#62 / A "Prediction Market" Potluck

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You have probably heard about "prediction markets," right? Prediction markets are "open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives (gambling on real world events)." I am citing to Wikipedia, here, copying out their definition. Wikipedia also calls prediction markets "betting markets." 

I got to thinking about prediction markets because The Wall Street Journal devoted quite a lot of space to prediction markets in the edition of the paper published on February 3, 2026. A big, page one article in that edition of the paper was titled, "Wild Betting Markets Propel Polymarket's 'Truth Machine.'" On page B11, another article described how a "derivatives exchange seeks to capitalize on the popularity of yes-or-no wagers." That is language from the hard copy version of The Journal. Online, that second story was headlined as follows: "Cboe In Talks To Bring Back All-Or-Nothing Options To Vie With Prediction Markets." "Cboe Global Markets, Inc. is an American financial exchange operator headquartered in Chicago. It owns and operates a portfolio of exchanges and trading venues across equities, options, futures, and digital assets. It was founded in 1973 as the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE)."

As I was growing up, I remember that my father regularly read The Wall Street Journal. He was a successful business executive, the Vice-President For International Sales at Lenkurt Electric Company. My impression, growing up, was that The Wall Street Journal was intended to provide news and information to investors and business people, so that they could make responsible (and profitable) investments and make knowledgeable business decisions, based on the information and analysis that The Journal provided.

It now appears that significant numbers of business people and investors make their "investment" decisions by way of "betting" on things over which they have very little, if any, direct control. To my mind, this reveals something important about the world in which we are living today - that "world" including, very significantly, our personal "world view," which is the way we think about the world. 

In my daily blog postings, I frequently urge us to think about "reality" as something that we create, by our own actions - that's my, personal "world view," and "possibility" is "my category." 

While we live, ultimately, in the "World of Nature," into which we are each born, and which we don't, ourselves, "create," the most "immediate" reality that affects us is that "human world" that we do, collectively, create. That "human world" is the world that I also call the "Political World," a world that is, demonstrably, the product of our past and current human choices and actions. By our actions, by what we choose to do (or choose not to do) we truly do "create" the world in which we most most immediately live.

Well, going back to The Wall Street Journal, and to "prediction markets," my dad's view was that you read The Journal to get real and reliable information about things affecting your business and your investments - information that could help you make better decisions and take better actions when informed with "the facts." Accurate information about what currently exists, and about current activities and proposed future actions and activities, could let us know where we are, and where we appear to be going. In possession of such reliable information, we could make better choices about what we should do to achieve the kind of future we wanted.

While "betting" about the future is likely to provide more winning bets when the betting is informed by factual information, the whole premise of the "prediction (betting) market" idea is that the realities are independent of our own, personal choices and actions, and are external to us. We "bet" on future realities, instead of determining to take appropriate action to "create" the future realities we desire. 

That means, it seems to me, that we have largely "given up" on the idea that we will, by our own choices and actions, create the world we will inhabit in the future.

"Prediction markets," in other words, are a sign that what is now oftentimes called human "agency" has atrophied. Different from my father's relationship with the paper, we read The Journal to inform our bets, not to inform us of current realities, as we decide upon the actions we will undertake, ourselves, to forge the future we desire. 

Am I right in interpreting the rise of "prediction markets"? If I am, that's a mighty big loss from the way it used to be!

 

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https://www.tradingview.com/news/invezz:8ac53ac0f094b:0-a-major-challenge-cftc-faces-in-regulating-prediction-markets-in-2026/

#61 / Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining

 

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I have already noted that the State of the Union speech, presented by our current Chief Executive on Tuesday, February 24th, was not noted for any genuine evaluation of where we actually are, right now, as a nation. As I said in that earlier blog posting, CBS found that most of what was asserted by our current president was either flat-out "false," or "misleading."

I have not read about anyone renaming that most recent "State of the Union" speech as the "State of Delusion," but I was tickled to see that a couple of New York Times' columnists suggested that the speech brought to mind the statement that I have used as my title, today: "Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining." Another, similar, statement would also work: "Who Do You Believe? Me, Or Your Lying Eyes." 

The Times' column I am talking about, which ran in the February 27, 2026, edition of the paper, was called, "Trump Has Lost Touch With Reality." Click on the link to read it. No paywall should prevent you from doing that.

