It is worse than you IMAGINE

You might look at the terrible events described in The Last Closet and thank your lucky stars that nothing like that has ever happened around you. And you might be wrong:

Dozens of predators, 100s of kids: Decades of trained stars and scorched lives at Children's Theatre.

Shortly after Children’s Theatre Company was founded in 1965, critics were calling it the greatest children’s troupe in the world. The extraordinary feats of its cast and crew, bright kids from across America, afforded the Twin Cities a reputation for artistic excellence.

The Minneapolis company was an insular institution with mysterious methods, helmed by the brilliant and volatile John Clark Donahue. He was also a predatory abuser of children. It was common knowledge that the boys in starring roles tended to be those who serviced Donahue sexually.

When Donahue was finally caught in 1984, Judge Charles Porter skewered the Twin Cities arts community for its complicity.

“‘Genius has to be given their idiosyncrasies, or genius has its funny side, and you have to forgive those sort of things. The theater would have collapsed if anything happened to John Clark Donahue, and the Twin Cities could not afford to have that happen.’ I have heard that so much,” Porter said at sentencing.

“Large family and company money, Dayton’s, Pillsbury, etc., supports the theater, and that they would not allow this to happen. The allegations would be squelched to protect their reputations.”

The judge understood that Donahue was just the spearhead of a larger deceit.

Underneath him were dozens of other staffers who sifted freely through the company’s turnstile of children. Some predators were friends Donahue hired to teach. Others were former students who’d been raped when they were very young, in an earlier decade, and raised in a boundaryless reality to become perpetrators in another.

But because many within the company worked to deflect probing questions from the outside world, the institutional nature of the abuse was hidden for decades. The company survived. It scoured its history.

My parents were patrons of the Children's Theatre and we attended every show there for years, including at the height of this period of rapacious abuse. Neither they nor I had any idea about any of this, of course; I knew nothing of it until Spacebunny brought my attention to it this weekend.

And it is an object lesson in understanding that the murky depths of evil may lurk considerably closer to you than you would ever assume.

Big Bird has a problem

Or so it would appear:

Never a show to shy from tough subjects, "Sesame Street" is tackling America's opioid epidemic head on, revealing that Karli, the little green Muppet with yellow hair, was in foster care because her mother suffered from addiction.

When the children's show returns for its 50th season, Karli will explain that her mom "was away for a while because she had a grown-up problem."

Never fear, Bert and Ernie can adopt her after getting gay-married, right? Nothing is safe anymore. Pop culture is filth.

The clearing of the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is disappearing, or so we're told:

An area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of a football pitch is now being cleared every single minute, according to satellite data. The rate of losses has accelerated as Brazil's new right-wing president favours development over conservation.

Okay, so let's walk through the math.

• Amazon rainforest = 5,500,000 square kilometers
• Football pitch (max) = 120 meters x 90 meters = 10,800 meters
• Square kilometers of Amazon cleared every single minute = .0108
• Minutes until Amazon is entirely cleared = 509,259,259 minutes
• Number of minutes in a year = 525,600
• Years remaining to Amazon rainforest = 968

So, clearly not a problem for anyone living today, unlike immigration. And, as it happens, this reported clearance rate is actually very good news for those of us who are both ecologically conscious and numerate, as it means the rate of rainforest clearance has declined by 98 percent since 2013.

The first global, high-resolution, satellite analysis of global deforestation revealed that since 2000 an area equal to 50 football pitches has been destroyed every minute. The total loss is 10 times the area of the UK, with only a third being replaced by natural and planted reforestation, and the destruction is accelerating in the tropics.

So, if  .18 square kilometers are being replaced by natural and planted reforestation every minute and .0108 is being cleared, the Amazon will last a lot longer than 968 more years. Indeed, it appears that it is actually growing.

And even that is an improvement from 2008, when we were told that 120 football pitches were being destroyed every minute.

