Questions

Questions

 The administration's almost hysterical efforts to get their name on a peace plan in the Middle East have achieved a compromise 60-day 'ceasefire.' However, reading it reveals the main countries are Israel and Lebanon. Indeed, Israel's retired ambassador said as much yesterday. So, the frantic peace agreement to shore up the American administration's reputation and legacy is a sixty-day cease-fire between Israel and a non-combattant?

*

"If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way." 

This appeared in a news article. Could it be true?

*

Pro-Hamas demonstrators are following a long tradition of importing outside problems to the U.S. and making them domestic. They disrupted the Macy's Parade.  And, as they are never officially arrested, we don't get a chance to know them, their numbers, or their sponsors.

*

If a demonstrator is on a student visa, why not deport him?

Of course, we'd have to identify them.

*

Travis Hunter has a 4.0 GPA?

*

A story from Duquesne. A tenured professor finished her class and said, "see you next week, guys." Several students complained to the administration about 'guys' and she was reprimanded. Apparently, there were no blind students present.

*

Britain and France are in talks to send troops to Ukraine to deter Vladimir Putin, it has emerged.
Is this in response to the fear Trump will withdraw funding? Or is Putin seen as an inevitable threat?

*

Megyn Kelly, who is tough on sexual transgressions, does not believe Hegseth's accuser. But it looks like his mom does.

Nast and Thanksgiving

A social media ban for children under 16 passed the Australian Parliament on Friday in a world-first law.

***

...as The Post’s Rachel Weiner reported, this squabble reveals an essential truth about bike lanes as weapons of civic planning: They are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.--Cowen

***

A report is afoot that will be dedicated specifically to a form of geoengineering known as solar radiation management. This is a technique that essentially involves spraying fine aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth. The idea is that, once it’s reflected, there’ll be less heat and temperatures will go down.

They plan to block the sun.

***

                            Nast and Thanksgiving

Thomas Nast was a Bavarian immigrant credited with developing the American cartoon. He arrived in the 1840s as a child and became the illustrator for Harper's Weekly. He developed the modern version of Santa Claus and the elephant as the Republican Party symbol. As such, this is a provocative drawing, from the Nineteenth Century.

Melanie Kirkpatrick’s 2016 book, Thanksgiving: The Holiday and the Heart of the American Experience (link added):

 

{Thomas] Nast was an immigrant, having arrived in America from Germany when he was six years old, and “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” reflected what Nast saw as the immigrant’s passionate affection for his new country and commitment to its democratic values….
At the head of the table stands Uncle Sam, who is carving a turkey. Around the table are seated Americans representing an array of races and religions, identified in many cases by their national dress. Among the guests are an African American family, a Native American, a Chinese man with a long queue, an Irish American couple, a Spanish woman wearing a mantilla and holding a fan, a bearded Muslim with a fez on his head. Nast presents the people in this portrait respectfully, not as caricatures. His message is that every American has an equal right to sit at the Thanksgiving table.

Happy Thanksgiving

Saudi Arabia is preparing to begin construction work on its next giga-project: a cube-shaped skyscraper big enough to fit 20 Empire State Buildings.

***

The latest report from the National Science Foundation shows that U.S. R&D spending in 2022 (the last year available and notably before the new U.S. industrial policy push really got going) climbed to a record high a few years ago and then just kept on climbing, driven almost entirely by private business

***

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a tricky word. It means gratitude but it implies more than something to be grateful for, it implies something to be grateful to.

In the fall of 1621, the Plymouth settlers had a celebratory meal with a local Indian tribe as part of a traditional English harvest festival. There are two accounts; no mention is made of a Day of Thanksgiving but they were probably happy; since their arrival, they had a 50% mortality. 

It lasted three days. A Day of Thanksgiving, a day the English would have considered religious, was first held in the new land in 1623 following a needed rainfall. Various days of thanksgiving were celebrated by the country over the years, the first in commemoration of the end of the Revolution by Washington. In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln formally made Thanksgiving an annual event.

It is interesting to see these two men, Washington suspicious of organized religion and Lincoln harder to read, celebrating an official Thanksgiving, but both seem heartfelt, Lincoln's surprisingly so. Washington is almost a mirror of the mindset of the time. The two proclamations are below.

The Thanksgiving

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor--and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks -- for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions--to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence [sic], have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
Abraham Lincoln

Thanksgiving's Downside

MSNBC said it was “unaware” that Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign paid $500,000 to Sharpton’s National Action Network nonprofit ahead of a friendly interview with the Democratic nominee just weeks before the election.

***

Concern over poverty is often confused with concern over differences in income, as if the wealth of the wealthy derives from, and is the reason for, the poverty of the poor. But this is just one of the many forms of the zero-sum fallacy. Since the United States contains several times as many billionaires as any other country, ordinary Americans would be among the most poverty-stricken people in the world if the wealth of the wealthy derives from the poverty of the poor. Conversely, billionaires are much rarer in the most poverty-stricken parts of the world.--Sowell

***

500,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the border illegally during the Biden administration.

***

Thanksgiving's Downside

Events like Thanksgiving are upsetting to the Left because they imply community, a violation of the Left's template of division and isolation. The basic element of society, according to the Left, is conflict, most recently the effort of the oppressed to right themselves after some oppressor's damage and continued ill wishes. The essence of community is conflict. This insane oxymoron is a repackaging of the disastrous Marxian homicidal mania of the recent past. 

However, America's invention solved the ancient inequality problem by formalizing the equality of all men regardless of their individual histories and characteristics. This was done by fiat, not by destroying the cultural/political/social outliers.

Somehow this astonishing, optimistic, true egalitarianism cannot be accepted by fractious, angry, rebels-without-a-cause who insist on fighting over problems that America has already solved.

A Transition in Ukraine

DNC launches GoFundMe campaign for its post-election employees.

