A Miracle, Thanksgiving-type

On this day:
1782
American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris – In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
1803
In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1947
1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine begins on this day, leading up to the creation of the state of Israel.
2004
Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, Utah finally loses, leaving him with US$ 2,520,700, television’s biggest game show winnings.

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Don’t be misled by statements that private property rights put rights of property over rights of people. Private property rights are rights of people over uses of goods they own.-- economists Armen Alchian’s and William R. Allen’s Universal Economics

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Tom Stoppard died.

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At the beginning of the Burns film on the American Revolution, the narrator intones that “long before 13 British colonies made themselves into the United States,” the Iroquois had “a union of their own that they called the Haudenosaunee — a democracy that had flourished for centuries.”

The film suggests a connection between a statement made by the Iroquois leader Canasatego, recommending a union on the one hand, and Franklin's suggestion of the pro-British, anti-French Albany Plan that would isolate the French in North America, on the other.

Canasatego made his statement at a 1744 conference over the Treaty of Lancaster, a negotiation between the Iroquois and several colonies. (Remember, most Native Americans had no written language, some had a limited hieroglyphic language.) For his part, Franklin cited the Iroquois as having a confederacy in a single sentence in a 1751 letter about the possibility of a colonial union.

As the scholar Robert Natelson has noted, the Iroquois don’t show up as a model in the 34-volume “Journals of the Continental Congress”; the three-volume collection “The Records of the Federal Convention” (the Constitutional Convention); or the more than 40-volume “Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.”

As for the Iroquois confederation being a democracy, there were no elections; leaders were selected by women elders, whose status was hereditary.

1619 anyone?

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A Miracle, Thanksgiving-type

In a 2003 Boston Globe article titled “Giving Thanks for the Invisible Hand,” syndicated columnist Jeff Jacoby offered a wonderful tribute to the miracle of the invisible hand that makes affordable turkeys available so efficiently every year at Thanksgiving through the power of “spontaneous order” and without the need for any central planning or “turkey czars.”
“The invisible hand” — the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many.”


The Thanksgiving Miracle

Isn’t there something wondrous — something almost inexplicable — in the way your Thanksgiving weekend is made possible by the skill and labor of vast numbers of total strangers?

To bring that turkey to the dining room table required the efforts of thousands of people — the poultry farmers who raised the birds, of course, but also the feed distributors who supplied their nourishment and the truckers who brought it to the farm, not to mention the architect who designed the hatchery, the workmen who built it, and the technicians who keep it running. The bird had to be slaughtered and defeathered and inspected and transported and unloaded and wrapped and priced and displayed. The people who accomplished those tasks were supported in turn by armies of other people accomplishing other tasks — from refining the gasoline that fueled the trucks to manufacturing the plastic in which the meat was packaged.

The activities of countless far-flung men and women over the course of many months had to be intricately choreographed and precisely timed, so that when you showed up to buy a fresh Thanksgiving turkey, there would be one — or more likely, a few dozen — waiting. The level of coordination that was required to pull it off is mind-boggling. But what is even more mind-boggling is this: No one coordinated it.
No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one forced people to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn’t have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn’t a miracle, what should we call it?
Adam Smith called it “the invisible hand” — the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many. Out of the seeming chaos of millions of uncoordinated private transactions emerges the spontaneous order of the market. Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance. Indeed, the more an economy is planned, the more it is plagued by shortages, dislocation, and failure.

It is commonplace to speak of seeing God’s signature in the intricacy of a spider’s web or the animation of a beehive. But they pale in comparison to the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market. If it is a blessing from Heaven when seeds are transformed into grain, how much more of a blessing is it when our private, voluntary exchanges are transformed – without our ever intending it – into prosperity, innovation, and growth?