Friends, whatever tenuous connection our Chief Executive has with "Reality," it is imperative that "we, the people," don't succumb to delusions (of either grandeur or misery). We need to be in touch with the "real world," the world as it actually is, not the world that somebody is trying to pawn off as reality.

Why is that particularly important? It's important because "we, the people" are actually responsible for what our nation does, and we can't (properly) blame someone else. 

The way we run the country is by electing people who act as our "representatives," much as lawyers "represent" their clients in court, and in important negotiations. 

If you happen to end up with a representative who is not, actually, "representing" you, and who is not doing what you would like that representative to do on your behalf, election time is the time when you can make some changes.

In case you haven't noticed, there are some alarming signs that our current Chief Executive, and his henchmen, would like to make sure that this doesn't happen. There are concerted efforts to make sure that the upcoming November elections will result in the elevation to office of people who will do what they're told (by our current president), as opposed to telling our current president what he is supposed to do, on behalf of their constituents. 

This is just one more thing to worry about, right? 

Well, true! And there is nothing wrong with worrying about it, but how about getting yourself together with one of those groups across the nation that are working to ensure election integrity? Locally, in Santa Cruz County, I am partial to "Indivisible." Think about clicking some links! Do something, in other words, don't just agonize!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/trump-coins.html

#60 / Something Is Happening Here

 

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Something is happening here

But you don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

          - Bob Dylan

"Ballad of a Thin Man," the Bob Dylan song in which the above words appear, is not, by any stretch, one of Dylan's specifically "religious" songs. If you'd like to check out a sample of those religious songs, I invite you to click this link, which will take you to a past blog posting that provides access to what I call my "Last Day" or my "Memorial" songs - songs I regularly listen to as I consider the issues of life and death while I walk around town. Except for one, all my "Memorial" songs are by Bob Dylan.

The complete lyrics to "Ballad of a Thin Man," which is where the above-quoted words appear, will be found at the bottom of this blog posting, and while that song is not, itself, a song that raises lots of "religious" questions, the "pull quote," I think, does make a specifically "religious" observation, one that strikes me as worth commenting on in what I have come to think of as my "Sunday blog posting series," in which various "religious" topics often seem most appropriate.

When we consider our life - you know, when we consider it in a kind of "existential" way - we need to account for what we think it all means. At least, that's my own view. 

So, what does it all mean? 

I don't have easy pronouncements and have been known to celebrate the idea that we should just "let the mystery be." 

But I do want to declare myself. I do, most definitely, think that "something is happening here," and "what's happening" testifies to the fact that our lives are a "mystery," and that we need always to be careful to understand and acknowledge that there is something both mysterious and sublime in the fact that we are alive, here, together, on this beautiful planet, and that we didn't create either this planet or ourselves. 

There are various stories about what all means - about that existential what's it all about? I like the one that ends up talking quite a bit about Jesus, but what I want to affirm is not that everyone should be seeing it my way - just that something is (definitely) "happening here," and what is "happening" is of the greatest and most profound importance, to each one of us, and that this makes each one of us, and all others, "important," too. 

We need to pay attention! And if we do, we will end up understanding that what is "happening here" is of magnificant and majestic significance - of more importance than we can ever fully comprehend - at least in the detail that so many of us demand.

oooOOOooo

Ballad of a Thin Man

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, “Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?”
And he says, “How?”
And you say, “What does this mean?”
And he screams back, “You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

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https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/bob-dylan-country-music-inspiration-heroes-feature/

#59 / Resist The Machine

  

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Paul Kingsnorth is proposing "Six Ways To Resist The Machine." Click that link to be directed to Kingsnorth's article, which appears on a website maintained by Plough Magazine. Plough advertises itself with the slogan, "another life is possible."

Since I have always claimed that "possibility is my category," you can see why I like the magazine. I liked Kingsnorth's article, too, and I think you can read the whole thing by using that link in the first paragraph. The reason you should want to read the article, and to consider the strategies proposed by Kingsnorth, is summed up in this excerpt (emphasis added): 

The American historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford, in his massive study The Myth of the Machine, published in two volumes between 1967 and 1970, attempts to chronicle the rise and triumph of the system of power and technology which now increasingly entwines us all. He calls this system “the megamachine.” In the first pages of volume one, he explains what he means by this:

“The last century, we all realize, has witnessed a radical transformation in the entire human environment, largely as a result of the impact of the mathematical and physical sciences upon technology.… Never since the Pyramid Age have such vast physical changes been consummated in so short a time. All these changes have, in turn, produced alterations in the human personality, while still more radical transformations, if this process continue unabated and uncorrected, loom ahead.”