***

Records show the largest outside group that supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election paid companies owned by or otherwise linked to its founders more than $10 million for consulting services.

***

President-elect Barack Obama is strongly considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a Cabinet post, Democratic officials told Politico.--2008

***

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.--Lord Acton

***

A Transition in Ukraine

Does anyone have an explanation for Biden's last-minute decision to send long-range missiles to Ukraine, lifting a long-standing ban put into place for fear it could provoke the Kremlin to respond?

And how does such a decision compromise Trump's position as he takes office?

The deployment of thousands of North Koreans this month to drive back a Ukrainian invasion force in Russia’s Kursk region is said to have played a role in Mr. Biden’s apparent about-face, according to background sources cited by The Associated Press. 

The New York Times was the first to report the authorization of the long-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which has a range of up to 190 miles

Critics say Mr. Biden has slow-walked aid to Kyiv ever since the Russians invaded in February 2022. Mr. Biden has said he did not want to draw NATO and U.S. troops into a direct war with a nuclear-armed Russia. Top officials of the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly made veiled threats to resort to nuclear arms as the U.S. and its allies gradually stepped up military aid to the Ukrainian government.

“Ukrainian troops cannot use these weapons on their own,” Mr. Putin told a state television interviewer. “Only specialists from NATO countries can do it because they need space intelligence, which Ukraine naturally does not have.”

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis for the intervention-skeptical Defense Priorities think tank, called the reported U.S. shift “strategically unwise and operationally unnecessary” and predicted that Russia’s military would adjust to the threat by moving back vulnerable troops and weapons stocks.

“The move will not meaningfully improve Ukraine’s military position, but it will intensify U.S. and NATO entanglement in the conflict and worsen the risk of Russian escalation — including possible retaliation on U.S. or European targets …,” she said. “To really impose costs on Russia, Ukraine would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it doesn’t have and won’t receive because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

"This is another step up the escalation ladder, and no one knows where this is going," Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., Trump’s incoming national security adviser, said on Fox News.

"​​No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period. This is as if he is launching a whole new war," Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, wrote on X.

"Everything has changed now – all previous calculations are null and void. And all for politics."

"The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $Trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!" Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s son, wrote on X.

It is certainly a reversal of the administration's opinion over the last years--and at a very curious time.

A Reverse Coverup

Anti-NATO demonstrators set off smoke bombs and marched through the streets of Montreal with Palestinian flags.
According to the Montreal Gazette, the rioters set cars on fire and clashed with police.
Protesters also threw small explosive devices and metal items at officers. At one point, the group burned an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Their phone records would be interesting.

***

In 1984, the first year for which data is available, 35 percent of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day,” according to NAEP. By 2023, that figure was down to 14 percent, and 31 percent of respondents said they never read for fun at all.

***

China is the world's largest producer of renewable energy, now constructing almost two-thirds of all large-scale wind and solar power, according to nonprofit Global Energy Monitor although the country still gets more than half its power from coal.

***

Six states — California, Washington, New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — are poised to effectively eliminate the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered RVs starting January 1, 2025.

***

A Reverse Coverup

Recent events have raised questions about whether agencies and unelected bureaucrats have altered the reporting of events "for our own good."

Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.
According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots. (Politico)

No doubt this will become our CIA cover-up story. But.....

This might remind one of Oswald in Mexico City.
Now a real conspiracy. Jack Childs was a spy/raconteur who knew Castro. He says Castro told him that when Oswald realized the Cubans would not grant him a visa when he was in Mexico City he screamed with defiant bravado, "I'm going to kill Kennedy!" This was confirmed by the spy Rodriques Lahera in a debriefing with Harold Swenson. In November 1963, the Cuban intelligence officer in charge of monitoring possible CIA/exile activity against Cuba, Florintino Aspillaga, was told by Castro to abandon his usual sweeps and focus all his listening devices on the Dallas area.
So.....? 

The specifics of the assassination are beyond debate. Oswald, a defector to Russia, a communist disillusioned with the Russian system but enamored with the Cuban one, murdered President Kennedy. The only question is whether someone or some group influenced Oswald's decision. Castro may not have been involved. But it sounds as if he was not surprised.

Questions

Questions

Can the Russia-Ukrain conflict be evaluated by simple cost-benefit analysis? Or is it more involved?

*

If we have to bail out Europe's energy shortages, how will that impact American consumer energy costs?

*

There are many models that suppress merit in the decision-making process. Primogenitor. Bribery. Bigotry.

*

Who took over the Department of Defense when Austin disappeared? Or, put another way, who is Kathleen Hicks?

*

Who is more qualified for the position they have applied for, Kamala Harris or Hegseth? Was Kamala checked for offensive tattoos?

*

If a belief is good for everybody, why must it be compulsory?

*

500,000 civilians were killed in the Algerian war against the French. Is that the model for Hamas?

Kennedy #2

Swedish battery maker Northvolt filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., delivering a blow to Europe’s electrification ambitions.

***

A British lawyer has died after a suspected methanol poisoning that is thought to have killed four others in Laos, south-east Asia.

Simone White, 28, from Orpington, south-east London, was among a number of people taken to hospital following the incident in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng is a small, riverside town in central Laos, about two hours north of the capital Vientiane.
It is a hub for backpackers travelling across south-east Asia. It's home to the Banana Pancake Trail - a popular backpacking route spanning Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

***

The number of used and refurbished smartphone shipments grew nearly 10 percent from 2022 to 2023, while the number of new smartphone shipments declined by over 3 percent, according to the market intelligence firm IDC. That adds up to the secondary market for phones being worth about $65 billion in 2023, and it’s expected to grow to nearly $110 billion by 2027.

***

COP29 report: the rich nations — the U.S., Australia and those from Europe — agreed to transfer $300 billion per year by 2035 to poor countries to help them fight climate change and transition to cleaner energy. Just imagine.

***

Kennedy #2

An industry has arisen to continue the mythology.

