recall the role Citi played in choosing the Obama cabinent?), but we are seeing something different in the current Trump regime. Recall Trump’s recent claims that both JPM and BofA refusing his business…

    This is another element to the MAGA/Trump movement that has yet to be fully appreciated by a wider audience or media, but it’s a component that I thought the erudite NC commentariat would find interesting, and is something to be mindful of as the Fed drama plays out…

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11. Lina August 21, 2025 at 8:55 am

    Re reading. I’m an avid reader. My work team knows this. We were on a team call and talking about what we’ve been doing this summer. I brought up a couple books I’d recently read. Each person on my team, all women over 50, said they don’t read.

    I was surprised, but then not so surprised when I thought about it. They are among the least creative or insightful people I’ve ever met. Lol.

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    Re reading. I'm an avid reader. My work team knows this. We were on a team call and talking about what we've been doing this summer. I brought up a couple books I'd recently read. Each person on my team, all women over 50, said they don't read. I was surprised, but then not so surprised when I thought about it. They are among the least creative or insightful people I've ever met. Lol.

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