The current rate of rainforest destruction is the equivalent of two football fields every second. That adds up to 33.8 million acres a year. Official Brazilian government data shows that 3,500 sq km of forest were lost between August and December last year, but it is thought that the real figure might be double that. Rising prices for cattle, soy and other commodities are increasing the value of deforested land, so we can expect deforestation rates to increase accordingly.

Always do the math. And thank Sting and Mrs. Sting for saving the Amazon. The numbers make it very clear that their Rainforest Fund has saved the planet by reducing the rate of rainforest clearance to less than one percent of its previous rate.

The corruption of Creepy Joe

Creepy Joe Biden's presidential campaign is all but finished, thanks to the information now coming out of Ukraine. It is now being reported that it wasn't just his son who was being paid by the Ukrainians, but Creepy Joe himself as well:

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden received $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma Group, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada member Andriy Derkach said citing investigation materials.

Derkach publicized documents which, as he said, "describe the mechanism of getting money by Biden Sr." at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine's press center in Kyiv on Wednesday.

"This was the transfer of Burisma Group's funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company. Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services," Derkach said.

He also publicized sums that were transferred to Burisma Group representatives, in particular Hunter Biden, a son of the former U.S. vice president.

"According to the documents, Burisma paid no less than $16.5 million to [former Polish President, who became an independent director at Burisma Holdings in 2014] Aleksander Kwasniewski, [chairman of the Burisma board of independent directors] Alan Apter, [Burisma independent director] Devon Archer and Hunter Biden [who joined the Burisma board of directors in 2014]," Derkach said.

"Using political and economic levelers of influencing Ukrainian authorities and manipulating the issue of providing financial aid to Ukraine, Joe Biden actively assisted closing criminal cases into the activity of former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, who is the founder and owner of Burisma Group," he said.

"Biden's fifth visit to Kyiv on December 7-8, 2015 was devoted to making a decision on the resignation of [then Ukrainian Prosecutor General] Viktor Shokin over the case of Zlochevsky and Burisma. Loan guarantees worth $1 billion that the United States was to give to Ukraine was the point of pressure. Biden himself admitted exerting pressure in his speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in January 2018, calling Shokin 'son of a bitch who was fired'," Derkach said.

That so-called "impeachment" drive by Democrats is increasingly looking like a well-laid trap for them.

The cost of money

World of Warcraft Designer/Producer Mark Kern's explanation of why he has severed himself from all things Blizzard illustrates why I never seek large investments from anyone in any of my projects:

This hurts. But until Blizzard reverses their decision on @blitzchungHS I am giving up playing Classic WoW, which I helped make and helped convince Blizzard to relaunch. There will be no Mark of Kern guild after all.

Let me explain why I am #BoycottBlizzard

I am ethnically Chinese. I was born in Taiwan and I lived in Hong Kong for a time. I have done business with China for many years, with several gaming companies there. So I think I have a valid perspective here, having been a Team Lead at Blizzard and having grown up in Asia.

I have watched China slowly take over as the dominant investing force in gaming and movies over the years. It’s a shame US companies never believed as strongly as China and Asia in investing in games, but this allowed China to have unprecedented influence over our media.

Chinese game companies have grown huge not just because of market size, but because the government subsidizes them. They get free land, free offices, and huge infusions of cash. This cash was and is used to do expand and buy up stakes in US gaming companies.

I’ve seen firsthand the corruption of Chinese gaming companies, and I was removed from a company I founded (after Blizzard) for refusing to take a 2 million dollar kickback bribe to take an investment from China. This is the first time I’ve ever spoken publicly about it. I’ve also seen how American company reps in China have been offered similar bribes to get licenses for large AAA titles. Not everyone refused like I did.

Unfortunately, US and European companies are loath to take risks and invest in game companies legally as much as China was. China remained one of the few places mid-tier studios could get funding. So again, China influence grew. I’m sure this is the same for movies as well.

I understand Mark's perspective and I respect his stand. He's a good guy, a smart game designer, and a man of principle. That being said, I absolutely consider the Chinese influence to be vastly preferable to the alternative with which they are competing. A competing civilizational alternative to Western civilization may not be ideal, but it is almost infinitely better than pure satanic inversion.