Oswald was not capable of such violence; he could not have made the shots in the time allotted; the rifle was inferior and the scope was misaligned; he had an alibi; there is no record of his interrogation by the Dallas police; he was an imposter from Russia; the "Oswald" in Mexico City was an imposter; his pictures holding the rifle with the pistol and the two Communist newspapers are fakes; he travelled with Cuban revolutionaries; the rifle found on the depository sixth floor was a Mauser, not Oswald's Italian infantry rifle Model 1891/1938; the third shot--the head shot--came from the front; a second shooter was seen on the "grassy knoll;" the Dallas doctors disagreed with the Bethesda pathologists; three tramps in a box car in Dallas were likely CIA and were probably involve--one even looked like Woody Harrelson's father; Tippit's murderer was unidentified; the bullets that killed Tippit did not match Oswald's pistol; many involved have died suspiciously; the Mafia did it because of their annimosity to Bobby Kennedy; the CIA did it because of their fear of a Kennedy retaliation over the Bay of Pigs invasion; the Garrison argument implicating Clay Shaw (on the evidence of a psychotic who failed a lie detector test); Castro did it in self-defense; the JFK movie by Stone (see Garrison); the Navy pathologist burnt his notes; the Dallas FBI burnt a note Oswald left for them before the murder; Marina Oswald burnt photographs of Lee holding the rifle, Ruby killed Tippit, Tippit was meeting Oswald and was involved, .....on and on. The democracy is hard at work here. Many of these notions come from average and concerned people, volunteers working far afield. Some are lawyers. Few are experts in the area they are focused on in the murder. One writer on the Zapruder film and what it reveals about the number of bullets and their timing is a Kierkegaard lecturer from Haverford. Some of these objections are just nuts, some are true but, of those that are true, none would change anything.

What is certain is this:
1. Oswald bought the murder weapon from a mail-order house using an alias he always used and had the false ID in his wallet at his arrest. Oswald posed with the rifle holding communist newspapers; his wife, Marina, took the picture. Marina saw the rifle many times and knew where it was kept.
2. Before going to shoot Gen. Walker, a right-wing John Birch Society member, Oswald wrote a detailed letter to Marina explaining what he was going to do and what she should do if he were killed or did not come back.
3. He shot at Walker and the window slat diverted the bullet. He then fled the state for New Orleans.
4. The day of the murder he left his wedding ring in a glass by his wife's bed, then carried the gun to the depository wrapped in paper (later found at the shooting site) in a car driven by a fellow worker.
5. He was seen and described by a witness as he pushed the gun out of the window and the muzzle fire of 3 shots was seen.
6. Men at the window one floor down and directly below the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the depository, heard the gunfire above, heard the bolt action, and heard the casings hit the floor.
7. Oswald was seen in the depository after the shooting; he left the building and took a bus, then a cab, to his rooming house where he got his pistol.
8. Officer Tippit was a well-regarded, simple guy and a solid citizen. At least ten people saw him murdered by Oswald and all identified him. Three bullets hit him in the chest. Oswald stepped away, then returned several steps to put a bullet in Officer Tippitt's temple as he lay on the ground. (!)
9. Ruby killed Oswald but his motives are obscure. It may not even have been planned. All acquaintances said he was distraught over Kennedy's death and the possibility that Jackie, whom he adored, would have to return to Dallas to go through a trial with Oswald. (The only press interview he ever gave was to Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen!)

Any theory about the killing has to include and accept these facts.

November 22, 1963

 

Smollett's overturned conviction is probably legally correct but his stubbornness and arrogance are telling indicators of the nation's shamelessness.

***

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, showing meaningless and embarrassing symbolism is not limited to the U.S.

***

The media outrage over Biden's availability is strangely timed. There has really been no change over the last four years.

***

November 22, 1963

The past and present merge:

The Thanksgiving holiday, one of the best holidays and certainly the best secular one, has been spoiled for everyone who was awake and thinking in the mid-60s by the assassination of Jack Kennedy. That promising shift from the generation of Eisenhower to its sons, to youth and its potential, to the charismatic and the virile, was just stopped cold by Oswald in Dallas. We defaulted back to the older, ponderous Lyndon Johnson, a true guardian of the Old Guard. That loss--of youth, of hope, of promise, of beauty--has never been overcome and we are reminded of it every Thanksgiving. One only wonders how much of the unrest in the '60s and '70s was a result.

An aspect of the assassination that has dogged its shadow has been the shameless exploitation of the atrocity by writers, politicians, and artists. This exploitation, which has become almost a cult, believes--or says it believes--that the assassination was a conspiracy of a number of men, groups, or organizations. Every aspect of the event has been picked over, every inconsistency of life magnified, every possibility made a probability. The result is that the event, right before many of our eyes, has been completely recreated and, like an alternative universe, continues without interference with its own laws, experts, and history. It is very like those academic musings run wild. "If, instead, you assume that history and archeology were 300 years wrong--or falsified--and Moses was actually alive in the court of Akhenaton...." "If, instead, you assume there is an unexplained and unexplainable driving force in history..." "If, instead, you assume that everyone is possessed at birth by sexual urges towards their immediate family...." It is another victory of the Art of the Plausible.

This is nowhere more revolting than is seen in the movie "JFK" where a seemingly respectable director rewrites the assassination story according to a man whose grasp on the event is dangerously close to psychosis. Oliver Stone writes a story of the assassination through the eyes and the belief set of James Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, who had arrested, charged, indicted, and tried a local community figure, Clay Shaw, for involvement in the Kennedy murder. Shaw's arrest was virtually random. There was no evidence against him other than the word of a psychiatric patient who failed a lie detector test and refused to testify. How an American citizen could come under such unreasonable, whimsical charges has never been explained. But Garrison persisted and then Stone followed up after the laughable trial (where the jury took longer to find their seats than to find "not guilty") with a movie inexplicably presenting the Garrison thesis as within the same time zone as reason. Of course, all the facts of the assassination were changed to implicate the innocent, the shooting presented was almost a complete fiction and this all was delivered by Kevin Costner, a credible actor, with certainty and outrage. Anyone who knew anything about the assassination walked from the theater with their collective heads spinning. But many with less of a good grasp left alarmed and resentful. This constant barrage of misinformation has done a lot to undermine this country's credibility and value in the minds of its people who, after all, own and run it.

