Weekend Update

Chief Justice Urges Political Leaders to Tone Down Rhetoric Chief Justice’s admonition to political leaders has as much chance as happening as he and the rest of the Supreme Court showing spine and good impartial judgment.

Alzheimer’s research in peril. Will Trump budget cuts set progress back by decades? President Trump wants to cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health by 40%. I would think that a man approaching 80 years of age and reputedly evidencing signs of dementia would want enormous amounts of money directed to finding a cure or treatment and quickly. For all the 65 and over voters who voted for Trump last year, here is what your support is getting you – – the possibility of a horrible ending of your life. If you have ever had a family member or friend who had Alzheimer’s, you realize how tragic and devastating this disease is.

Catholic Bishops Try to Rally Opposition to Trump’s Immigration Agenda President Trump got 64% of the white Catholic vote as many bishops and priests urged support for him primarily to overturn Roe v. Wade. My admonition to the bishops: you reap what you sow. Too late now that the Trump Genie is out of the bottle. Your support helped uncap the bottle.

Elon Musk rips into ‘utterly insane’ Trump-backed megabill.Buyer’s remorse! Guess Elon is not happy with his return on investment?

Dumbocracy

When stupid people get together, they tend to elect stupid candidates. Those candidates, once in office, appoint other stupid people to help them mismanage the government. Naturally, stupid politicians make stupid decisions. And stupid decisions, like a biblical plague rain chaos and destruction on everything they touch.

That, in a nutshell, is a brisk and brutal diagnosis of our current political condition.

But what about the so-called smart people? Are they truly intelligent if they keep letting the proudly ignorant run the country—and ruin their lives in the process? A genius who surrenders the steering wheel to a blindfolded clown isn’t a genius at all; he’s just a polite passenger on the road to nowhere.

There was once a time when a stupid person had the humility to recognize he needed the expertise of smarter minds. That time has passed. Today, asking for advice is seen as weakness, and expertise is treated with the same suspicion once reserved for door-to-door preachers. Guardrails? Who needs ’em when you’ve got overconfidence and a social media following?

The rise of stupidity in America isn’t a fluke—it’s a feature. For at least a quarter century, our culture has glorified the simple-minded and vilified the competent. Stupidity has become endearing, even charming. Meanwhile, intellect and nuance are treated as elitist sins. Smart people are mocked, threatened, canceled (by both the woke and the anti-woke), and exiled from conversations (and decisions) they might actually improve.

So what happens? Smart people stop running for office. They quit their jobs. They retreat from the public square. Why volunteer for a high-stakes pie-throwing contest where the prize is harassment and the consolation is a subpoena? When idiocy becomes fashionable, intelligence becomes a liability.

If democracy dies in darkness, it may also perish in stupidity—with a laugh track.

Bangers: 624 aphorisms from 9 Deep Thinkers by Jash Dholani (Notes and Gems)

I read, collect and on occasion try to write pithy and wise aphorisms. Like a gold miner from the American West, I sifted through the contents of this book and found these gems. Author is listed before his aphorisms.

By La Rochefoucauld

We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.

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To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as if we were established.

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Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.

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Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.

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We become so accustomed to disguising ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.

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The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.

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Those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things.

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By Nicolas De Chamfort

What makes the success of many books consists in the aﬃnity there is between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and those of the public.

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A WITTY woman told me one day what may well be the secret of her sex: it is that every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.

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By Charles Caleb Colton

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.

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By John Lancester Spalding

To be more impartial about the modern world, you need the vantage point of old books.

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The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak.

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Conversation injures more than it beneﬁts. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence. Reﬂection makes them uncomfortable, and they ﬁnd distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them.

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The smaller the company, the larger the conversation.

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By Austin O’Malley

Beware of the patient man The bigger the dam of patience, the worse the ﬂood when the dam breaks.

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A man’s life is like a well, not like a snake— it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.

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In selecting a wife use your ears before your eyes.

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By Goethe

An intelligent man ﬁnds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

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What I Like; What I Get (Headlines)

Politicisms (not so polite)

Earth grows hotter by nature, and colder by nurture.

Reason whispers, but influence now belongs to whoever shouts longest and loudest.

Democracy collapses not with a fight, but with a shrug and a spineless back.

If cowardice was our currency, there would be no national debt.

Washington belies the adage that old age brings wisdom.

You can’t fight today’s demons with the dulled swords of polite politics.

In Christ’s time, 30 pieces of silver, today a meme coin to buy a man’s soul.

Religion used to console the broken—now it emboldens and supports the breakers.

Our national IQ is falling faster than memberships for Kennedy Center events.

Discouraging or expelling foreign college and graduate students is akin to expelling firemen from a growing fire.

A nation in the pall of dementia—its people adrift, having forgotten their roots, their history, their purpose, and their friends.

Discordia Ascendant (Chaos Rules)

Reading the news is not necessarily the best way to start your day…

“Big, beautiful” tax bill would add $2.4 trillion to US debts, CBO says.

Trump bans 12 countries’ citizens from entering the US.

Emergency Abortions: The Trump administration announced that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.

Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors. Selfishness Is Not a Virtue David French NYT 6/5/25

The consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble said on Thursday that it would cut 7,000 jobs globally over the next two years, or 6 percent of its total work force, as it seeks to reorganize amid uncertainty caused by President Trump’s trade war.

A federal judge in Colorado on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting the wife and children of the Egyptian man charged with attacking an event in Boulder, Colo., honoring hostages in Gaza….“Punishing individuals for the alleged actions of their relatives is a feature of premodern justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,” (Eric Lee, Attorney for the family)

But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to “any city, any university I want,” he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years…Applications from China and Europe for graduate student or postdoctoral positions in the United States have dropped sharply or dried up entirely since President Trump took office. The number of postdocs and graduate students in the United States applying for jobs abroad has spiked.

When the current Congress was convened in January, there were nearly 120 members who were 70 or older — 86 in the House, including nonvoting delegates, and 33 in the Senate. This number, which is unmatched in modern history, included 14 octogenarians in the House, five in the Senate, and 91-year-old Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.“Big, beautiful” tax bill would add $2.4 trillion to US debts, CBO says.