Remember, the Chinese response is a reaction to the subversive cultural invasion of their civilization. It is an aggressive form of civilizational self-defense. Rather than permit their invaders a safe base from which to stage their attacks, they are attacking the bases from which the invasion stems. Given this observation, I very much doubt it will be long before a Chinese company acquires one of the Big Five media companies.

And let's face it. They couldn't have screwed up Star Wars any worse than the Devil Mouse has.

No need to wonder

I think it is pretty clear the Chinese don't intend to permit the game to take place barring a full and public kowtowing from the NBA Commissioner:

Despite nearly every coach, player and staff member apologizing on behalf of Morey, China is severing financial connections with the league and discontinuing scheduled broadcasts.

Ahead of a preseason game between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers set to take place Thursday, multiple videos have surfaced of NBA memorabilia being purged from the public view in Shanghai.

The move has many wondering if the game will be canceled.

NBA China update from Shanghai:

4:30pm NBA press conference was cancelled.

NBA fan event tonight cancelled.

Video shows how logo of Chinese Smartphone maker Vivo - an NBA advertiser - was covered on an NBA promotional sign.

Lakers-Nets scheduled to play in Shangai Thursday.

The Chinese are absolutely within their rights. They are a sovereign nation and the NBA is blatantly lying through its teeth about "free speech", which it does not respect, practice, or support in any way, shape, or form. The NBA has literally nothing to complain about in light of the way it treated a former team owner over nothing more than comments of which it did not approve.

On the plus side, we have now discovered the one force capable of forcing Mark Cuban to keep his mouth shut. And President Trump is right to observe that these bozos have no problem shooting their mouth of about him, but they're terrified to even mention an entire country, much less criticize it.

• Item: Silver refused to apologize and said the NBA doesn’t dictate what people can or can’t say.
• Item: Philadelphia 76ers fans kicked out of game for carrying 'Free Hong Kong' signs.
• Item: All of the NBA's official Chinese partners have suspended ties with the league.

There is a lesson in this, people. You don't have to let SJWs push you around.

Smells like old pajamas

Cuck Central is live! All they need to do is add Rod Dreher and they'll be set:

Former National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes of the now-defunct Weekly Standard have launched a conservative media company called The Dispatch.

“We aim to make The Dispatch a place that thoughtful readers can come for conservative, fact-based news and commentary that doesn’t come either through the filter of the mainstream media or the increasingly boosterish media on the right. Importantly, we want to build a genuine community, with regular engagement between those of us who work here and the readers and listeners who will pay our salaries," Goldberg and Hayes write on the company's website.

Visitors to the site can choose to read content for free initially or purchase a "Founders Membership" for $1,500, which provides a lifetime membership and other perks including "priority access to meet-ups, events, conference call with top staffers" and "access to robust members-only discussion room."

"Everything will remain free for the next few months. Early next year, we’ll begin charging $10 a month or $100 a year for membership," Hayes indicates in an email to new subscribers.

The publication's newsletter will debut on Wednesday, Axios first reported on Tuesday.

National Review's David French will also be joining The Dispatch as senior editor, the news outlet added.

According to Axios, The Dispatch will launch with a full-time staff of eight. It has reportedly raised $6 million from investors ahead of its debut.

It's a blog. A six-million-dollar group blog. I wonder how long it will be before that $6 million from investors is converted into a loan. And it won't surprise me if  it doesn't have as many page views as this totally free blog does.

You always know a publication is going to be full of tedious squishes when it advertises itself as "thoughtful". Because they spend a lot of time thinking very hard about how to be absolutely certain that no one can call them racist.

Market vs society

The Z-Man considers the way in which conservatism now attempts to conserve the market rather than the society:

If one were to summarize why Buckley-style conservatism failed, the clearest answer is that it stopped being conservative. The central tenets of conservatism are tradition, organic society, hierarchy, authority, property rights and prudence. In the Anglo-Saxon model, ordered liberty can also be included. The limits on authority are the logic of a fixed and orderly legal system. Probably the most concise explanation of American conservatism came from Russel Kirk seventy years ago.