There are two bad lessons here. The first is there are people and industries in the world who, even in those cultures with the highest of ideals, will do anything, say anything, publish anything to make a buck. If possible they will take the Plausible-made-Art and create an industry of it with historians, academics, and franchises. The second is that they often hide their entrepreneurship in the gowns of Art. How many of our greatest artists have questioned the reliability of memory, the interaction of history and art--even to the point of their blending? So Stone calls Julian Barnes and Cormac McCarthy as witnesses for his defense.

Stone is more Goebbels than John Huston here. He is everything that is wrong with businessmen gone rogue. His product is harmful to the society, toxic to the young, and delivered without an ounce of social conscience. The real story about Garrison is how is it possible that Clay Shaw could be treated like a Kafka character in the United States. Another would be a clarifying and cleansing explanation of all the facts and evidence that has been gathered over the years about the murder. This might set the country at ease. But there's probably not much money, or return on arrogance, in this. Instead, why not take advantage of the distressed and confused citizens, contribute to their malaise, and cash in.

In 1976 the U.S. House of Representatives created a commission, The House Select Commission on Assassinations, to investigate all the evidence of the murder again. This time they applied all the newer technologies available as well. Aside from the single and erroneous "fourth bullet thesis" not a single new conclusion was reached. Instead, this august deliberative body concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy--but they believed one existed anyway.

Shlaes on the Depression

According to McKinsey & Company, global spending on “DEI-related efforts” totaled $7.5 billion in 2020. If trends continue, that figure will exceed $15 billion by 2026.DEI principles were attached to over $1 billion in federal contracts last year.

***

Foreign direct investment fell by 4 percent across the continent in 2023, with Germany suffering a steep 12 percent decline.

***

Cormac McCarthy began a relationship with a 16-year-old girl when he was 42, according to an account given by the woman who says she became his “secret muse.” There is a fascinating story about the two of them in Vanity Fair. From it:

"Santa Fe killed the Cormac I knew. He gained fame, wealth, and fancy superficial friends. He turned his back on his old friends like Jimmy Long (J-Bone) and Billy Kidwell. They were left to die, forgotten and alone. He lost much of his compassion and kindness. As the Institute crowd claimed more of his time, he struggled to write. Couldn’t write. How could he? He’d stifled or killed that which inspired him. The advance for The Passenger was spent. He was obligated. These last many years he has taken up drinking again. Living in majestic splendor but enjoying none of it. Surrounded by junk and the clutter of a lifetime. Haunted."

***

Shlaes on the Depression

Amity Shlaes explains “the economic consequences of populism” in AIER. A slice:

'Historian Robert Higgs has developed a useful thesis to explain this lost decade [of the 1930s]: “regime uncertainty,” the notion that an erratic, aggressive government can terrify businesses into slowdown. The same theme was taken up by the chief economist of Chase Bank, Benjamin Anderson in a 1945 book, Economics and the Public Welfare. Though individual policies promulgated during the Depression may have differed, Anderson noted, there was one commonality: authorities’ arrogance. “Preceding chapters,” concluded Anderson at the end of his section on the Great Depression, “have explained the Great Depression of 1930–1939 as due to the efforts of governments, and very especially of the Government of the United States, to play God.” When playing God failed, Anderson noted, our government had determined that “far from retiring from the role of God,” it “must play God yet more vigorously.”'

Bioweapons Research and the People of the Wheel

A Chinese vessel has been implicated in what has been described as the sabotage of undersea telecom cables in the Baltic Sea,
The Chinese!

***

Goetz. Hegseth. Gabbard. These are tough nominations. Without Goetz, the other two might be interesting and challenging. With Goetz, they are defiant and hostile.

***

Volkswagen asked its workers to take a 10% pay cut, arguing it was the only way that Europe's biggest carmaker could save jobs and remain competitive as profits plunged to a three-year low and union bosses threatened strikes.
It was the first official confirmation of cost-cutting measures VW wants to implement to turn around its fortunes as high costs and weak demand in China dragged down sales and left its factories bloated from overcapacity.

*** 

“Europe’s auto-industry travails are painful evidence that net-zero climate policy is the worst act of economic masochism in the West since the 1930s.”--WSJ

***

Most central banks are cutting interest rates. Not Russia’s. Last month policymakers raised rates to 21%, a two-decade high; markets expect them to reach 23% by the year’s end.

***

 
Bioweapons Research and the People of the Wheel

The recent revelation that the Russians may be reopening their bioweapons program raises countless questions; one is 'accidents.' Bioweapons have evil intent but are purposeful, under human control.  So accidents will occur.

Ebola is a virus with several subsets that, in humans, is savagely fatal, or up until recently has been. In some respects, it has been managed well and the oft-maligned WHO can point to it with some pride; they have, in between great dinners, managed the outbreaks--if with some admittedly homicidal preventive techniques by the "host" countries.

However, the history of Ebola research raises real concerns.

Ever since the Russian Biopreparate bio-weapons program, where researchers developed weaponized microorganisms and new, lab-created illnesses, to kill people at random, the Americans have had labs devoted to countering these anti-human experiments. On several occasions, Ebola has been encountered outside of such labs by accident. The teaching case is Ebola Reston.

Reston's appearance in 1989 was the first-ever Ebola virus that emerged outside of Africa and was also the first known natural infection of the Ebola virus in nonhuman primates. When it was first discovered among laboratory monkeys in the United States, the source was immediately traced back to the Philippines to a monkey breeding/export facility. The second outbreak was in 1992–93. The third episode in 1996 was the last known outbreak before Reston ebolavirus reemerged in pigs in 2008.