Mumford’s “megamachine” manifests today as an intersection of money power, state power, and increasingly coercive and manipulative technologies, which constitute an ongoing war against roots and against limits. Mumford predicted that this structure would allow “the dominant minority [to] create a uniform, all-enveloping, super-planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of functioning actively as an autonomous personality, man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians now interpret man’s role, will either be fed into the machine or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of depersonalized, collective organizations.”

This, I believe, is where we mainly find ourselves today. We are trapped within this Machine, whose momentum is always forward, and which will not stop until it has transformed the world. To do that, it must raze or transmute many older and less measurable things: rooted human communities, wild nature, human nature, human freedom, beauty, religious faith, and the many deeper values that we all adhere to in some way or another but find difficult to describe or even to defend. Its modus operandi is the abolition of all borders, boundaries, categories, essences, and truths: the uprooting of all previous ways of living in the name of pure individualism and perfect subjectivity. Its endgame is the replacement of nature with technology, in order to facilitate total human control over a totally human world.

Any effort to create a "totally human world" is, in essence, an attempt to deny and defy what I call my "Two Worlds Hypothesis," which is my suggestion that we live, simultaneously, not only in a "human world" that we create ourselves, by what we, collectively, do (what I generally call the "Political World"), but that we live, ultimately, in a world that we did not create, the "World of Nature," or (for those willing to be a little "religious") the "World That God Made." 

It is really very important that we understand our subservience to and our dependence upon that "World of Nature," that world that existed and exists before we do any human and creative work at all. 

Of course, we do need to give great attention to that "Political World" that we can shape, ourselves, and in which "possibility" (for both "good" and for "evil") is the category that prevails. But ultimately, we depend upon - and our "human world" depends upon - the "World of Nature," the "World That God Created" - and if we have any serious thought that we can supplant that world with a "totally human world," we have lost our way entirely. 

 

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https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/technology/six-ways-to-resist-the-machine

#58 / The East Wing Demolition

    

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I have recently been pointing out that our nation's chief executive has a misplaced idea of his function and position. If you'd like to check back on a couple of earlier statements about this matter, please click on my links to "The Royal He," or "Wrecking Ball." 

The picture above is a good reminder why calling our current chief executive a "Wrecking Ball" is exactly "on point," as we all consider the state of the nation (and the state of the East Wing of the White House). 

On February 24th, The Washington Post (owned by the sychophantic Jeff Bezos, billionaire, in case you have forgotten who is in charge there) ran an article titled, "GOP Lawmaker Quietly Questioned ‘Disturbing’ East Wing Demolition." That's where I got the picture above.

Unfortunately, a paywall may well block your effort to read what a couple of the Post's reporters had to say about this topic, but give it a try, anyway. In sum, it turns out that not every Member of Congress was unconcerned, as the current occupant of the White House acted as though the White House were his personal property. 

It wasn't, and it isn't, and it's about time that "we, the people" start asserting our rights to our nation - and to all the assets of this great country of ours!

It is important that people start speaking out, in public, to let everyone else know what they think about the idea that an elected official who occupies the White House by reason of his election, actually "owns" the official residence - or can act like he does. 

OUR country! Got it?

If we don't make clear who this country actually belongs to, we're going to find out that the doctrine of "adverse possession" will result in us losing our ownership interest. Click this "adverse possession" link for an earlier comment, made back in 2021. 

OUR country! Got it? You snooze, you lose!

Got it?

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Image Credit:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/24/trump-ballroom-gop-concerns/

#57 / Strong?

    

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A friend challenged me to watch the "State of the Union" speech last Tuesday evening. I do not, normally, ever watch television (Golden State Warriors' games, sometimes, and Netflix films being the two exceptions to this rule). In fact, I get my news from the "newspapers," the non-online kind that get thrown towards my front porch each and every morning - the kind that leave my hands dirty with ink stains, to the extent that I need to wash my hands after reading the papers, and certainly before I touch my computer keyboard. 