Buckley conservatism, in contrast, was never deeply rooted in social philosophy and this was a deliberate act. The Buckleyites wanted a create a political movement that could compete with Progressives. In order to do that it meant winning elections and that meant providing a practical platform for governance. As a result, Buckley conservatism was always a compromise. In order to fashion a practical political platform, it meant deviating from conservative dogma as necessity required.

This lack of ideological moorings, however, led it to drift away from conservatism toward something that is better described as marketism. Libertarians see property as the key to individual liberty. All human rights derive from ownership of self and property is the fruit of labor, so absolute property rights safeguard individual liberty. Marketism, in contrast, views liberty as the unfettered right to trade property and labor. Therefore, liberty is maximized only through the free and unregulated marketplace.

In both cases, the definition of individual liberty is at odds with conservative conceptions of individual liberty, as well as the tenets of conservatism. The Right has always understood that a man could only be free within the context of society. To exist within a society, he must gain control of his passions and master himself. Customs and traditions, which habituated him to his duties as a member of society, also channeled his energies to that which served the good of his society.

This doesn't address the entirety of the problem, but it is a good start. The reality is that Kirk-style conservatism was every bit as doomed, even if it didn't stop being conservative, because it is not a coherent political philosophy, it is only an attitude.

Of course, that which by any name conserves nothing will not be able to conserve the free market because it did not conserve the society that values free markets.

Mailvox: a response from Hong Kong

A native of Hong Kong responds to yesterday's email from a mainlander.

I am born and raised in Hong Kong and are currently lived in the city for the past 5 years.

The reason why people oppose the government and react the way they do is simply the lack of trust for the government.

The mainland mailer is correct in a sense the Hong Kong people are spoiled brats because we have been at peace prospering for as long as this generation remembers. And so they are all boomer-like in a sense that they believe in lies that the government tells its people and such.

What Carrie Lam, the chief executive in Hong Kong, did that outraged the people is the obvious show of brute force that essentially served as a wake-up slap to the public. And they, being spoiled by peace, are throwing a fit.

We don’t hate the mainland Chinese people, However their tourists actions are equal that of an illegal immigrant from Mexico to the US. They have no intention of abiding by our cultural rules, I have personally seen two incidents where they openly defecate in the street, even outside the public bathroom!

Due to multiple incidents of fake and poison milk powders, they raid our food supply.The major city centres close to the broader have been turned to a mainland China city-like environment. The obvious cultural erosion has been putting pressure in the bomb for about 10 years now. And now is the result of the explosion.

Doesn't he know he's supposed to cuck?

The God-Emperor has finally stopped trying to negotiate with the evil and the insane:

President Donald Trump has set his strategy for the impeachment fight with House Democrats — minimum cooperation, maximum confrontation. Whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have learned how to counter him is the big question.

Trump dramatically upped the political ante on Tuesday, with White House counsel Pat Cipollone blasting the Democrasts’ impeachment inquiry as “illegal” and “dangerous,” and insisting the administration won’t cooperate with a probe it considers constitutionally improper.

Democrats now have to work quickly to determine how to contest Trump’s broadside as they push ahead with an investigation into whether the president abused his power in pressuring Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election and investigate Joe Biden.

But Trump’s anti-impeachment offensive — a mix of legal, political and personal attacks, some logical and some simply bombastic — poses a real challenge for Democrats. Nearly three years into Trump’s presidency, lawmakers are still trying to figure out how to respond to a president who knows few, if any, limits on his behavior or rhetoric.

They really don't know what to do when you simply refuse to tuck your tail, wave the white flag, and surrender.

A contest of wills

The NBA is about to learn that China doesn't negotiate with lying foreign devils:

The National Basketball Association won't gag its personnel or apologise over a team executive's tweet that ignited a firestorm in China, commissioner Adam Silver insisted Tuesday, standing firm despite a growing backlash that imperils the league's lucrative Chinese following.

