Standards of dress have changed enormously over the last 50 years. As an example, many years ago, when I was in my twenties I took a date (possibly my now wife) to what was then the best French restaurant in Chicago. At the time for such a formal setting customarily men wore suits and women wore dresses. Typically cocktail length but also full formals. While we were waiting to be seated, we saw (and heard) the maître d scolding one of the guests, a young woman, possible 20. She was slim and attractive and wearing a leotard without stockings or tights with a scarf twisted around her hips as an improptu skirt and the poor maître d thought she was not dressed properly. Ultimately, he let her in but I turned and whispered to my date “If she had been five years older or five pounds heavier he would have turned her away”.

Nowadays not only wouldn’t he have batted an eye but if had made bold to comment on her outfit she would be outraged.

In the Wall Street Journal Allie Jones asks a horrifying question: “Can Taylor Swift Turn the Samoyed Into the Next Frenchie?”

When Travis Kelce stepped off his new wife’s private jet last month in Palm Beach, Fla., his travel companion caught people’s attention.

Paparazzi snapped photos as a fluffy white Samoyed puppy trotted down the airstair, appearing at home in its new billionaire lifestyle. When the canine made its tabloid debut on TMZ the next day, Swifties were agog: “Cat lady” Taylor Swift, it seemed, had become a dog mom.

Swift’s influence on consumer behavior is undeniable. She can sell out stadium tours, inspire fans to buy branded merchandise and replicate her outfits, and even boost entire economies. Could she and Kelce make Samoyeds the next French bulldogs?

The article goes on with a series of quotes from various Samoyed breeders, most of whom are acquaintances of ours. For example:

Should Swift’s dog inspire a true rush on Samoyed puppies, the breed would not be the first to gain popularity thanks to its celebrity associations.

“We’ve seen it in Dalmatians when ‘101 Dalmatians’ came out, or retrievers when ‘Marley & Me’ came out, or French bulldogs when Lady Gaga got her French bulldog” in 2014, said Munden.

There’s an error in the article:

Samoyeds, which originated in Siberia as reindeer-herding dogs for the Samoyedic people, have a unique “double coat” that requires professional grooming every six to eight weeks.

Sams do have double coats, i.e. a short, soft, dense inner coat and a longer harsher outer coat. It is thought that the inner coat keeps the dog warm while the outer coat protects the dog from the elements. But Sams are not unique in having double coats. Malemutes, Siberian Huskies, Great Pyrenees, German Shepherds, and others do, too.

My wife and I have had Samoyeds together for almost 30 years. My wife’s family had Samoyeds since before she was born. In preemptive answer to the question always asked: yes, they shed. A lot. In our house dog hair is considered a condiment, frequently found in food. We’ve also had Australian Shepherds for 20 years.

There is much to recommend Samoyeds: they’re smart and energetic. They are beautiful. If you’re looking for attention and walking with a Samoyed, you will get it (our Australian Shepherds are beautiful, too, and always receive a lot of attention). Samoyeds also have downsides: they’re smart, energetic, and want you to be energetic with them, particularly out-of-doors and particularly in the winter. They shed profusely, particularly twice a year.

If you are bound and determined to have a Samoyed, I have one bit of advice: obtain your Samoyed from a reputable breeder. Like many purebred dogs, Samoyeds may have a few hereditary health problems and they tend to run in families. A reputable breeder will make sure your Samoyed is free from these issues.

The editors of the Washington Post continue to ride the hobby that I referred to earlier. This time it’s in the form of a large animated graphic illustrating the increases in revenue and expenditures since 1962.

It’s interesting but it omits several important things. The first is that it neglects the revenue side of the equation almost completely. It shows the revenue but there is little commentary (or animation) associated with it.

The second is that from 1962 to date the federal budget has run at a surplus in a relative handful of years and all but one of those times (2000) the Social Security trust fund surplus accounted for most of that surplus.

The third is that interest paid on the debt for 2026 is roughly the same size as for Medicare.

Without those trust fund surpluses either taxes would have needed to have been higher or the federal debt would be higher and interest on the debt would be higher.

It is tempting to look at the growth of Social Security and Medicare and conclude that without them we wouldn’t have a debt problem. That doesn’t follow. For decades Social Security ran surpluses that financed other federal spending. Without those surpluses, taxes would have had to be higher, other spending lower, or borrowing from the public greater. And eliminating Medicare would not have eliminated the cost of providing medical care to the elderly; it would merely have shifted that cost elsewhere.

We do have a problem, but it’s not simply that we created Social Security and Medicare. It’s that for generations we have been unwilling to pay, currently, for the government we have chosen to have. We’ve been living on the cuff for almost all of the last century, and it’s a very bad habit.

The editors acknowledge that governments are supposed to offset deficits in bad times with surpluses in good times. That’s precisely what we haven’t done. We have run deficits during recessions, wars, and emergencies as a good Keynesian would expect but we’ve also routinely run them during expansions and peacetime.

Donica Phifer and Avery Lotz report at Axios that Luigi Mangione has pled guilty:

Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to stalking charges tied to the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, per multiple reports.