Nonhuman primates (NHPs)are used for preclinical research, disease modeling, drug development, experimental infections, and biological production and testing. M fascicularis is the only indigenous simian species in the Philippines; collection sites and quantities are government-regulated. Regulated.

The original outbreak was first detected among imported NHPs in a quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, USA. This outbreak was initially suspected to be simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF), another viral disease caused by an arterivirus, and indeed SHF virus was isolated from the animals. However, Ebola virus was also noted by electron microscopy and indirect fluorescent antibody assays in the cultures.

Remember, these are regulated breeding facilities and labs. And, of course, such an infection had never been seen before.

At the time, the virus was identified and its behavior was unknown. Unknown. There was an exposure to human handlers who knew they were exposed--and they went home. To their families.

It turned out that a small proportion of the personnel in the lab had developed antibodies to the virus but it appeared that this particular subset of the virus did not infect humans. (Despite the common natures of the subtypes, the Reston virus does not convey immunity to either Marburg or Zaire.)

Now, this news item from Fort Dietrich, Md.: In June, 2019, an inspection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found leaks and mechanical problems with the lab’s new chemical system to decontaminate wastewater. The institute was also working with Ebola and the agents known to cause the plague and Venezuelan equine encephalitis when high-level research was voluntarily halted.

In 2009, research at the lab was suspended after the discovery that more than 9,200 vials, about one-eighth of its stock, weren’t listed in the institute’s database.

Now, how good is the containment policy in Wuhan?

What are these people doing? And why do we have faith in any of them?

In the original movie adaptation of the novel I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth (1964), bacteriologic warfare destroys humanity except for a few humans and a group of crazed remnants bent on killing anyone loosely connected to science whom they call The People of the Wheel.

The Righteous

“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and the author of “Strongmen,” a 2020 book about authoritarian leaders, wrote on Friday. “And so we would have a national security official who would potentially compromise our national security.”
So foreign nations do get a vote.

***


Ukraine has fired US-made ATACMS missiles into Russia’s Bryansk region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, in a major escalation on the 1,000th day of war.
The attack comes just two days after the Biden administration gave Kyiv the green light to use the longer-range American weapons against targets inside Russia.

***

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said damage to two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea looks like an act of sabotage and a "hybrid action", without knowing who is to blame.

***

The Righteous

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that faulty mail-in ballots can’t be counted during this year's Senate vote. This after the Democratic majority on the Bucks County election commission had decided to ignore a binding state Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to engineer the election of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

The Bucks County Boards of Elections counted them anyway.

"People violate laws any time they want," Democratic Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said last week, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes."

But the court had already paid attention. It had already ruled against her. So they ruled against her again.

Laws are challenged in the courts all the time, but not by breaking them and seeing what happens. And while demonstrators will sometimes break a law--like assembly or trespassing restraints--it is to call attention to another, unrelated legal issue. 

But violating the law because you think your vision of the legal situation is better has one foot in tyranny, one in chaos. This is especially true in a nation whose very foundation rests on the confines built around the appropriate actions of its government.

This is not an outlier. Recall Biden and his response to the Supreme Court's ruling against his college loan forgiveness/transfer. “That didn’t stop me,” President Biden proudly declared after the Supreme Court blocked his $430 billion student loan write-off in 2023. It sure didn’t. After striking out in court with three debt forgiveness schemes, the Administration unveiled another.

This arrogant assumption of personal superiority over foundational law is the hallmark of the autocrat.

Weekend Catch-Up

Weekend Catch-Up

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at sunset with a payload that has been shrouded in secrecy to the point of not disclosing any specifics of the mission, and not using its original name.
All regulatory filings and U.S. government agencies, like the Space Force and the Federal Aviation Administration, call the payload ‘Optus-X,’ while SpaceX calls the mission ‘TD7.’ SpaceX’s commentator noted that it was a communications satellite during the company’s livestream.

***

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago over the weekend.

***

America's biggest budget airline, Spirit Airlines, has filed for bankruptcy.

***

US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia using US-made long-range missiles, in a big policy shift
What could have inspired this aggressive change?

***

Good hours. Good pay. Rare emergency call.
Medical residency applications for dermatology slots are up 50% over the past five years,
A younger generation of physicians wants better work-life balance than their predecessors
Dermatologists earn a median $541,000 a year,
Seventy-one percent of applicants who selected dermatology as their first choice when applying for their residency match this year were women,
A 2020 study found dermatology was the second-least-racially-diverse specialty in medicine, behind orthopedic surgery.

***

Organic and baby carrots sold at grocery stores across the US have been recalled after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person.

***

Portugal is implementing tax breaks and housing incentives to retain young talent and combat the brain drain to wealthier European countries.

***

Zelena Zeto writes that 2000, not 2016 and 2024, were the American outliers.

***

Several Trump appointees are being attacked for their lack of administration experience. Worse than Kamala?

***

Sweden, Finland Urge Residents To Be Ready For War--Barron's headline

***

There's a big campaign called "Stand up to Hate." Will they have bumper stickers and pins like "Whip Inflation Now?"

A View of the Fed

The Democrats’ focus on identity politics was a problem before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s death, but it has supercharged since then. People see themselves primarily as individuals, not as members of a demographic group. They don’t like being treated as members of a group rather than as individuals.--Strain

***

Recently, Democrats shook their fists and bellowed to the Heavens about the need to expand the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster, override state abortion laws via federal legislation, and choose presidents by popular vote. All to save Our Democracy. So far as I can tell, all such talk has ceased—as if there were a great disturbance on the Left, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. It’s never wise to seek powers that you would fear in the hands of your adversaries.-- Graboyes

***

A Southwest Airlines plane carrying passengers has been struck by a bullet amid gunfire near a Texas airport.