The tweet last Friday by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong has infuriated Chinese fans and led to broadcasters and sponsors severing ties with the NBA.

But Silver, speaking at a press conference in Japan where the Rockets are playing exhibition games this week, said the world's top basketball league would continue to "support freedom of expression and certainly freedom of expression of the NBA community."

"The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way," Silver said in a statement before the press conference.

It won't surprise me if the Chinese government waits for the commissioner to travel to China before cancelling both exhibition games at the last minute. Especially in light of how Silver's claim that the NBA supports freedom of expression is absolutely and entirely false. The NBA doesn't even hesitate to put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say when it comes to "racism", "sexism", "anti-semitism", and "hate".

"We believe that any comments that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech," China Central Television (CCTV) said on its social media account.

Just call it "hate speech". Then the NBA will have no choice but to ban it.

Mailvox: a different perspective on Hong Kong

An update on the Hong Kong situation from a mainlander:

I wanted to send this to you last week but the outside internet has been completely inaccessible in China for the past two weeks because of the National Day holiday. They do this every year but it's particularly bad this year.

A few days ago the ENTIRE Hong Kong metro system was closed because the "protesters" went on a rampage in response to a new law making it illegal to wear a mask in public. Every single metro station. Imagine if that had happened in a major American city of ten million people, what the police and the National Guard would do.

Pat Buchanan has an article in which he states, "The people of Hong Kong, who are surely being cheered by many on the mainland of China ..." All respect to Pat Buchanan but he doesn't understand this situation at all.

There is mutual hatred between Hong Kong and mainland people. NO ONE on the mainland is cheering the Hong Kong protesters. They think Hong Kong people are a bunch of spoiled brats who are now wrecking their own city and being used by the West because they think they're better than mainland people. And Hong Kong people, meanwhile, think they ARE better than mainland people because they've had the benefit of a hundred years of imposed quasi-Western civilization and the result is a more well-mannered people and a more orderly society in a higher-quality environment.

But Hong Kong has been going downhill for decades now, due to various reasons that are not reducible to a simple statement, and the mainland has been in the ascendancy. But regardless, if Beijing sends in the troops, (which I don't think they will do because the bad PR outweighs any other benefit; they'll probably just let Hong Kong burn because they don't really need it) I assure you that the vast majority of mainland Chinese will applaud this decision and love their government even more, seeing it as just desserts for a bunch of spoiled traitors, i.e. Chinese who don't want to be Chinese and who collude with the yang guizi (foreign devils).

The global media would of course use any move by Beijing as a way to paint China as the new Nazis. You can see this narrative already developing and being pushed by Bannon and others, as well as the Hong Kong protesters themselves, who are quite obviously trying to provoke a violent response. But for the mainland Chinese, it would only solidify their sense of "us against the world." My fear is that the people who want the next big war are actively pushing in this direction. I hope that Trump and Xi Jinping really are friendly, because they're increasingly looking like Kennedy and Khrushchev.

Milo busts the Prime Minister

Although frankly, I doubt that proof of the suspected affair will make any difference whatsoever to the Brexit political math given that it was seven years ago, neither Johnson nor Arcuri have directly denied an affair, and Boris Johnson's lack of marital fidelity over the years has not exactly been a secret:

The businesswoman at the centre of a storm about her links to Boris Johnson 'bragged' about having sex with him and proudly showed off what she called her 'Boris bruises', her former friend Milo Yiannopoulos has claimed.

Jennifer Arcuri's alleged fling with Mr Johnson when he was Mayor of London was an 'open secret', according to Mr Yiannopoulos, a controversial right-wing activist who also worked on the London tech scene at the time.

Speaking to MailOnline, Mr Yiannopoulos claimed that Miss Arcuri had 'loudly and proudly' displayed evidence of the romance and said he had tried to warn her off it. He stressed she was not alleging the bruises were the result of any 'anything abusive', but instead were 'trophies' from 'enthusiastic, consensual lovemaking'.