Thanksgiving's Downside

On this day:

1781
The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.

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The Trump administration moved to abruptly cancel or violate existing, legally binding contracts and grants with universities—often involving visas, research funding, or property use—without due process, leading to lawsuits and claims of breach of contract. This disregard for legally binding obligations undermines the rule of law and the reliability of the U.S. government as a partner. The sanctity of contracts is a core principle of both American law and free-market economics.--Dlugash

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"Trump Uses National Guard Shooting to Cast Suspicion on Refugees" This is a headline from the NYT. Think about it a moment.


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The assumption that central authority can gather and use all relevant knowledge. Hayek called this “the fatal conceit.” So, what does that mean about AI's efforts to collect human information?

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Two grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton plan to launch a private university focused on science and tech, located on the company’s old HQ campus near downtown Bentonville, Arkansas.

…The future university plans to offer innovative, flexible pathways to jobs in automation, logistics, biotech, and computing — fields crucial to Northwest Arkansas’ future.

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Is decrying Somali fraud racist?

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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.

Nast and Thanksgiving

On this day:
1095
On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1520
After navigating through a strait at the southern end of South America, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
1729
Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.
1893
Women vote in a national election for the first time: the New Zealand general election.

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“Human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”--deVries

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As much as the political left loves to use words like “change” and “revolution” as if they had a monopoly or a copyright on them, the actual track record of the left pales in comparison with the social revolutions created by the free market.

No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.--Sowell

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Senators Josh Hawley (R‑MO) and Peter Welch (D‑VT) introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, with automatic inflation adjustments. Vice President JD Vance favors an $11 rate. In New York City, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-declared socialist, wants a $30 minimum wage for the city. According to Welch, “Every hardworking American deserves a living wage.”

A wage is not a moral declaration—it is a price. Raise the price, and demand falls. When wages are mandated above the productivity level of the worker, employers have limited options: lay off staff, cut hours, reduce hiring, or replace workers with machines. Hazlitt’s summary still holds: “For a low wage, you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.”--WSJ

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Arendt wrote in her 1951 book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” that “the ideal subject was not the convinced Nazi, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer existed. A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader who, like a talisman, assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality.”

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Trump is selling watches on TV. While this might be reality, reducing democracy to its elemental, commercial nature, it is ugly.

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From Reuters: "The document reviewed by Reuters said Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year, three months after Trump took office. Lakanwal, 29, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history, the official said."
This will be politicized and outtraged words fired. But the basic problem, the safety and success of the American people will, as always, be sidelined to the advantage of our self-absorbed leaders.

This DC Guard shooting crystallizes the essential question in American government: what is the nation obligated to do, what is it forbidden to do, and what is it able to do?

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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:

 

{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

On this day:
1095 

Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.

1942
World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.
1971
The Soviet space program’s Mars 2 orbiter releases a descent module. It malfunctions and crashes, but it is the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars.
1978
In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.
2001
A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

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Classical liberalism, as understood by Adam Smith and the American Founders, is an umbrella term. It describes a political philosophy characterized by an emphasis on liberty, limited government, and individual rights. Classical liberalism elevates the rights of people above the rights of the collective. In doing so, it liberates human potential and enables the representative democracy under which we live. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the expansion of classical liberalism paved the way for an outpouring of technological innovation and economic dynamism that changed the world, freeing millions from slavery – figurative and literal – and sparking a mind-blowing rise in living standards and life expectancy.--Hennessey

Therefore, not sacrificing the individual to the group in the long run is beneficial for the group.

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A new tax for electric and hybrid vehicles has been announced by the British chancellor in her autumn Budget, to compensate for lost gas tax revenues.

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The CROWN Act, which stands for "Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair," prohibits discrimination based on a person's hairstyle, type or texture. Pennsylvania is the 28th state to pass a version of the CROWN Act.

The Founders would be so proud.

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Like the Grand Inquisitor felt the Laws of God asked too much of a free man and needed to be more tightly codified by man, so the Left thinks the average American cannot reach the ideals and achievements the geniuses of the Constitution allowed, and consequently have to be more tightly led.