***


A View of the Fed

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Very shortly thereafter, the United States for the first time become involved in a European war, initially as a lender to the Allies, subsequently as a co-belligerent. Coincidence? Not entirely.

We are treated to such quaint myths about the purpose of a central bank. “It controls the money supply to steer the economy away from high inflation or high unemployment.” “It is the lender of last resort.”

The real purpose of a central bank is to enable the government to borrow money at a low interest rate.

…..

In its twentieth-century incarnation, an effective central bank enables the welfare-warfare state. Nowhere is it more effective than in the United States.--Kling

So, as in so many cases, the law and the system benefit the agents and not the citizens? Like the education system benefits the employees, not the students? If true, when does such a repurposing become damaging?

For example, 85% of Black fourth graders cannot read. How does such a loss of foundation influence future learning? How does that growing failure influence future decisions?   

And, importantly, can a society afford to have structural deficits that disqualify over 13% of its population from contributing to its advancement?

Sat Stats/Transfer Payments

CNN anchor Chris Wallace announced on Monday that he would leave the network at the end of his contract, citing the growing influence of podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God.

***

We find that performance on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and essay components of the Nevada Bar have little relationship with the assessed lawyering effectiveness of new lawyers, calling into question the usefulness of these tests.--paper
"Effectiveness"

***

Noonon on Hegseth:
Pete Hegseth as defense secretary? This is unserious and deeply alarming. He is a decorated military veteran with Ivy League degrees, but he has no serious governmental or managerial experience, no history of international accomplishment. The Pentagon is a mammoth bureaucracy overseeing almost three million employees, including those in the military services. The defense secretary is a world leader: If North Korea launched a nuclear missile, he would be in the room with the president, advising and counseling. In the past 10 years Mr. Hegseth has made his living as a breakfast TV host and culture warrior. This isn’t the right fit. At this point in his life Mr. Hegseth, 44, lacks the stature and depth required of the role.

***

Transfer Payments

Payments from government entitlement programs — transfer payments — are the fastest-growing major component of citizens’ personal income.

Such transfers are the third-largest source of personal income: In 2022, the average citizen received almost as much from government transfers ($11,500) as from investments ($12,900), and more than one-quarter as much money as was obtained from work. 

This average citizen received six times more (adjusted for inflation) in government transfer payments than in 1970, during which span income from other sources increased less than half as much. Transfers’ share of total (inflation-adjusted) personal income has more than doubled since 1970, from 8.2 percent to 17.6 percent in 2022.

How are we different from the failing European redistributionist? 

And while those numbers are astonishing, they are not as remarkable as their direction.

Tariffs

Tocqueville read Say’s "Cours complet d’économie politique pratique" twice—the second time while enroute to America. Besides exposing Tocqueville to key ideas expressed in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Say stressed a point that Tocqueville never forgot: that while the economy can be studied on its own terms, one should never forget that it is embedded in society.--Gregg

That may be why the Europeans have such difficulty understanding the Americans.

***

A Gallup poll this summer said 81% of Americans want a path to citizenship for those “brought to the U.S. illegally as children.” That included 64% of Republicans.

***

Tariffs

A new National Bureau of Economic Research paper shows that tariffs probably did more harm than good. Using meticulously collected industry-level and state-level data, the paper traces the impact of specific tariff rates more clearly than before. The results are not pretty.

One core finding is that industries with higher tariffs did not have higher productivity — in fact, they had lower productivity. Tariffs did raise the number of US firms in a given sector, but they did so in part by protecting smaller, less productive firms. That was not the path by which the US became an industrial giant, nor is it wise to use trade policy to keep lower-productivity firms in business. Not only does it slow economic growth, it also keeps workers in jobs without much of a future.

These results contradict the traditional protectionist story — that tariffs allow the best firms to grow larger and capture the large domestic market. In reality, the tariffs kept firms smaller and probably lowered US manufacturing productivity.

The paper also finds that the tariffs of that era raised the prices for products released domestically. That lowers living standards, and should give a second Trump administration reason to pause, as he just won an election in which inflation was a major concern. The finding about inflation also counters another major protectionist argument: that tariffs eventually lower domestic prices because they allow US firms to expand and enjoy economies of scale. That is the opposite of what happened.

The paper also details how lobbying, logrolling, and political horse-trading were essential features of the shift toward higher US tariffs. A lot of the tariffs of the time depended on which party controlled Congress, rather than economic rationality. Trump is fond of citing President William McKinley’s tariffs, but they are evidence of the primacy of political influence and rent-seeking, not of a well-thought-out strategic trade policy.

The authors of the new research are Alexander Klein and Christopher M. Meissner with comments from Cowen in Bloomberg

Trump probably plans tariffs as a threat for other aims. And security questions are raised by foreign production of security products. But most economists argue against the value of tariffs in most instances and Trump, knowing these arguments, seems eager to bull ahead anyway.

Quality vs Censorship

The Democrats spent 300 million dollars against Scott in Florida.

***

The Gaetz nomination was a revealing error.

***

I assess the climate impact of granting federal approval to all proposed U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal projects, which would double U.S. export capacity by 2030. Results indicate a net decrease in global emissions through 2070, primarily due to higher local gas prices in the U.S., leading to lower domestic gas generation and accelerated renewable adoption.--That is from the job market paper of Constanza Abuin

Not what most LNG proponents would expect. Or believe. Certainly, the supply side in the improved distribution atmosphere would have a significant, if uncertain, impact. It does say a lot about world demand, though.

***


Quality vs Censorship

The premiere of a 19th-century play directed by John Malkovich was performed in an almost empty Sofia National Theatre after angry protesters irritated with how Bulgarians are portrayed prevented visitors from entering the building.

Reuters reports that one hour before the opening of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and The Man on Thursday evening, protesters started gathering in front of the theatre, Nova TV reported on its website.