Yesterday Miss Arcuri repeatedly refused to deny a romance with Mr Johnson, who is facing a City Hall probe over alleged conflict of interest.

Then again, I have no doubt that the EU and the Remain forces in the UK will attempt to cite this as conclusive evidence that Britain should stay in the EU. Facts and reason have never had anything to do with their nonsensical arguments.

This comment appears to be the most common reaction: I still don't care. Just get us out of the EU. And this is why no one cares who or what Boris does in his off-hours:

Boris Johnson effectively killed off hopes of a Brexit deal today after turning down a demand from Angela Merkel for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union.

In a crunch moment for negotiations, the PM and the German Chancellor clashed brutally in an early morning phone call.

No10 sources said Mrs Merkel told the premier that the province must remain within the EU's customs union indefinitely. But Mr Johnson retorted that meant a deal was 'essentially impossible, not just now but ever'.

Sometimes no deal is the best deal. This is obviously one of them.

Canada's Bill Clinton

Canadian Prime Minister Justin "Blackface" Trudeau is reportedly attempting to buy the silence of his accuser in what appears to be a teacher sex scandal dating back to his substitute teacher days:

Less than two weeks ahead of federal elections that have already been looking conclusively grim for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, rumors of an explosive sex scandal are percolating at the highest echelons of Canada’s media establishment.

Ottawa’s longest-tenured political observers had been expecting a career-ending expose in Sunday’s edition of The Globe and Mail — but that story never came.  Sources are now telling The Chronicle that Trudeau is in private talks with the principal source of that piece to suppress explosive sex allegations that, if made public, would likely force Trudeau to resign his office.

Trudeau’s accuser is said to be a former student at West Point Grey Academy and the daughter of a wealthy Canadian businessman.  Sources tell The Chronicle that she is being represented by counsel and is being offered monetary compensation in exchange for a pending, but not yet signed, non-disclosure agreement.

One way or another, young Blackface's political career would appear to be finished.

The Great Withdrawal begins

The God-Emperor is directly confronting the treasonous neoclowns.

President Donald Trump’s sudden decision to pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria drew quick, strong criticism Monday from some of his closest allies in Congress. It was condemned, too, by Kurdish fighters who would be abandoned to face a likely Turkish assault after fighting alongside Americans for years against the Islamic State.

The announcement threw the military situation in Syria into fresh chaos and injected deeper uncertainty into U.S. relations with European allies. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called it “a disaster,” while Syria’s Kurds accused the U.S. of turning its back on allies and risking gains made in the years-long fight against ISIS.

Trump defended his decision, acknowledging in tweets that “the Kurds fought with us” but adding that they “were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so.”

“I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home,” he wrote.

There are precisely zero Americans who aren't on the neoclown take who don't support the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East. The most idiotic thing about the mainstream narrative here is that it wasn't the US military that defeated ISIS in the first place, it was Syria, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.

It's not as if the neoclowns actually care about the Kurds or the sovereign integrity of Syria, it's that they are seeing their insane dreams of orchestrating a US-Iran war vanishing into smoke.

Speaking of Chinatown

Things aren't looking so good for the global financial system:

China banks are running out of cash in HKD and USD. Maximum withdrawal limit drop from USD1300 to USD38. A drop of 34 times. China financial doom day coming.

Can you say "bank run"?

Aquinas on usury

As is so often the case, it profits those of us whose understanding of a given topic is insufficient to consider what Thomas Aquinas has to say on the subject:

To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality which is contrary to justice. In order to make this evident, we must observe that there are certain things the use of which consists in their consumption: thus we consume wine when we use it for drink and we consume wheat when we use it for food. Wherefore in such like things the use of the thing must not be reckoned apart from the thing itself, and whoever is granted the use of the thing, is granted the thing itself and for this reason, to lend things of this kin is to transfer the ownership. Accordingly if a man wanted to sell wine separately from the use of the wine, he would be selling the same thing twice, or he would be selling what does not exist, wherefore he would evidently commit a sin of injustice. On like manner he commits an injustice who lends wine or wheat, and asks for double payment, viz. one, the return of the thing in equal measure, the other, the price of the use, which is called usury.

