this cannot be emphasized enough - "wages grow with GDP" means nothing. SEE: gilded age. National GDP is a fallacy in its own right: lobbyists in DC make INSANE money but provide very little "value" to the system but a farmer, who feeds like 160 people now, is seen to be "less productive." Also: National GDP and wage growth is macro. It tells us NOTHING about what is happening at the local level. This is how Trump got elected, the economists said "GDP UP, GOOD!" but then from their ivory towers didn't see the Rust Belt fading into the sunset UNTIL the opioid epidemic became a thing...

Balogun is a Nigerian who grew up in London. I'm glad his suspension got revoked, but I'm not going to pretend he's American. The Globalism World Cup.

As America marks its 250th with misgivings and malaise, how about if we seek inspiration from the Nordic model going forward? I traveled to Scandinavia to understand how these countries achieve prosperity and a high degree of equality -- while also becoming the happiest places on Earth. As Norway's finance minister, @jensstoltenberg, told me: “We actually live the American dream....The American dream, it’s more reality in the Nordic countries than in America.” They do have real challenges, and it's not entirely clear that the Nordic model is fully sustainable, let alone replicable. And we're not going to adopt it wholesale. But the US was actually on a similar track in the 1950s and 1960s, so it's not exactly alien. And I argue that in the Nordic model there is much to admire and learn from -- and adopt. Here's a gift link, and I welcome your thoughts: nytimes.com/2026/07/04/opini…

Very nice message from Ukraine’s @ZelenskyyUa on July 4th, 2026. I guess I missed Russia’s congratulatory message today. Oh yah, because Russia is too busy working to destroy American superiority and their officials spent America 250 in Iran mourning Khamenei. I am now officially Pro-Ukraine! Happy Independence Day! 🇺🇸

The US Navy operates a 50,000 acre forest in Indiana whose entire job is keeping one wooden ship from 1797 afloat. The ship is USS Constitution, still a commissioned warship with an active-duty crew. Cannonballs bounced off her in 1812 because the hull sandwiches a wall of live oak ribs between two layers of white oak planking, nearly 2 feet of solid wood so dense it barely floats. British 18-pounders hit it and dropped into the sea. A sailor yelled "her sides are made of iron" and the nickname stuck. Here's the problem with owning a 229-year-old wooden ship: you can't buy the parts. Hull planks run up to 40 feet long and 7 inches thick, cut from single white oak trunks. A white oak takes over a century to grow that big. No lumberyard on earth stocks it. So the Navy grows its own. Constitution Grove at Naval Support Activity Crane holds trees over 100 years old, reserved exclusively for this ship. Foresters there are managing oaks today that will become hull planking in the 2100s. The maintenance plan literally runs on tree time. Every 20 years or so she enters dry dock and shipwrights swap out rotted timber. After two centuries of this, estimates put original 1797 wood at maybe 10 to 15 percent of the ship. The Navy keeps replacing her plank by plank because Congress mandated her preservation and because she's the only active US warship that has sunk an enemy vessel. Every other asset in the Navy has a decommission date. This one has a tree farm.

You don't have to be an insufferable downer all the time. It's a choice.

The group marched away from Union Station, carrying various flags, including Confederate flags.