Jonathan

Michael Kennedy

by

From Chicago Boyz commenter Miguel Cervantes comes the sad news that Dr. Michael Kennedy has died.

Michael was a prolific contributor to Chicago Boyz from 2008 to 2024. His posts are here. He also posted a huge number of comments in response to other contributors’ posts here.

Michael’s personal blog is here. He contributed to a wide variety of other blogs (including lefty blogs that, Michael occasionally complained, banned him as a dissident). Neo has a lovely post about Michael here.

He self-published two books: A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine and a memoir, War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine. (I read “War Stories” and highly recommend it.) Michael’s Amazon bio hints at other fascinating books yet to be published — alas.

Michael was obviously a brilliant man, accomplished, full of energy and with many interests. He must have been an excellent physician. He was a student of history, a skilled and experienced sailor, and a father. His observations on politics, current affairs, technology and other topics were always well informed and insightful. I will miss him.

RIP. Alav hashalom.

Condolences to the Kennedy family.

Seth Barrett Tillman: “In Remembrance of P.J. O’Rourke: Let’s Make a List”

by

You’re going to need a bigger list! Seth brings it.

Worth reading as usual.

Quote of the Day

by

Dominic Cummings:

…Hopefully DOGE learns: nothing will happen without fast purges, like Twitter in week 1. And government is a SYSTEMS problem: it’s people, ideas, institutions and tools in that order but executed together.
 
Some places need rebuilding, some places need closing, some things need startups. E.g do not try to ‘reform’ USAF to do drones properly, incentives force the senior people to sabotage intelligent action – set up a new Drone Force outside USAF with new legal authority and totally outside existing procurement, HR, budget etc rules, with incentives to focus on engineering and saving $$, not DEI and cost-plus rackets for Boeing!
 
The core disaster in western states is the creation of PERMANENT BUREAUCRACIES — as Palmerston said to Queen Victoria in 1830s, this alien European system would be a disaster in England, making responsibility of ministers FAKE.
 
That’s what we have: FAKE meritocracy, FAKE responsibility, FAKE Cabinet government
 
But a vibe shift is coming fast across the west – covid & Ukraine & the old system’s pathological failures are pushing people to face fundamental change is needed. SW1 is being forced to confront the Vote Leave agenda coming to DC because the old regime is imploding everywhere…

“Vote Your Conscience”?

by

David Reaboi:

I’ve always hated this idea that your vote is “sacred” and that you should “vote your conscience.”

Nonsense. It’s only ever been transactional and strategic. Nobody cares about your lofty ideals; only 1 of 2 candidates will be elected, and abstaining is also making a choice. Sitting out an election is your right—but there’s nothing valorous about not being able to make up your mind in a simple binary.

In most elections the only options are bad and worse. When worse is much worse, writing in your ideal candidate is especially foolish. Nobody will get your point and you make it more likely that worse gets elected.

Public life would be better if fewer people thought about politics and elections as battles between good and evil and more people thought in terms of making incremental improvements by choosing less-bad alternatives. This is unlikely to happen unless the stakes are lowered by reducing the size and power of government.

“When Is Blowing Up the World A Success?”

by

VDH’s excellent summary:

Recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken bragged in an op-ed that “The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.”
 
What?
 
This is the latest campaign fantasy narrative also served up by Harris-Walz—analogous to the four-year untruth that “the border is secure” and “the economy is strong”—as they try to explain why the world utterly blew up on their watch and due to their own actions…

Read the whole thing.