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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

A Reverse Coverup

On this day:

43 BC
The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (“Octavian”, later “Caesar Augustus”), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony is formed.
1939
Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates the incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later.
1944
World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth’s shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing 168 shoppers.
1944
World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.
1970
In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.
1983
Brink’s-MAT robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink’s-MAT vault at Heathrow Airport.

20112011 NATO attack in Pakistan: NATO forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani checkpost in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others.

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Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich.--von mises

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Is there any reason to think the people writing the reports have nothing to hide?

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Gerrymandering is an effort to frustrate the general political will to the advantage of a political minority. It is quite simply an effort to advance a political subset by manipulation and deceit. The principles that created the Constitution, as so many of those ideas in the country's evolution, are put aside for personal advantage.
This is not just a cabal at work. People vote for these cabals.

There is no excuse for supporting such anti-democratic, aristocratic positions in the New World.

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Many radical economic theories contain a very inhuman promise: the freedom to be unmotivated.

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The Pirates tendered Santana.

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So...the plan is to make NYC housing 'more affordable'. Will other small areas in the nation benefit from 'more affordability'? What products qualify?

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A Reverse Coverup

Recent events have raised questions as to 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 for the next decade. 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.

Kennedy #2

On this day:

1120
The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.
1667
A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people
1758
French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control. Fort Pitt is built nearby and it grows into modern Pittsburgh.
1839
A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.
1863
American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge – At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.
1864
American Civil War: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.
1876
Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife’s sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

1950
The Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950, otherwise known at the time as the “Storm of the Century”, strikes New England with hurricane force winds resulting in massive forest blow-downs and storm surge damage along the Northeast coast including New York City. This storm also brings blizzard conditions to the Appalachian Mountains and Ohio Valley, becoming one of the worst storms of all time. 353 people die in the event.
1970
In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt. 

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False opinions work more mischief than bad men.--Lord Acton

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Since joining Congress in 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene's net worth has increased from around $700,000 to as much as $25 million.
(Yahoo Finance)

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Aidan Toner-Rodgers, 27, was an MIT student who published a research paper on the impact of AI on the workplace. It was quoted everywhere and read in Congress.

It was made up. Completely fabricated.

He took advantage of a MIT culture where high levels of trust, integrity, and rigor are all assumed. That is, he took advantage of an optimistic, honorable environment where AI was already mistrusted.

Any resemblance to American social and political culture is probably coincidental.

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The Slenderman attacker is living in a group home. With other people.

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So, suppose you distort the market to make the unaffordable affordable. How is that different from making below-prime mortgages, prime, as was done twenty years ago, and triggered a disaster?

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Don't worry about anything. Turkeys are being pardoned.

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Kennedy #2


An industry has arisen to continue the mythology. It will likely find the current suspicious times a fertile field.

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 criminal 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 ordinary and concerned people, volunteers working far afield. Some are the ubiquitous 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. Mamet himself thinks the film was edited. 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.

Kennedy #1

I’ve never seen an orgy of hypocrisy quite as brazen as how the exact same media corporations and journalists who spent years demanding more Big Tech censorship turned *overnight* into free speech champions: because now it’s their friends being silenced rather than their enemies.--Greenwald

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Who has decided that these notions--affordability, housing--raised by a peripheral NYC socialist are going to be the basis for the next national election?

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Is it really true that Trump's efforts at peace should be dismissed because they are driven by his desire for a Nobel Prize?

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Kennedy #1

The Kennedy assassination was a significant moment for me and for many. Yet the event, so terrible and intense, so researched and analyzed, has developed almost as its own entity, its own beast, as it matures along paths of manipulation, overt deception, and least resistance.

First, the reaction. Mrs. Kennedy's quote here is significant: "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights . . . . It's — it had to be some silly little Communist."

