I’ve been thinking about starting a recurring feature, “Ironic Juxtapositions of the Day”. For example, on Saturday one of the news aggregators that try to keep me informed had these two

“Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find”

and

“Juan Orlando Hernández, Former President of Honduras, Convicted in Manhattan Federal Court of Conspiring to Import Cocaine into the United States and Related Firearms Offenses”

which I found pretty ironic. BTW the flurry of corrective articles like the first one represent what I would call a “category error”. At least to me the question is not whether migrants commit fewer or less felonies than native-born citizens but whether migrants who have been convicted of violent felonies in their countries of origin continue to commit them when they come here. I suspect the answer is “yes” but determining whether that’s the case is actually quite difficult.

IMO we should be deporting non-citizens who have been convicted of violent felonies in their countries of origin who commit violent felonies here without any disagreement about it but that does not presently appear to be the case.

Last njght I watched nearly the entire Academy Awards ceremony for the first time in years. My wife and I have observed over the years that Oscars seem to be awarded in waves. Last night was no exception: it was clearly a Poor Things and Oppenheimer night.

Cillian Murphy was an obvious shoe-in for Best Actor for Oppenheimer although I was rooting for Paul Giamatti. If you haven’t seen The Holdovers, I recommend it (it’s streaming on Peacock which I get with my cable subscription). It’s a fine film, sort of a throwback to pictures that were made decades ago—no car chases or explosions, lots of dialogue. Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress which I thought she deserved. Like all of the characters in The Holdovers, her role was a complex, layered one.

For me the toughest category to pick was Best Supporting Actor. I was gratified that Robert Downey, Jr. won for his performance in Oppenheimer but Mark Ruffalo, too, has been nominated many times without winning. IMO he’s one of the finer Gen X actors.

I was surprised that Emma Stone won Best Actress for Poor Things. I haven’t seen it yet but I probably will.

That Godzilla Minus 1 won for Best Film Effects was not a surprise but it did illustrate the conundrum in which Hollywood finds itself. GM1’s total budget was about $15 million—less that a tenth of the Hollywood blockbusters being produced these days. Clearly, there’s something wrong in Hollywood. They’re too darned expensive for such mediocre results—something that was called out, ironically, in one of the acceptance speeches. The chap doing the complaining had it wrong, though. Not only is it possible to make 20 $15 million dollar movies rather than one $300 million stinkeroo, it’s being done. The issue is distribution rather than production. And those $15 million dollar movies will have less box office appeal in China and India. Car chases and explosions translate better than dialogue.

One speculation is that its movies are being produced by committee. I suspect that, like all too many American enterprises, they are engines for making big bucks for a handful of people and have lost sight of their markets.

Last night I tried to listen to President Biden’s last State of the Union message of his first term. At one point I fell into a troubled slumber. It was largely a shouted wishlist interrupted all too frequently with rowdy outbursts. The Republicans cooperated by being surly and lacking in decorum.

The targets of the speech were Republicans, large corporations, individuals earning more than $400,000 per year, credit card companies, and landlords.

I was clearly not the audience for the speech. It was largely a campaign rally, presented on a take it or leave it basis. I suspect its intent was more to shore up the president’s support among Democrats wondering if he’s up to the job than to convince moderates or independents. Some are characterizing the speech as “fiery”. I thought the president looked old, frail, and doddered at times. It was little more incoherent, halting, or rambling than any other Joe Biden campaign speech.

As President Biden prepares to give his State of the Union message for 2024 which some of his supporters are saying provides him with the opportunity of resetting his reelection campaign, I thought it might be fun to do a little retrospective on his previous SOTU messages.

This evening’s SOTU will find the president not with the lowest net approval rating of his presidency but with the lowest at the time of any SOTU message:

In my memory no SOTU message has been a barnstormer of the sort that some, e.g. Robert Reich, are advising. All have been dreary wishlists, landing like dead cats, forgotten within days of their delivery.

The targets that have been leaked include big corporations, centimillionaires, credit card companies,

To date none of President Biden’s SOTU messages have been followed by sizeable improvements in his popularity. Will this time be different?

William A. Galston uses his Wall Street Journal column to give advice to President Biden on what to do in his State of the Union message:

He must deliver a forceful State of the Union address, campaign vigorously, accept media interviews he has ducked up to now, and debate Mr. Trump this fall.

There are certainly risks in such a strategy including the risk of a major gaffe which reinforces the message that many people have been receiving lately.

I suspect that Karl Rove’s assessment of the primary results on Super Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal:

We’ve never seen two candidates wrap up their nominations this early. What could have been contests have turned into coronations. Yet both Messrs. Trump and Biden aren’t only weak contenders but massively flawed, old and declining, despised by much of America. In my lifetime there have been lower points in our nation’s politics, but it is hard to recall them just now.

sums up the views of quite a number of Americans. What concerns me even more is how many people will tie themselves into knots to convince themselves that wasn’t the case.

I think there’s one really telling passage in E. Wayne Merry’s consideration of European countries rearming themselves at 1945:

Most NATO members regarded their militaries and defense industries more as jobs programs than as national security because, after all, defense was the responsibility of the Americans.

Where could they have possibly gotten that idea? The answer is simple: we’ve been telling them that for the last 75 years.

Does no one see a conflict between defense being the responsibility of the Americans and Europe paying its share? Apparently not.

Here’s a fun little graph illustrating French, German, and British defense spending as a percentage of GDP:

In case you’re wondering here’s a graph of the GDPs of those country also from the World Bank:

It looks to me as though their real spending had declined. Clearly, they’ve believed us.

The editors of the Washington Post agree with the unanimous Supreme Court decision removing control over whether Donald Trump may appear on the ballot in 2024 out of the hands of state governments:

No, there is no one weird trick to keep former president Donald Trump off the ballot and out of the White House. That is the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court, which ruled Monday that the 14th Amendment does not authorize states to disqualify presidential candidates from seeking the office based on alleged oath-breaking and insurrection. This settles a legal controversy whose answer ought always to have been clear, leaving primary responsibility for preventing Trump 2.0 in the hands of voters.

I’ve read complaints about the decision on the grounds that the 14th Amendment should be self-executing but none of them have been accompanied by an explanation of that reasoning. Once again I think they’re trying to turn American jurisprudence into a civil code system.

At The Motley Fool Sean Williams points out something interesting—the M2 money supply is declining for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s:

M1 consists of money in circulation plus demand deposits. M2 adds savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit (CDs) below $100,000. Mr. Williams observes:

Since a growing economy requires more cash and coins in circulation to complete transactions, rising money supply is something economists and investors tend to take for granted and assume is a given.

But on rare occasions, U.S. money supply contracts in a big way — and that’s historically portended bad news for the U.S. economy and stock market.

In July 2022, U.S. M2 money supply peaked at an all-time high of roughly $21.7 trillion. Based on the Feb. 27 data release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, M2 stood at $20.78 trillion, as of January 2024. All told, we’re looking at a year-over-year drop of 1.44% and an aggregate decline from the July 2022 peak of 4.21%. This is the first significant drop in M2 since the Great Depression.

It may be that after the astronomical increase in the money supply during COVID this is merely a reversion to the trend but that may not make any difference.

Fingers crossed that this development does not portend a deflationary recession. We may be running into a perfect storm.