I found that our chief executive's claim that the State of the Nation is "Strong!" to be extremely heavy on "assertion," and vanishingly light in terms of the actual factual support brought forward to support his claim. You can click right here to get a review by CBS News of some of the assertions made in that State of the Union speech. "False" and "Misleading" is what CBS says about most of the claims made by our current president. 

Here is what I found most unsettling as I watched, however. After every major assertion made by our current president, and after every honorary presentation made, our current president turned his head, and raised his chin, and presented his profile in just the way that is pictured above. What was unsettling (unsettling to me, anyway) was this: our current president's pose captured perfectly the pose first perfected by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

As I say, I did find this to be disturbing - as I found everything else about that television presentation to be disturbing, too. 

Weren't you (whoever you are, who might be reading this) disturbed, as well?

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1- https://annotatedgilmoregirls.com/2017/10/12/il-duce/

2 - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/watch-trump-state-of-the-union-2026-online-free-streaming-1236514002/

#56 / The Supreme Court Has A Plan (Oh, Yeah?)

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Sarah Isgur hosts a podcast for The Dispatch, a conservative media outlet. She is also the author of Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court. Last month, Isgur authored a Guest Essay that appeared in the December 8, 2025, edition of The New York Times. The title of her Guest Essay, online, was as follows: "Actually, The Supreme Court Has A Plan." This "Plan," one gathers from Isgur's essay, is intended "to rebalance the separation of powers in the federal government," a topic directly touched upon in my blog posting yesterday.

Isgur's online essay speaks to the likelihood that the Supreme Court is about to overturn a long-term precedent, established by the case of Humphrey's Executor. The Court's decision in that case, decided in 1935, held that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had no right to "fire" a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, when the law setting up that Commission made clear that the Commission was to be "independent." 

Isgur worries about any such claim of "independence." "In a self-governing republic," Isgur says, "voters have to be able to hold someone accountable," and Isgur therefore thinks that any effort by Congress to limit the president's power to fire specified officers, in agencies created by the Congress, is simply, absolutely, dead-on wrong. Here is how she puts it: 

“At its most basic, the idea [is] that when the Constitution says, 'The executive power shall be vested in a president,' it means only the president. All members of the executive branch derive their authority from the president, and Congress can’t put limitations on the president’s power to remove executive branch officials. In a self-governing republic, voters have to be able to hold someone accountable (emphasis added)."

According to Isgur, the problem today is that the federal bureaucracy, or the "Deep State," or the "Administrative State," as some call it, is not really accountable to anyone. Congress has made many important federal agencies "independent," so Congressional legislation, she thinks, doesn't really hold the agencies accountable, and under the precedent of Humphrey's Executor, the president can't effectively tell the heads of those agencies what to do, either. 

It is unclear to me, having read what Isgur has to say, what "Plan" she thinks the Court actually has in mind to deal with the situation just described, but her statement, as highlighted above, is clearly wrong. Members of the executive branch don't "derive their authority from the president." They derive their authority from the laws enacted by Congress. In our system (as it's supposed to work, anyway), Congress "legislates," and the president "executes," but the President is only empowered to "execute" according to the laws enacted by Congress. The president, under our Constitution, has no independent authority that allows him to establish and implement his own personal public policy, based on what the president thinks that public policy should be. 

As our news media make clear every day, however, our current president doesn't agree with this system. He thinks that since he was elected "President" he has a completely independent authority to make deals with foreign nations, to use the nation's military forces to kill those in foreign waters he decides should be killed, to topple governments, and to set up tariffs not authorized by Congress but which tariffs he, as president, can change at any moment, on his whim, to establish what he, the president, thinks would be a good result. This is just a "partial list," of course, of what our current president believes he is somehow entitled to do, as the nation's Chief Executive.

There may well be some problems with federal agencies becoming so independent that they, and they alone, decide that our national policies should be, instead of simply implementing the policy directives enacted by the Congress. Let's agree that this is both a potential and a real problem. That's the issue that has led to claims that there is a "Deep State," or an "Administrative State," independent of the people, independent of Congress, and independent of the president that is operating solely on its own ideas of what is right. 

If there is a problem there - and I'm willing to say there may well be - how do we deal with it? Where is this "Plan" that the Supreme Court supposedly has?

