Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

This is delicious. Paul Krugman, who has the views of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and the values of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), both of whom died seven decades ago, realizes that young people aren't so much progressives as libertarians. They don't give a damn about labor unions, municipal monopolies, machine politics, or income inequality; they want their technology to make their lives easier, and Uber does that.

In a comment on a previous post, Mark Spahn wrote:

Pardon my unfamiliarity with bicycle-racing terminology, but does "attack" have a special meaning? Nibali, who precedes Froome on the course, looks back and sees Froome slowing down to fix a brake problem. (How can this be if Froome is the "leader", who by definition is ahead of everyone else?) Then Nibali comes back to Froome and starts attacking Froome. With what weapon? With his fists? With fierce invective? This makes no sense to me.

Mark is playing dumb, but let me explain anyway, for those who aren't. In a bicycle race, to attack another rider is to forge ahead of the other with a sudden burst of speed. The hope is that the person attacked will not be able to respond, in which case the attacker can "take time" out of him or her. The goal of the Tour de France (a three-week stage race) is to finish with the least elapsed time, so taking a few seconds (or minutes) out of one's rivals here and there can make the difference between winning and getting second place (or between finishing ninth and 10th). In 1989, Greg LeMond began the final stage (an individual time trial) 50 seconds behind Laurent Fignon. LeMond completed the course 58 seconds faster than Fignon, which gave him an eight-second overall victory. Every second counts!

Addendum: Don't confuse Froome being ahead of Nibali overall  but being behind him (physically) at a particular point in a particular stage. The best riders stay together in a bunch until someone attacks, at which point those who can respond to the attack do so. Those who fail to respond are said to be "dropped." Many riders got dropped during today's climb up L'Alpe d'Huez, for example.

Seven-Inning Felix pitched well—for seven innings. He's 12-5 for the season and on track for 19.2 victories. His team is in fourth place in a five-team division.

The New York Times is stunned to discover what anyone with a functioning brain already knows, namely, that people with marketable (especially specialized) skills command higher salaries. In the twisted view of the Times, everyone would study whatever he or she wants, from art history to economics to law to astronomy to philosophy to library science to counting grains of sand, and be compensated at the same rate. Economic illiteracy never sleeps.

Here are scenes from today's stage of the Tour de France, which took place in the majestic French Alps. The stage winner, defending Tour champion Vincenzo Nibali of Italy, averaged 19.57 miles per hour for 85.7 miles. The comparatively low average speed tells you how much climbing there was. Nibali broke an unwritten rule of cycling today when he attacked the leader, Chris Froome, while the latter had a mechanical malfunction. I watched it live. As soon as Froome slowed to remove an obstruction from his brake mechanism, Nibali looked back, saw the difficulty, and attacked. What an asshole! I didn't like him a year ago when he won the Tour, and I like him even less now. Either you win as a gentleman or you don't win at all.

Addendum: Nairo Quintana attacked Froome near the end of the stage and closed to within 2:38. Unless Froome has a bad day tomorrow, Froome will win the Tour, for Sunday's stage is largely ceremonial.

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This is the final climb of yesterday's stage of the Tour de France. Click to enlarge.

Here are two paragraphs from a New York Times article:

But Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in persuading the country that, as he asserted in 2012, he is “not the president of black America” but rather “the president of the United States of America.” Two-thirds of those surveyed said his administration’s policies treated whites and blacks the same. Yet in 2010, 83 percent of Americans said the administration did not favor one race over the other.

Still, almost half of those questioned said the Obama presidency had had no effect on bringing the races together, while about a third said it had driven them further apart. Only 15 percent said race relations had improved. Seventy-two percent of blacks said they approved of the way Mr. Obama is handling race relations, compared with 40 percent of whites.

The first paragraph contradicts itself. In the past five years, the percentage of people who believe that Barack Obama is unbiased with regard to race has fallen from 83 to 67. Yet, the reporters claim that he has "largely succeeded in persuading the country that . . . he is 'not the president of black America' but rather 'the president of the United States of America.'" If that's success, what would count as failure? Am I missing something?

This individual (Obama) has been a disaster in many ways, not least being his tendency to favor blacks over whites. In his view, blacks are always right and whites always wrong. Blacks are always victims and whites always perpetrators. Blacks are never responsible for their own behavior. This is demeaning to blacks, many of whom work hard, obey the law, take care of their families, go to church, and love their country.

I'm not the least bit surprised that (according to the article) "Only 15 percent [of respondents] said race relations had improved." The irony, of course, is that Obama promised to unite this country rather than divide it. This was a false promise, because Obama had no history of uniting anyone. As a community organizer, his objective was to pit one group of people against another with the aim of extracting resources. He is an agitator, a provocateur, and a rabble-rouser. He is the Divider in Chief.