They held a big banner reading: "Without anti-Bulgarian plays at the National Theatre." Protesters threw garbage bags, spat and physically attacked Oscar-nominated animator Theodore Ushev as he tried to enter the theatre, Nova TV reported.

To avoid further clashes, the theatre management allowed only a few journalists inside to watch the performance.

The play is a comedy featuring a love story during a conflict between Bulgaria and Serbia.

Critics in Bulgaria say Shaw presents the Bulgarian soldiers as cowardly and unworthy, and Bulgarians as people who bathe once in their lives and don't read, Nova TV reported.

Criticism of art is become intolerance of it. And that can become suffocating.

News

 

News

From the news last night:

The Houthis attacked several U.S. ships last night.

Melania has declined the 'transition tea' with Jill Biden because Jill insulted her family during the campaign. She's becoming one of my favorite Americans.

Chris recommends the podcast 'Sold a Story' on Spotify, on American education. It is very good, upsetting and surprising. Two amazing stats: 35% of 4th graders can not read. 85% of Black students in 4th grade can not read. And the reasons are infuriating.

Target has a Merry Christmas campaign for the first time in years.

Trump’s election drove the largest single-day increase in the U.S. dollar in more than two years, and the third largest in the last decade.

Kamala's campaign spent $1 billion. Billion. And they paid the entertainers who appeared for her. $1 million to Oprah.
 
Some remarkable Trump announcements last night.

---Huckabee to Israel; hopefully he will be busy and will do fewer ads. 

---Rubio to State; a turnaround from 'little Mario.'

---Homan, a real bull, is 'Border Czar; his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, will be Kristi Noem, the diminutive puppy assassin. It's hard to imagine that relationship. And DHS is a big job

---Pete Hegseth as Defense? He is a decorated veteran from several tours in the Middle East with a Princeton and Harvard background who has been a vocal critic of how the military has been organized and marketed. So this might be an innovative and revolutionary appointment. But he has run only a charity. And this is a really big job. On the other hand, has Lloyd Austin done a good job?

---Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to overhaul the federal government, leading what is called the Department of Government Efficiency. These are actually good, important ideas and I guess there's no reason they can't be entertaining.

Several of his foreign policy appointees are pro-Ukraine. Surprising.

The crucial positions of Education and Attorney General are pending. Both departments have been nightmares and need serious guidance.

Business and government are logical mergers. But are they? Herbert Hoover's election was powered by his engineering background, the success he had earlier in repatriating Americans caught in the first war, and his managing the Americans' effort to feed Europe after the war. His election was felt to be a victory for efficiency and objectivity in government with more than a dash of philanthropy. The depression and his position in it were complex but he was blamed and that positive narrative was destroyed.
In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. The Executive benefitted from both commissions’ recommendations.

So the Department of Government Efficiency run by successful entrepreneurs is not new but success is not a certainty.

Taxes

Kamala for the Supreme Court?

***

The Kyiv residence of Estonian Ambassador to Ukraine Annely Kolk was hit by a Russian drone on Thursday, according to Estonia's foreign minister.

***

A reasonable question from Pino: "But if I did believe that American voters were racist and sexist, and I wanted to win the presidential election, I would not have nominated a non-white woman in that election."

***

Taxes

Kamala Harris’ proposed tax plan would increase taxes on corporations and the “ultra-rich” to achieve “equitable outcomes.” She plans to increase the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent, the top income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, the investment income tax from 3.8 percent to 5 percent, and the corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 28 percent. She also plans to add an unrealized capital gains tax, moving it from 0 to 25 percent.

We are in a world where countries compete for investment. And investment goes where it is welcomed. And the 'unrealized capital gains' idea is as crazy as it is unconstitutional.

One's "fair share" is subjective. But it almost always comes with a big dose of envy.

The most recent individual federal income tax information from the IRS indicates, in 2024, American taxpayers paid $2.43 trillion to the federal government, a 43 percent increase in revenues over 2020.

That data also show the top one percent of taxpayers earned 26.3 percent of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) but paid 45.8 percent of all personal federal income taxes. The top 0.1 percent of earners paid 24.7 percent and the top 5 percent paid 65.6 percent.

In contrast, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers earned 10.4 percent of income but paid only 2.3 percent of the total tax burden. Over the past forty years, the rate paid by the bottom 50 percent has declined from just over 7 percent to just over 2 percent, while the percentage paid by the top 1 percent increased from just over 17 percent to nearly 46 percent of all individual taxes.

In 2021, the top one percent of taxpayers reported an average tax rate of 25.9 percent, while the bottom 90 percent averaged tax rates between 3.3 percent and 10.4 percent.

Fairness.

The Light Brigade

Happy Veterans Day

Is a foreign power attacking the president an act of war?

***

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."--Epicurus

***

This is from the New Republic, the new explanation of Trump's win:
"This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.

And that is why Donald Trump won . . ."

The Left thinks there is an underground news cabal that is bigger--and more influential--than their own.

The Forbin Project. "There is another system!"

***

The Light Brigade

Neither the battlefields nor the plight of those who fight on them have changed.

The Light Brigade story that inspired the famous poem is surprisingly complex, with several contributing writers involved. Tennyson wrote his original [OEM after the event; he wrote the "Heavy Brigade" poem as a sequel in a charity effort. Rudyard Kipling later angrily wrote "The Last of the Light Brigade."
The Light Brigade attack during the Crimean War in 1854 was led by Lord Cardigan. French Marsha Pierre Bosquet said: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." ("It is magnificent, but it is not war.") "C'est de la folie" — "It is madness."
Of the 666 men known to have ridden in the charge there were 271 casualties: 110 killed (less than 17%), 129 wounded, plus another 32 wounded and taken prisoner. Additionally, 375 horses were killed.
The Heavy Brigade was led by Captain Scarlett

This battle, one of the most famous battles in military history, was fought at Balaclava, in the Crimea. Upon reading reports of the disaster in the Times five weeks later, Tennyson wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
The line "someone had blundered" came from a newspaper account:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. . . .