On the other hand, there are things the use of which does not consist in their consumption: thus to use a house is to dwell in it, not to destroy it. Wherefore in such things both may be granted: for instance, one man may hand over to another the ownership of his house while reserving to himself the use of it for a time, or vice versa, he may grant the use of the house, while retaining the ownership. For this reason a man may lawfully make a charge for the use of his house, and, besides this, revendicate the house from the person to whom he has granted its use, as happens in renting and letting a house.

Now money, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 5; Polit. i, 3) was invented chiefly for the purpose of exchange: and consequently the proper and principal use of money is its consumption or alienation whereby it is sunk in exchange. Hence it is by its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury: and just as a man is bound to restore other ill-gotten goods, so is he bound to restore the money which he has taken in usury.

The Philosopher is Aristotle. And it's worth noting how, centuries ago, Aquinas logically concluded the inevitable consequences that we are empirically observing, which is that taking usury for money lent will lead to an unjust form of inequality.

Contrary to the assertion of economists like Murray Rothbard, the gradual acceptance of usury across the West was not a civilizational advance, but rather, a slow descent into misrule and barbarism.

America as Chinatown

Thanks to President Trump, Maureen Dowd just noticed that the USA is corrupt:

Forget it, America. It’s Chinatown.

Washington, once the guarantor of American values, is a crime scene. This capital of white marble is now encircled by yellow tape, rife with mendacity, cowardice and corruption. It’s Chinatown on the Potomac.

Robert Towne, the screenwriter of the 1974 classic “Chinatown,” wrote the movie as a eulogy to great things that were lost. He said that he was not conjuring a place on a map but a state of mind: the futility of good intentions.

Or, as Raymond Chandler, the premier chronicler of Los Angeles noir, once wrote: “We still have dreams, but we know now that most of them will come to nothing. And we also most fortunately know that it really doesn’t matter.”

This is hardly news to Generation X, let alone Generation Z. But it's interesting to see that Baby Boomers may be finally losing their childlike faith in The System. Regardless, Baby Boomer columns like Dowd's are increasingly out-of-touch, referencing as they do former cultural touchstones like 45-year-old movies that are completely foreign to the three younger generations, to say nothing of the immigrants and children of immigrants.

White-collar journalists discover financialization

Sports Illustrated just laid off nearly half its staff:

Sports Illustrated cut more than 40 members of its staff on Thursday as part of a restructuring plan. The layoffs were haphazardly executed, with management scheduling meetings Wednesday evening, only to cancel them the next day about 10 minutes before the planned start time. The meetings ended up taking place four hours later, with one scheduled for staffers who were getting laid off and a separate meeting for those who were not, according to a source.

theMaven, which licensed the rights to Sports Illustrated's print and digital publications in June, is behind the decision as it takes full ownership of the company from Meredith Corporation. Meredith sold the Sports Illustrated brand and intellectual property to marketing company Athletic Brands Group earlier this year but had agreed to manage the media business for up to two years.

Rumors about impending changes and layoffs have loomed over the company ever since theMaven took over. The Seattle-based startup also announced in June that Ross Levinsohn has agreed to serve as CEO of the new company, which will be named Sports Illustrated Media. Levinsohn had a short stint as publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times, but was put on unpaid leave in 2018 over "questionable behavior" in his past, which he denied.

theMaven plans to hire about 200 contractors to increase Sports Illustrated's local sports coverage, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Sports Illustrated has been subjected to some major changes in the last few years. After being sold to Meredith Corporation by Time Inc. in 2018, ABG bought the brand and intellectual property in May for $110 million. Meredith continued to publish the magazine and website.

The unusual structure of that deal suggested that the Sports Illustrated brand is much more valuable than the magazine.

The sniping is amusing. Who cares if the layoffs were "haphazardly executed". And it's even more amusing to note the emotional, near-hysterical coverage these steep cuts at an elite journalistic institution are receiving considering the way the news media has generally ignored, when they haven't openly sneered at, the suffering of blue-collar Americans.