Why it matters: Mangione was facing a potential life sentence if convicted in a federal trial, and the guilty plea could mean his lawyers ask to dismiss separate state charges, including second-degree murder.

• Mangione’s legal team has argued that charging him in both federal and state courts constituted double jeopardy, a legal protection that prevents a person from being charged twice for the same offense.

Frankly, that puzzles me or at least Axios’s description of the argument does. The federal constitutional issue was settled more than a century ago in United States v. Lanza and most recently reaffirmed in Gamble v. United States (2019): the Double Jeopardy Clause does not prohibit successive state and federal prosecutions because they are separate sovereigns.

The actual issue appears to be different. New York’s Criminal Procedure Law §40.20 provides broader protection than the federal Constitution and generally prohibits successive prosecutions arising from the same criminal transaction, subject to several exceptions. Indeed, the judge in Mangione’s state case has already rejected his federal constitutional argument while noting that his New York statutory argument could become ripe after a federal guilty plea.

So the interesting question isn’t whether Mangione’s lawyers intend to relitigate Lanza. It’s whether his federal guilty plea now bars the New York murder prosecution under New York law.

Rahm Emanuel’s critique of President Trump’s trade policy in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal leaves a few questions unanswered. Here’s his alternative to what he describes as a policy of “losing friends and alienating allies”:

First, trade Mr. Trump’s tariff wall for an “economic bloc of common interest.” The U.S., the European Union, Latin America and Indo-Pacific allies should set one common external tariff on subsidized overcapacity: steel, aluminum, autos, batteries, solar equipment and so on. Then drop tariffs inside the bloc. Nobody beats overcapacity unilaterally.

Second, compete where the game is decided: markets. As ambassador to Japan, I watched Beijing ban every scallop and fish Japan exported. Mr. Xi’s move wasn’t about food safety. The Chinese wanted to damage a key Japanese industry. Tokyo was able to withstand China’s coercion because Washington helped it find alternative markets.

Third, treat each ally’s industrial base as part of America’s portfolio of security assets. In April 2025, Britain’s Parliament was recalled on a Saturday to stop the Chinese owner of its last two blast furnaces from letting them go cold. This was the first time since the 1982 Falklands War that legislators were asked to convene on a Saturday, reflecting the depth of Downing Street’s concern. British steel—like Korean semiconductors and Japanese shipyards—buttresses America’s security in the event of a conflict with China. Economic statecraft should support national-security interests.

I think he’s leaving at least two questions unanswered. First, how do you reconcile the Democratic complaints about “affordability” with raising prices with tariffs whether we do it in a bloc or not?

There is no reason to believe that steel, batteries, solar equipment, or automobiles produced in the United States or other members of Emanuel’s bloc will cost as little as subsidized Chinese production. Indeed, preventing Chinese subsidies from driving competitors out of business is the point of the tariff. Economic security has a price. How much are we prepared to pay for it?

Second, what if the European Union, Latin America, and the Indo-Pacific fear and dislike the United States more than they do China? There is ample evidence going back 200 years that is the case. Do we have friends and allies? I don’t think we do. I think we have trading partners, clients and competitors.

An ally is someone with whom you cooperate. A client is someone whose security you guarantee. The two categories can overlap. The mistake is assuming that because a country is an ally, dependence on that country’s industrial capacity is equivalent to domestic capacity.

If Japan withdrew from its security relationship with the United States tomorrow, would the United States remain a viable independent great power? Obviously yes. If the United States withdrew from Japan tomorrow, could Japan confidently guarantee its security against China and North Korea? Much less obviously.

My view is that President Trump is right and wrong at the same time. He’s right that we cannot depend on China for strategic goods which includes steel, autos, batteries, solar equipment and so on. He was wrong to impose tariffs on Canada, the European Union, Latin America, and the Indo-Pacific.

Mounting a tiger provides three alternatives. By far the best, least risky, and cheapest is not mounting the tiger in the first place. Unfortunately, we mounted the tiger more than 30 years ago. Alternatively, you can be prepared to endure the pain and damage you will absorb when you dismount or you can just keep riding. Choose carefully.

At the Wall Street Journal Chris Jacobs of Juniper Research has an op-ed in which he notes that Democrats are moving towards endorsing a single payer healthcare system:

Conventional wisdom in Washington holds that so-called moderate Democrats who haven’t endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s single-payer healthcare plan support many coverage options.

But a white paper on healthcare reform from Oregon’s Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, shows that this is false. The report, released July 30, mentions the word “profit” or derivations thereof 185 times in an 86-page document, echoing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric demonizing wealth. The outlined policies also resemble those of Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Sanders—proposals that Democrats previously rejected as too costly and disruptive, and that would move the country toward a fully government-run system.

The Wyden document begins with a discussion of “consumer-friendly enrollment.” It proposes “a more standardized or centralized platform that creates a consistent enrollment experience across coverage programs,” suggests that “existing enrollment processes in the employer market can be burdensome for workers,” and raises the idea of including employer coverage in this “more standardized employer platform.” The apparent attempt to integrate businesses and employer coverage into a government-run enrollment architecture resembles the purchasing alliances that defined Hillary Clinton’s failed healthcare proposal in the 1990s.

