Feb
5
2026

Bring Back Bogie

Leading off with Frank J. Fleming's effort, which is stunning and funny:

At his substack, Frank discusses further: Totally Real Video of Me Caring for Wildlife.

When I shared on Twitter, I got two angry reactions from people who obviously didn’t watch to the end: Those who warned me about getting close to wildlife and those who thought they were smart for pointing out this was actually AI.

And here's something I missed from last December:

I know I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure creative geniuses with low budgets (and minimal concerns for copyright law) will start making feature movies with their choice of stars from the past. Sure, Sturgeon's Law says 90% of it will be crap, but 10% will be great, and the public will eat it up. There will be lawsuits galore, but in the end we'll get wonderfully entertained.

And maybe some things will be lawsuit-free. Last year, I looked at an effort to AI-restore Orson Welles' original version of The Magnificent Ambersons. And of course, my idea of a Casablanca sequel, with AI resurrecting the original cast? Still a dream!

Also of note:

  • It doesn't seem like Congress is functioning well either. George Will lays out some possibilities, none pleasant, but: One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely. (WaPo gifted link)

    GFW points to a recent report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, titled What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like? Their scenarios:

    • Financial Crisis: Reduced confidence in U.S. Treasury markets could lead to a spike in interest rates, panic among traders, devaluation of assets, freezing or slowing of credit, and failure of key financial institutions.
    • Inflation Crisis: Attempts or fear of attempts to manage debt levels through monetization, artificially low interest rates, or financial repression could result in high and potentially spiraling inflation.
    • Austerity Crisis: Sharp tax increases and spending cuts enacted to stave off a fiscal crisis could create undue hardship, undermine demand, and push the economy into recession.
    • Currency Crisis: The U.S. dollar could face sudden and significant depreciation in response to fiscal stress and policy responses, resulting in destabilization of markets and the economy.
    • Default Crisis: Policymakers could explicitly or implicitly default on debt, including by failing to make debt payments or by restructuring existing debt.
    • Gradual Crisis: Living standards and fiscal and monetary flexibility could gradually erode in response to rising debt, potentially causing as much or more long-term damage than an acute crisis.

    GFW comments on that last one:

    The most probable, and most ominous, outcome would be a gradual crisis. In 2021, debt service consumed less than 10 percent of federal revenue. In 2025: 18 percent. By being gradual, a protracted crisis would mean a demoralized nation slowly accommodating perpetual economic sluggishness, waning investments in research and development, social stagnation, diminished contribution from the entrepreneurial energies of talented immigrants, and waning U.S. geopolitical influence.

    A gradual crisis would be anesthetizing, rather than an action-forcing, cymbal-crash event that could stimulate recuperative reforms of U.S. political culture. Instead, this culture would become more toxic. Political power would be fought for, and wielded, with the desperate ruthlessness of a zero-sum competition in which one faction’s gains must equal other factions’ losses.

    So, government would simultaneously become more powerful, more divisive and less legitimate. The currency is how everyone meets the government every day through the unstated — because presumably obvious — government promise that the currency it issues is trustworthy.

    That's the WaPo, which still exists, and last I heard, George Will is still there.

    I fear "zero-sum" in the second quoted paragraph is way too optimistic. Almost certainly we'll be looking at negative-sum conflicts at that point of the game.

  • And don't look at tax gimmicks to fix things. Robert VerBruggen looks at a recent study that concludes Taxing the Rich Won't Raise Much Money. Cutting Their Taxes Won't Either. Invoking the Laffer Curve?

    This is a hard problem. But a fascinating new study, written by a trio of economists from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, takes a crack at it, using more sophisticated methods than previous work has employed. Its intriguing title gives away its main finding: “Laffer Curves Are Flat.” We won’t raise money by cutting the top rate, it concludes, but we won’t raise very much by increasing it either.

    A harder problem, apparently: getting rid of the useless Department of Education. In recent news: The Department of Education Isn’t Going Anywhere. Which brings us to…

  • If throwing money at schools didn't work, you didn't throw enough. That's the unshakable faith of seemingly every educrat. Jennifer Weber reports, on the contrary: New York Leads in School Spending—But Not Student Achievement.

    Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed executive budget for fiscal year 2027, released January 20th, earmarks nearly $40 billion in state funds for K–12 education. Her proposal appears with New York leading the nation in per-pupil spending for the nineteenth consecutive year.

    Albany cites these nation-leading expenditures as evidence of the state’s “longstanding commitment” to giving students “the opportunity to excel.” But big spending has not meaningfully improved the metric that matters: student achievement.

    Per-pupil spending in New York State already exceeds $36,000 annually. If Hochul’s budget passes, New York will have increased state school aid by about $10 billion over the past five years. It will bring total state school aid to $39.3 billion—the largest in New York’s history, and a $1.6 billion increase over last year alone.

    If record investment translated into academic mastery, New York students’ proficiency rates would be increasing. Instead, they remain stubbornly low. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31 percent of New York eighth-graders were proficient in reading; only 26 percent were proficient in math.

    If you'd like, go back and read my post from two days ago in response to John Shea's (Superintendent of Schools in Somersworth NH). Shea wants New Hampshire's state educational spending to be more like New York's. Why?

  • The sickness is metaphorical, but still… The WaPo editorial board (which still exists) looks at news you may have missed (like I did): Moderna’s chilling announcement is a symptom of a deeper sickness. (WaPo gifted link)

    Moderna’s recent disclosure that it plans no new late-stage vaccine trials because of policy uncertainty in the United States is a chilling consequence of the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine turn. It’s also symptomatic of a deeper sickness threatening American dominance in pharmaceutical innovation.

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is systematically eroding a vaccination infrastructure that has saved countless children from death and deformity. After a quarter-century, America is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status. Now he’s tinkering with the liability system that keeps vaccine manufacturers economically viable.

    Throw in government price controls, and you've got a perfect, and deadly, storm of government interference making things worse.