Well, Isgur's essay makes plain that the Supreme Court's "Plan," if the Court does, as now predicted, remove the "independence" of federal agencies, is to let the president decide, unilaterally, what every federal agency should do. Adam Liptak's story in the December 9, 2025, edition of The Times quotes a prominent "originalist" legal scholar, Caleb Nelson, as coming out against this idea that the so-called "unitary executive" understanding of the Constitution is correct. "Letting the president fire officials 'for reasons good or bad,'" Nelson says, "would grant him 'an enormous amount of power - more power, I think, than any sensible person should want any person to have.'"

In other words, according to a prominent, respected, "originalist" scholar (meaning a "conservative" legal scholar), what Isgur is advocating is not a "plan" to restore democratic control over our federal agencies and to hold them accountable to the people. It's a "plan" to make the president the only person in our government who has the ability to tell federal agencies what to do, and if that is how the government works, who cares about Congress, anyway?

Well, here is who should care: "WE, the people." WE should care, because those Members of Congress are supposed to be working for us! They are our "representatives." 

If you'd care to read what a "liberal" commentator has to say about this topic, I strongly endorse this excellent discussion by former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. 

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/opinion/supreme-court-trump-congress.html

#55 / Saying Something Nice About Neil Gorsuch

    

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That picture above, of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, comes from an editorial that ran in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal. That Opinion column was titled as follows: "Justice Gorsuch Tries to Revive Congress."

I am not what might be called a "fan" of the above-pictured Member of the Supreme Court, but I do want to highlight what The Wall Street Journal's editorial statement claims; namely, that "Members of Congress ought to spend time reading Justice Neil Gorsuch's concurring opinion in the Supreme Court's rejection of President Trump's claim of emergency power to impose tariffs (Learning Resources v. Trump)." If you click that link just provided, you can follow that advice yourself, and wade right into the various statements made by our Supreme Court Justices. 

My blog posting, yesterday, which I titled, "Wrecking Ball," pointed out that our current president is making claims to powers which are not his to claim - at least not if you think that the Constitution is where we should look to see just what sort of powers a president has been granted by "we, the people." So, let me say something nice about Justice Gorsuch, by echoing this statement from that Wall Street Journal editorial (emphasis added):

As Justice Gorsuch makes clear, the difficulty of passing legislation is a constitutional feature, not a fault. “Deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions,” he writes. “And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure.” He rightly calls the legislative process “the bulwark of liberty.”

 

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/justice-gorsuch-tries-to-revive-congress-8af8f321

#54 / Wrecking Ball

   

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The "Opinion" page in the February 19, 2026, edition of The New York Times included an editorial statement by Massimo Calabresi, the title of which reads like this: "Trump Is A Wrecking Ball, And He's Only Getting Started."

I am told you can read the whole statement by Calabresi by simply clicking the link that I have just provided, and that no paywall will prevent that. I certainly encourage you to read Calabresi's statement, and to see what he has to say. 

To summarize his main point, Calabresi says that our current president is disturbing (and destroying) the nation's international relationships, and that "the outlines of his disruption are already clear: the collapse of multilateralism, a shift away from the liberal democratic values established after World War II and an embrace of a might-makes-right approach to national security."

Our current president is asserting that what he says, and what he thinks should be understood as a statement by the nation itself. Obviously, this is a huge misunderstanding of how the United States has actually organized its government. Our president is charged with carrying out and "executing" the laws and directions of Congress. The "president," in other words, is supposed to "do what he's told to do by the Congress," and it is not his job to tell everyone else what to do, and what to think, and what is what.

Of course, it is absolutely understandable that other nations might not get this. It seems like a lot of our own citizens don't get it, either - including hundreds of those citizens who are elected Members of Congress, and who have totally abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities.

It is important that "we, the people," make clear that what our current president is doing, and saying, does not, emphatically, "speak for us" in any official way. Again, it simply must be admitted that we, as citizens, aren't doing as good a job as we should in making this crystal clear. The "No Kings" protests organized by Indivisible are powerful and important, but our individual responsibility is to insure that our local representatives to Congress say and do what WE want them to do, so the world doesn't get the wrong impression of our nation.

We need to get a lot more "political," in other words, if we want to make clear that the current occupant of the White House should be understood for who he actually is - a whack job who is literally taking a wrecking ball not only to our continuing foreign policy goals, but even to our president's official residence, and is acting like what he happens to think is what "we" think!