This may not have set the tone for the management of the murder in history but it certainly was representative of it. The general reaction to the murder was completely divorced from what happened. Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy's "martyrdom" to "the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." Drew Pearson wrote that Kennedy was a victim of "hate drive."A Soviet spokesman assigned "moral responsibility" for Kennedy's death to "Barry Goldwater and other extremists on the right." The NYT encouraged us all to take blame for "the shame all America must bear for the spirit of madness and hate that struck down" the President. James Reston's article the day after the shooting--on the first page--was headlined ""Why America Weeps: Kennedy a Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation." Senator Mike Mansfield eulogized the President as a victim of "bigotry, prejudice, and hatred." In Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s one thousand-page history of the thousand-day Kennedy presidency, the assassin is not even mentioned. The Manhattan Institute's James Piereson, in his 2007 book "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism," writes that the country's illness that led to the assassination required a curative "punitive liberalism." A newer book, Dallas "1963", says Dallas did it through a "climate of hatred" created by right-wing businessmen, religious leaders, and media moguls. And an updated take by Alex Beam in a Boston Globe article: "Kennedy brought low by some redneck."

This is not simply a need to turn away and shield our eyes; there is plenty of stomach for Zapruder films and autopsy shots. This is much worse: an inability or unwillingness to see things as they are. It is simply not possible for the Left to accept the idea that Kennedy was murdered by a Marxist. And this perspective will lead to any number of creative narratives, consistent or not, to shift the blame from Oswald and towards a more acceptable villain. More, it is a refusal to see the modern world and its potential, where a man of great standing and regard can be brought down by a fool. 

It is the egalitarian nightmare.

Sunday/Forgiveness

On this day:
534 BC
Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character onstage.

***

Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC's fourth summary report released in 2007, speaking in 2010: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world's wealth."

What?? WHAT??

***

Giant institutions like Yale University have dozens of specialists with years of experience and expertise in selecting and monitoring alternative assets. Even so, their performance has often been disappointing.

What does this mean?

***

The hallmark of the Left is its demand for things that are without limit. They demand freedom on the streets of America, the birthplace of freedom. But they are never in the streets demanding freedom in China.

***

From 1700 to 2000, over 12-15 human generations, the world has been transformed in ways never seen before in human history. People in the West live in what 300 years ago would be unimaginable comfort. Yet the West is dominated by unrest and bitterness. 

Why is this not the focus of philosophers, economists, politicians, and theorists?

***

The Bank of Russia announced on Wednesday that it has, for the first time, begun selling physical gold from its reserves as part of operations conducted by the Finance Ministry to fund the state budget.

This action reflects previous transactions involving gold from the National Wealth Fund (NWF)

The NWF held 405.7 tons of gold before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the Finance Ministry has sold 57%—or 232.6 tons—to cover budget shortfalls, leaving the fund with 173.1 tons as of November 1.

Overall, the NWF’s liquid assets, including gold and yuan, have dropped by 55% to $51.6 billion.

***

Sunday/Forgiveness

Today's gospel is The Good Thief, where Christ promises the thief crucified with him that he will be with him in paradise.
Forgiveness is a key element in Christianity. It has been said that a person is in thrall to whomever he cannot forgive. 

So does that mean that forgiveness is the state of ultimate freedom? Like divinity? Is forgiveness a prerequisite of the divine?

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways,
Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the critic let the man be lost!
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.

--Pope: Essay on Criticism: Part 2  

November 22, 1963

On this day:

498
After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus is elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius is elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.
1718
Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as “Blackbeard”) is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
1942
World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army is surrounded.
1963
In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of both the President and police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
1974The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.
1990
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdraws from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership.

***

“President Trump is the biggest con job in American history,” said Nancy Pelosi, the US speaker emerita, to reporters on Thursday while criticizing his anti-climate agenda. 

Actually, the Biden Regency is the biggest con job in American history by far, and its dishonesty allowed for the rise of Trump.

***

The Sagas of Icelanders, backed by hard archaeological evidence at L’Anse aux Meadows, tell that Vikings journeyed from Scandinavia to Newfoundland via Greenland as early as 999 AD.

