Pun Salad

¹⁰ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
    and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
¹¹ For through wisdom your days will be many,
    and years will be added to your life.
¹² If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you;
    if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer.

… and sideswipes the mocker, one of the Proverbialist's favorite targets. I guess he was mocked when he was a young boy, and he grew up thinking "I'm gonna get those guys someday."

Yesterday's twin news—that Trump organization fixer Michael Cohen had confessed in court to multiple crimes including violating campaign finance law, and that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of bank fraud and other financial crimes—mostly serves to reinforce what we've known, or at least suspected, for awhile now. Trump, the real estate swindler who played a fake businessman on a reality TV show, liked to surround himself with a cast of shady characters. It did not take a psychic to see yesterday's news, or something like it, coming.

Psychics? Hm…

John Keilman of the Chicago Tribune asked a bunch of psychics for their predictions about a Trump presidency on January 20, 2017. Susan Rowlen "who does psychic consultations in Oak Brook" has a good take:

First, the good news.

The economy will take off under Trump, a real estate tycoon who sees almost everything as negotiable. The stock market will climb, with energy companies, small stocks and precious metals proving to be particularly good investments, she said.

"The way he approaches it is everything is a deal," she said. "He has a completely different vision than President Obama."

 But that wheeler-dealer sensibility will also get him into trouble, she said. While he will keep more manufacturing jobs inside the U.S., the price of consumer goods will rise as a consequence. Meanwhile, one Cabinet pick after another will flame out — as many as seven will leave their posts within two years, she said.

"He'll go through people in his Cabinet like we go through underwear," she said.

Impressive. I believe the current count of flamed-out Cabinet members is five. And that's after 19 months. (I don't know if it's normal, but my underwear lasts much longer than that.)

For another psychic take on the Trump Administration, see our Amazon Product du Jour. The subtitle is "Twenty Months to a Turning Point for America", and that's … counting on fingers … well, not long from now.

Reviews are funny: "The predictions are vague, similar to what you could see in your horoscope in the newspaper. Some are obvious like the Trump children having influence in the administration. I consider my purchase three dollars wasted." Dude, what did you expect?

That fact may come as a surprise, especially for readers who weren’t able to watch Trump’s address. Many voices in the media have been complaining for months that Trump is a wannabe tyrant who regularly “attacks the First Amendment.”

Speaking to a boisterous crowd at an election rally in West Virginia, the president railed against censorship by social media platforms. But he made clear that he believes the free speech umbrella extends even to outlets that routinely bash him.

“You know, I’d rather have fake news like CNN,” he said, waving toward the bank of reporters in front of him. “I would rather have fake news — it’s true — than have anybody, including liberals, socialists, anything, than have anybody stopped and censored.”

Well, good on him.

In China, there is systemic discrimination against non-Han Chinese. Ethnic minorities — about 10 percent of the Chinese population — are routinely denied access to elite universities and urban job markets in the name of Han supremacy. Under China’s internal-passport system, many non-Han aren’t permitted to even look for work outside of their rural provinces. Tibetan and Uighur citizens are often barred from using Chinese hotels.

And much more at the link. I wonder if you'd hear about these things under the auspices of UNH's Confucius Institute?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that “companies shouldn’t be accountable only to shareholders.” She then outlined her new bill that “would require corporations to answer to employees and other stakeholders as well.”

She proposes to mandate that “corporate directors … consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders — not only shareholders — in company decisions.” To help ensure that this mandate is carried out, she wants at least 40 percent of the members of corporate boards to be elected by workers.

If this mandate is ever enacted, it would radically restructure corporate law, governance, and finance, which is especially frightening because seldom have I encountered so many fallacies packed into so few words as are on display in Sen. Warren’s op-ed.

Professor Boudreaux outlines a few of her fallacies, but … If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

It's been nearly a century since scientists first theorized that the Universe was expanding, and that the farther away a galaxy was from us, the faster it appears to recede. This isn't because galaxies are physically moving away from us, but rather because the Universe is full of gravitationally-bound objects, and the fabric of space that those objects reside in is expanding.

But this picture, which held sway from the 1920s onward, has been recently revised. It's been only 20 years since we first realized that this expansion was speeding up, and that as time goes on, individual galaxies will appear to recede away from us faster and faster. In time, they'll become unreachable, even if we journeyed towards them at the speed of light. The Universe is disappearing, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Yar, in the deepest parts of space there be dark energy, blowing away the very fabric of the cosmos. I advise ye to steer clear.

Oh thank God! I was so worried about these fictional animals in their fictional cages. Now they're free to roam the fictional plains, where the fictional lion can tear the fictional zebra to shreds. https://t.co/itSruI7Kia

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) August 21, 2018

Word has it that the Keebler elves have armed themselves against the marauding beasts.