Not true, right? If we want other nations to understand us (and not to succumb to the improper idea that the "president," whenever the president acts or speaks, is always acting and speaking for the nation as a whole), then Congress should enact laws, and issue statements, that make that clear. 

What our "Wrecking Ball" of a president is saying, and doing, is not to be interpreted as our own statement of national purpose!

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rise-and-fall-wrecking-ball-180957752/

#53 / Soul To Soul

 

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At the bottom of this blog posting I am providing you with the lyrics to one of those Bob Dylan songs that I listen to as I am walking around town. I think of these songs as my "Memorial Songs," and if you go down to the bottom of this blog posting, and click the link to the title of that song -  "When The Deal Goes Down" - you should be able to listen to the song, while you read along with the lyrics. 

The walking part is optional. 

I particularly like the last two lines of the second verse of "When The Deal Goes Down." As I have said at least once, I have come to understand myself as "being a soul," and "having a body," at least as much as I can see it the other way around. Comparisons are odious, says Alma Bracken Patton, and I'm not going to defy my mother by trying to adjudicate which way of understanding ourselves is the "right" way or the "best" way. They both work, I think. The only thing that doesn't work, for me at least, is to deny the "soul" part, altogether. Whether we "are" a soul, or "have" a soul, our souls are central to our being. Our "souls" are real. 

When I go walking around, I often meet people coming the other way, people who are also walking around. Often, they have dogs! With or without dogs, if we look at each other, as we pass, there is often that "flash" of connection and acknowledgement that brightens the day for both of us. EVEN with strangers! Even with people whom we don't know, and even, when we're especially blessed, when we meet and confront those whom we are prepared to, or already, dislike.

"Soul to soul, our shadows roll." 

Seeing that flash of recognition - of mutual acknowledgment - makes me confident, as Dylan understands, about what's going to happen when "the deal goes down." 

oooOOOooo

When The Deal Goes Down

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildered brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

The moon gives light and it shines by night
I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'er the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Copyright © 2006 by Special Rider Music

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#52 / What Do You Know About Big Sur?

 

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I am a longtime supporter of the Big Sur Land Trust, which means that I get a copy of its periodic newsletter. The last newsletter I received was dated "Fall/Winter, 2025," and I am showing you, above, what's on the cover. 

Inside, the Big Sur Land Trust is giving you an opportunity (1) To show what you know, and (2) To find out what you don't. The Big Sur Land Trust is doing that by way of a crossword puzzle: 

My bet is that most people are going to find themselves, mainly, in the "learning what I don't know" category. That is certainly where I found myself. If that's where you are, too, Page 14 of the newsletter is where you can "learn something."

Here's where to click to make a contribution to the BSLT!

 

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https://bigsurlandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/BSLT-FallWinterNewsletter25-Digital.pdf

#51 / The Royal "He"

    

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The following expression is pretty well-known: "The Royal We." Click that link and you will be directed to a Wikipedia entry, explaining both the origin and meaning of this singularly "plural" construction for a term meant to refer to a single individual. 

An article in the February 18, 2026, edition of The New York Times made me think about that "Royal We." The article, by Patricia Cohen, was titled as follows: "Neoroyalism: What It Says About Trump." I am assured that no paywall will prevent you from reading the article, if you click on that link.

We all do know (and that Time Magazine cover, above, helps remind us, should we be tempted to forget) that our current president is fond of postulating that his election as President of the United States is akin to, or equivalent to, his being crowned as "King" of our country. The fact that our country doesn't have "Kings," and was founded, in fact,  after a war fought to eliminate any future royal claim, has never really registered with the current occupant of the oval office. As defined by the Constitution, the "president" is, actually, a kind of "functionary," who is charged with taking orders from, and carrying out the decisions of the Congress. The "Executive" executes laws that are drawn up by others. The president, emphatically, does not issue "Orders" telling everyone else what to do. 

That's the system as established in the Constitution, at least, but our current president chafes under the constraints that the Constitution imposes. We do need to remind him - and (even more importantly) ourselves - that we don't got no "Kings" in this here country. 