That’s what is so enraging about Thursday’s blood-letting: It didn’t need to happen. Sports Illustrated did not have to be turned into whatever it will now become.

I asked sports journalist Patrick Hruby for his reaction to the news. “I think Sports Illustrated was caught by two different forces,” he said. “The first is the broader shift from print to digital media and the reality that in the digital world, Google and Facebook have gobbled all the advertising money. That money isn’t coming back, so there was going to be contraction to begin with. But it’s the second force we need to pay attention to. It’s the second force that turns a contraction into destruction. That is the fact that prestigious legacy journalism has been hit within the same bullshit industry—private equity—that’s ravaged so much of the journalistic world. Their business model is not ‘let’s manage a contraction.’ Instead, it’s ‘smash and grab.’ They are vampires bleeding these organizations dry and then selling them for parts. This is of course not limited to just journalism. It’s the over-financialization of our economy. What has happened to Sports Illustrated is what has happened to this country.”

The whole deal was financed by a $54 million loan to the vampires from the bigger vampires. This is the inevitable end result of usury; the methodical strip-mining of the economy.

NFL Week 5

Discuss amongst yourselves.

If at first you don't succeed...

Try, try again. The Democrats double down after their first "whistleblower" turned out to have no actual knowledge of the events he was describing:

The attorney representing the whistleblower who flagged President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine says a second whistleblower has now come forward.

Mark Zaid told ABC News on Sunday that he is now representing a second whistleblower who has first hand knowledge of events.

Zaid, a Washington lawyer, is already representing the whistleblower at the center of the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

The first whistleblower, who said Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, is a CIA officer and at one point was assigned to work at the White House, sources said.

The second person who has come forward is also reportedly an intelligence official.

Of course, they said the first guy had first-hand knowledge of events too. Until he was asked to provide it. Interestingly enough, this is the same lawyer who is handling the lawsuit for the Marvel artist accused of tortious interference between Antarctic Press and Comics Matter.

An interesting and unexpected nexus. I wonder why they're so desperate to stop the Trump administration from looking into Ukraine? I don't suppose the massive donations to the Clinton Foundation have anything to do with it, do they?

Vatican III?

The Vatican is discussing the possibility of married priests... and other things:

This Sunday kicks off a three-week meeting of bishops at the Vatican to discuss, among other things, ordaining some married men as priests to help alleviate a shortage of Catholic clergy in the nine countries of the Amazon region.

Pope Francis convened the meeting, called a synod, to discuss environmental and religious issues in the Amazon and give special attention to the needs of indigenous communities there. The region includes parts of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana. The Vatican has invited 184 bishops and priests from those countries and from around the world to participate in the synod and vote on measures. Thirty-five women, mostly religious sisters and nuns, have been invited but will not have voting rights.

There will be 17 representatives of the Amazon's indigenous populations, including 9 women, will attend as well.

But before it even begins, the synod has become the center of controversy for both conservatives and liberals.

The Pope told bishops from the region to "be bold" in their proposals for the meeting and Bishop Erwin Krautler, the church's Secretary for the Commission on the Pan-Amazon Region, says he hopes the meeting will address not only ordaining married men, but women too.

"We don't just speak about men because it's exclusionary," Krautler told CNN. "We also want to include women."

The possibility that centuries of Catholic tradition of a celibate priesthood might be overturned has caused conservative outrage.

Since I'm not a Catholic, I don't believe my opinion matters here. But, for those who happen to be interested, I don't think the abandonment of the traditional celibacy requirement for priests would be a bad thing. Married priests, even with the concomitant risk of nepotism, are vastly to be preferred to gay priests, which has been the reality since at least Vatican II.

Furthermore, the Biblical requirements for a deacon not only don't preclude marriage, they actually require it, and the fruits of priestly celibacy have not been generally positive.

Considerably more troubling is the possibility that this Amazonian synod will be used to push the ordainment of women, which would mark the beginning of the end of the Roman Catholic Church.