That raises a more fundamental question: what mechanism prevents the amount being paid from continuing to grow faster than the resources available to pay it? I don’t object to a single-payer healthcare system with one proviso: healthcare costs must be controlled.

Some do it better than others but there are no single-payer systems that do not at least attempt to constrain costs. The biggest problem with single-payer in the United States is that the Congress has abandoned attempting to control healthcare spending on the programs it subsidizes.

Our problem is that the incentives of patients, healthcare providers, and those who pay for healthcare are not properly aligned. My own preference would be for a system that resembles Italy’s, a capitation system in which primary care physicians are compensated based on the number and demographics of their patient base. I would go farther, however, and have specialists compensated through primary care physicians. That would align the incentives of patients, primary care physicians, specialists, and those who pay for care.

A system in which the government merely foots more of the bill without increasing taxation to pay for it may be appealing but is impractical.

Read this article at Associated Press by Brian Melley. It will make your day. Here’s a snippet:

LONDON (AP) — Timing is everything in comedy and, so it seems, in British politics for a perennial joke candidate who wears a garbage can on his head.

Count Binface, a self-described intergalactic space warrior, has landed in the center of the U.K.’s political universe ahead of a special election Thursday that was derided as a farce long before the ballot was packed with nearly three dozen candidates — many from the silly end of the spectrum.

Binface, who has run against prime ministers past and present, was the first to throw his bucket in the ring when Reform UK leader Nigel Farage abruptly quit Parliament and said he would seek reelection to clear his name over financial allegations.

“Game on, Nige,” Binface declared soon after Farage, portraying himself as the victim of a witch hunt, said he would represent the people against the establishment.

and then seek out some of the many videos in which he is featured.

I even have a campaign slogan for him: “Put a lid on it!”

There aren’t too many television series that are around long enough to face the challenges that NCIS has. NCIS began as a series anchored by Silent Generation and Baby Boomer authority figures with a predominantly Gen X supporting cast. Today it is anchored by a Baby Boomer and a largely Gen X/Millennial ensemble. These were its early cast members:

and these are its most recent cast members:

The recurring cast once reinforced the show’s multigenerational feel. Characters played by Ralph Waite, Muse Watson, and Joe Spano represented parents, mentors, and longtime colleagues rather than peers. Those kinds of recurring older characters have largely disappeared.

I presume that most of its audience are Baby Boomers. Will the transition in the cast enable it to capture viewers of a younger cohort? Frankly, I doubt it. No scripted broadcast network show has a scripted series that skews towards younger viewers. Even the streaming audience for scripted shows skews older.

I suspect CBS is just trying to hold onto the audience it has.

I just heard Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy outline his plan to “rescue” Social Security on Face the Nation. Here’s the relevant snippet:

SEN. CASSIDY: Yes, but I have a plan, and we don’t raise the retirement age in my plan. But that said–

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is the sovereign wealth fund–

SEN. CASSIDY: –somebody else may have a plan that does it- what’s that?

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is the sovereign wealth fund plan you had with Senator Kaine?

SEN. CASSIDY: This is the one where you do a investment fund and you put $1.5 trillion in it and you allow it to grow with the economy. It’s what the Canadians do, the Norwegians do, the Japanese do. It’s what the U.S. government does with the Federal railroad retirement system. When you do that, the growth in the economy takes care of a lot of the problem with the debt.

IMO that would have been a fine idea in the 1980s when Congress reformed Social Security by raising FICA and the retirement age but it has several serious problems now.

The first is where do you get the $1.5 trillion? Not only do Social Security expenditures exceed receipts but general spending is running at a deficit. We could:

• borrow another $1.5 trillion which would increase pressure to monetize the debt and thereby contribute to inflation and reduced affordability
• raise taxes which Sen. Cassidy opposes
• reduce or reallocate other federal spending

all of which are difficult or impossible in the present political climate.

The second is that such a fund would inevitably be politicized unless clear lines are drawn. The federal government should not be picking winners and losers. Congress would inevitably face pressure to favor politically desirable industries, avoid investments in unpopular sectors, or use shareholder voting power to pursue policy goals.

The third is that a large government purchase of equities would initially transfer wealth to existing shareholders by bidding up asset prices. According to the Federal Reserve the top .1% of wealth owners own 30% to 35% of of equities and mutual fund shares. That the richest are not rich enough is not presently a major problem in the United States.

The conceptual problem is do you really want the federal government to own a large portion of the economy? It’s unclear to me how one can philosophically oppose socialism and support government ownership of the economy. Even if one rejects the label “socialism”, a government investment fund of this scale raises legitimate questions about the appropriate role of the federal government as a major shareholder in private enterprise.

First restore actuarial balance through taxes and benefits; only after the program again generates surpluses should those surpluses be invested. My alternative plan would be to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, raise the maximum income subject to FICA so that 99% of wage income is subject to it (that’s about $560,000 at present) indexed to inflation, invest some portion of Social Security surpluses up to 100% in one or more privately administered mutual funds, and cap the administrators’ earnings for the fund.