The Times' story focuses on one of the prerogatives of kingship that ought not be overlooked, namely, the claim made by monarchs that the nation over which they preside essentially belongs to them as their own, personal "property." What the Cohen article points out is that our current president does seem to think that he is, in fact, entitled to act as the "owner" of everything that is actually "owned" by all of us. 

The East Wing of the White House comes to mind, doesn't it? Well, read that article. There are a number of specifics that should be convincing that our current president has profoundly misunderstood his role in the world, and in our nation, in particular. His parasitic and pathological narcissism is undoubtedly the (or a major) "cause" of our president's confusion about his role in our government, and about his "property" claims. 

What about our confusion? 

"We, the people," don't got no kings around here. The current occupant of our presidential office (yes, that office belongs to "us," the way we have structured our government) is just a "He," not a "We," and all claims to any kind of royal treatment need to be most emphatically denied. 

Mr. Trump's claims and assertions about his presidential prerogativess need to be rejected out of hand. He's a "He," not a "We," and we'd better start making that extremely clear to that upstart among us!

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https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/06/08/trump-time-magazine-cover-king-panel-sot-ctn.cnn

#50 / AI "Helps Out" On A Really "Long" Document

  

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Late last month, I got an email alert. The alert informed me that a paper entitled, "Hannah Arendt And Politics" was available for download. I did download that document, forthwith. It was authored by Maria Robaszkiewicz and Michael D. Weinman.

As those who are familiar with my blog postings know, I am rather preoccupied with "politics," and I think that Hannah Arendt had a number of profoundly important insights about that topic. I didn't know anything about the authors of the article, but I wanted to find out what they had to say. 

The download was free, and when I clicked on it, as a PDF file, the following advisory popped right up, right at the top: 

This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant. 

How thoughtful, right? I am always happy to discover ways to save time, so I checked how long that document was. Not that long, actually! The PDF that the AI Assistant wanted to summarize for me was only eight pages long. Really, it was only seven pages long, with a very short part of the final paragraph showing up on page eight. 

As it turns out, the PDF was the "Introduction" to the book whose cover is shown above, and the whole book is, indeed, a "long document." But I was being solicited to let an AI agent summarize an eight-page summary, and having now read the eight-page summary, I don't think that any further summarizing by some AI agent would have benefitted me at all. Quite the opposite! 

I have never used AI, at least to date, and I probably never will. The incident just recounted, with an AI agent offering to summarize a short summary, on the basis that I shouldn't have to read a "long" (eight page) document, is an example of why I am not an AI fan and am not an AI user. My entire purpose in writing this daily blog is to let the research and writing that goes into each blog posting help me "think about" things that I have some reason to believe are probably worth the effort. My writing is intended to make me think, not to provide me with a way to avoid doing my own thinking. If I permit an AI agent to provide me with ideas or insights that might have come from my own thinking, had I actually done that thinking myself, that's not a "plus." It's a "minus." 

Why do we think? Among other reasons, to help transform ourselves. At least, that's my belief. That's why I do it, and no shortcuts are possible! A person can't actually "think," themself, if the person involved is asking some agent of Artificial Intelligence to do that thinking for them.

Trying to let some agent of Artificial Intelligence think for us will transform us; I have no doubt about that. I do think that's true. But trying to get the benefit of "thinking," without actually doing any thinking ourselves, is not going to transform us in any good way! 

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https://www.academia.edu/125375436/Maria_Robaszkiewicz_and_Michael_Weinman_Hannah_Arendt_and_Politics_Introduction

#49 / Here's A Homeownership Idea

 

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An article that appeared in the January 19, 2026, edition of The New York Times focused on the legal status of "Fannie" and "Freddie," which the article identifies as "government-controlled mortgage giants." The article had the following headline in its online version: "Big Plan for Fannie and Freddie I.P.O. in Flux as Trump Pushes Affordability." Click the link I have provided to read that article. 

The plan that the article says is now "in flux" was a plan by our current president to have our nation's largest banks sell shares of these two government-controlled mortgage-lending companies on a major stock exchange. As I am understanding this proposal, doing that would give greater control over residential mortgages to private investors, freeing these mortgage lenders from current government controls. 

That does sound just like our current president - more benefits for the already-wealthy. Apparently, however, our current president is now having some second thoughts. "Fannie" and "Freddie," the two mortgage lending companies discussed in the article, were taken over by the federal government after the 2008 financial crisis, as a way to prevent their collapse and further disruption of the housing market. Maybe our current president is getting the picture that this might well happen again, if federal control is now relinquished, and that this kind of thing would not play well in the upcoming, 2026 and 2028 elections. 