The poem was so popular among those serving in the Crimea that a thousand copies were handed out at the front, and at Tennyson's funeral in Westminster Abbey survivors of the Balaclava battle lined the aisles.

Many of the surviving Balaclava soldiers, long returned to England and long forgotten, were so destitute that a charity drive was undertaken on their behalf. When little money was raised, the charity organizers suggested that the veterans visit Tennyson, who might rally support. When they did so, he wrote his "Heavy Brigade" poem and appealed for more donations. Money came in, and then the politicians gave a lot of it to other causes -- prevention of cruelty to animals, for one. This so angered Rudyard Kipling that he penned "The Last of the Light Brigade" documenting the scandal:

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four !

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

They sent a cheque to the felon that sprang from an Irish bog;
They healed the spavined cab-horse; they housed the homeless dog;
And they sent (you may call me a liar), when felon and beast were paid,
A cheque, for enough to live on, to the last of the Light Brigade.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made - "
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!





(From The Kipling Society and Steve King)

City Football

People who seek to find blame, as distinct from causation, often also seek a localized source of evil to blame. Professor Paul Krugman, for example, refers to slavery as “America’s original sin.” But it would be hard to find an evil less localized than slavery. Though universally condemned today, slavery was an institution accepted as a fact of life for thousands of years, even moral and religious leaders around the world. Christian monasteries in Europe and Buddhist monasteries in Asia had slaves.--Sowell

***

More than 6.1 million malaria cases, and 1,038 deaths, have been recorded in Ethiopa this year through the end of September, compared with 4.5 million cases, and 469 deaths, for all of 2023. Worse, cases are likely to soar far higher in the next couple of months because peak malaria season, driven by seasonal rains, begins in September and runs through the end of the year.

***

Government supplies money in proportion to failure, the private sector supplies money in proportion to success.--Vernon Smith

***

City Football

Westinghouse defeated Perry 68–0 to advance to the city championship game. It was an extraordinary win.

The previous week, in their game with University Prep, a fight broke out on the field and the Westinghouse bench emptied. Westinghouse won the game but all the players who left the sidelines for the scuffle were suspended for the next game, the city playoff game against Perry. At the time, their offense was on the field so the entire team, except the eleven offensive players, were suspended.

So in the game against Perry, the eleven offensive starters were the only players available. They played both ways. Only one player had played a single play on defense all year. Throughout the game, they rotated one player out to rest him so most of the game they played with ten players.

And they won 68-0.

They eventually won the city championship and the state championship.

Notes/Stats

 

Notes/Stats

Even before being appointed FTC Chair, Khan was one of the leaders of a strange—and often infuriating—school of thought about antitrust law. Known as neo-Brandeisians, new structuralists, or sometimes (by critics) as “hipster antitrust,” this school dismissed the idea that antitrust’s purpose should be to protect consumer welfare. Instead, neo-Brandeisians were concerned with an abstract promotion of competition—a fixation leading to the conviction that businesses getting too big, successful, or dominant was itself something to be feared and stopped.--Brown

***

Kamalakaze—fear of national suicide by left-wing politics.--Epstein

***

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I started to lose sleep over higher education in America. This was in the Spring of 2012, at my daughter’s graduation ceremony at Brandeis University. The main graduation speaker was in the midst of a not-memorable talk when she said “and I read this morning in the New York Times that America will be more than 50 percent non-white by 2050.”

To me, this would have been a straightforward observation, neither good news nor bad news. But the students greeted it as if they had just heard that their favorite sports team had won a championship or their favorite political party had won an election. They whooped and hollered and cheered for several minutes. It was by far the biggest applause line of her entire speech.

That outburst made me want to ask for a tuition refund. I realized that the students had been taught to be reflexively anti-white. At an institution where young people are supposed to learn critical thinking and careful perspective-taking, they instead had acquired a simple-minded way to view the world: minorities good, white people bad.--Kling

***

Coal consumption in 2030 is now estimated 6% higher than only a year ago. That may sound small, but it amounts to adding the equivalent of the consumption of Japan, the world’s fourth-largest coal burner. By 2030, the IEA now believes coal consumption will remain higher than it was back in 2010…

One notable statistic: Two-thirds of the total increase in energy demand in 2023 was met by fossil fuels, according to the IEA.

***

Even with a population of only about 7.5 million, U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country, and possibly more than all other countries put together, securing its role as the world’s first “corporation nation.”--from Sylla and Wright

Astounding

Notes

 

Notes

Clearing up some notes post-election:

Trump outperformed many of Republicans down-ballot.

Trump carried the 18-25 year old demographic.

FEC records show that Mothership Strategies, which has been scrutinized in the past for its aggressive fundraising tactics, has collected at least $48,712,448 over the last two years from advising an extensive array of Democratic PACs. That total does not include the money spent over the last few weeks given the FEC’s quarterly disclosure schedule. It is likely to be much higher. Many of the PACs tied to Mothership Strategies similarly used alarmist messages demanding donations to defeat Trump yet funneled vast sums of donor money back to consulting firms.

Migrants are abandoning a caravan headed for the United States because Donald Trump's election win has dashed their "dream of getting out".

There was an attack on Jews in Amsterdam after a soccer game. Very pogrom-like.

When the FBI released its numbers for 2023 in September 2024, it hid that it had revised its earlier crime data for 2021 and 2022, hiding the increase in 2022 and that there had been a net increase in crime over 2022 and 2023.

Professors at Harvard and Princeton have canceled classes following Trump's victory, and other units within the universities are offering "spaces" to process the election results.

12 officers of a New York environmental agency made an unannounced raid on a private home, captured the family's private pet--a squirrel with 500,000 followers on social media--and killed it.

New York City is ending its controversial scheme that gave migrant families prepaid debit cards worth a total of $18,500 each.