Thinking about mortgage financing under the current arrangements made me realize that there is a real opportunity to do something meaningful about housing affordability that has not yet been tried, at least to the best of my knowledge, and that might well have a dramatic effect on preventing the kind of housing price escalation that has been so evident in the last twenty or thirty years. My personal case is a good example of what has happened. A two-bedroom home my wife and I purchased in the 1970's cost less than $50,000 when we bought it. Several years later, we then expanded that home by adding two more bedrooms, boosting its then value to about $100,000. The home is now worth well over a million. 

Hooray for me, right? Well, maybe, but ordinary income workers can no longer live in my town. I certainly couldn't afford to live here, myself, if my wife and I hadn't been able to buy our home back when we did.  

Is there anything we can do to stop this kind of ruthless inflation of housing prices, which is going on all over the nation, and which is making it ever more impossible for any person who has an average income to buy a home (or to rent one, either)? Well, let's be honest. Not under our current system. There is no system of "price control" for housing, so housing goes to those who can pay the most for what is available. The "rich," in other words, will always outbid those who aren't, and if the rich want to buy homes on the market, they're going to win out over those who aren't so rich, and who are just ordinary working people looking for a home. 

Seeing homes as "a good investment," which they have surely been, the well-to-do, and "private capital," are increasingly taking control over more and more real estate. The president's plan, as outlined above, would only make things worse, if I am understanding it correctly.

Is there a way to make things better, instead of worse? Here's my thought. 

What if a home were not an "investment?" The wealthy are investing in homes because they think that they will be able to sell them, later, for significantly more than inflation. They can rent them in the meantime. What happened to my home is an example of what's happening, and this is happening everywhere in the nation, of course, and is especially happening in places like Santa Cruz, where my home is located, since this is such a desirable place to live. 

When you go out to buy a home in Santa Cruz, you aren't bidding against other local residents and local workers. You're bidding against people from all over the United States, who earn a lot more than you do. That's why simply building "more" doesn't reduce the price. If the number of "buyers" was fixed, and more housing was built, prices would stabilize. However, the number of "buyers" is virtually infinite. Not only would those living throughout the entire United States, and in fact the entire world, be likely to "outbid" local residents and workers, "investors" from the world over would be competing against  the local worker-resident, too. 

More housing built simply does not bring the price down. Those who put their faith in "supply and demand," with more "supply" supposedly helpful in lowering the price, are badly mistaken when we start talking about Santa Cruz (and places like Santa Cruz). The new supply is minuscule, compared to the untapped, huge, worldwide "demand," and local working residents just can't outbid the rich. This is not just a Santa Cruz problem, but we have one of the worst housing markets in the entire nation, and that is clear proof that building more doesn't solve the problem.

There is, though, I think, something that could make things better.

What if the price of a home did not increase over time? What if the price of a home when sold was the same price as the price it was when the home was purchased? Well, "investors" would not have any reason invest in homes, because the price they could sell for later would be the same price as the price they bought the home for (always taking inflation into account, though). Investors would go out and put their money into something that they thought would make money, as opposed to buying a home, which would not increase in value as time passed. 

But how could that actually be arranged? The government can't just pass a law to that effect. That would be an unconstitutional taking. However, if purchasers of homes had to encumber their home, when they bought their home, and put such a price restriction on the home, then that would be constitutional. And what if that is what mortgage lenders demanded? 

In other words, what if "Fannie" and "Freddie" conditioned their loans on the purchaser placing such an encumbrance on the home? If they were controlled by the government (working, at least supposedly, in all of our best interests), a mortgage lender could be required to provide purchase money to an ordinary income homebuyer, at a very advantageous interest rate (say 2.5%, instead of, say, 6%) on the condition that the homebuyer place a perpetual encumbrance on the property being purchased, ensuring that any future sale of the property would have to be at the same price for which the property was being purchased, plus inflation. 

Prices would come down. Private investors would not be competing with ordinary working folks. Only people who wanted a home to live in would be interested in buying a home

This is just an idea to think about - and that's just what that article in The Times made me do. It made me think about that.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/business/fannie-and-freddie-ipo.html