***

"...the fact is that European leaders are corroding the right to free expression, and show every sign of sliding further down a slippery slope into illiberalism.

Europe and the United States have always had different free-speech cultures. In the postwar era, both confronted the question of how tolerant societies should treat intolerant factions. Much of Europe concluded that, although free speech is important, views that threaten democracy itself are different and can be criminalized; see laws in various European states against Nazi propaganda. In contrast, the American system protected expression as vile as neo-Nazis marching through a town of Holocaust survivors because, by First Amendment logic, fascist speech poses less of a danger than enabling the state itself to engage in viewpoint discrimination. Despite these differences, both Europe and America mostly expanded speech protections in the 20th century and pulled back from censorship, seeming to converge on liberal values by the time the Iron Curtain fell and the internet spread."--The Atlantic, believe it or not.

***

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 60's 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 was 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 the story 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 that 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 guise 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 society, toxic to the young, and delivered without an ounce of social conscience. The real story about Garrison is how it is 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 have 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.

The Self-Inflicted Wound

On this day:

1407
A truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed under the auspices of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
1820
An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story).
1945
Nuremberg Trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.
1947
The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
1962
Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
1969
Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

2008
After critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997.

***

"You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American" - Reagan, 1988

***

Aristotle had said that those who worked with their hands and especially those who worked for money lacked the capacity for virtue. This remained the common view until the American Revolution changed everything. The northern celebration of work made the slaveholding South seem even more anomalous than it was. ... Slavery required a culture that held labor in contempt.

***

The US invested $7.8bn (£6bn) across Africa in 2023, compared with $4bn by China, according to the China Africa Research Initiative of Johns Hopkins University, which accessed official data.

It marks the first time since 2012 that the US has regained the lead.

"The lead" implies a direction and a goal.

***

From Tech Live 2025:

1. A startup called Sandbar displayed its new $250 Stream Ring.

The ring, as founder Mina Fahmi puts it, is basically “a mouse for your voice.” Tap the touchpad, hold it up to your mouth and start talking—notes, thoughts, questions, whatever. You’ll hear the AI response through your phone. The twist: Fahmi wants it to feel like you’re talking to yourself, so the assistant’s voice is modeled on your own. During setup, you record a few samples and the voice you hear back sounds similar to yours.

2. The $699 Light Phone is intentionally limited: calls, texts, music, maps, cameras, and a few other simple tools. No feeds. No algorithmic rabbit holes.

***

Things look a bit different with the anti-ICE demonstrations. This effort to interfere with returning illegals to their respective countries looks more and more coordinated with the original Biden open borders. The porous Biden border looks more intentional now, as if citizenship is arbitrary. 

And, if true, does that make the original American vision 'arbitrary '?

***

The Self-Inflicted Wound

A lecture last night on cyber scams. There seem to be several conclusions: 

1. The American risk tolerance is insatiable, perhaps a legacy of our Wild West days. There is a true vision, accurate or not, of individuals grasping and forcing the future. It's a wild atmosphere, the downside of the confidence in the individual who created this country.

2. The failure of the education system extends through life and piles up with age, like a snowplow creates snowbanks

3. The danger of advancing technology is a true dialectic, with each advance creating a counter-measure, each counter-measure creating a counterattack. An inescapable, irresolvable vortex.

4. One would expect the internet to homogenize the technological attacks, but that does not seem to be the case. Rather, the West seems to be the mothership relentlessly dogged by small pirate ships, feeding off it like pilot fish.

5. The untold story here is societal malice, the ability and willingness to poison another's well at some point. This would be aimed at the huge national subset of those simply going about their lives, not military opponents. Its objective is civilian misery, not military defeat. This willingness to do harm because one can is seemingly the greatest risk of this phenomenon. (Think of Norway discovering that all its Made-in-China trucks could be remotely turned off by one center in China.)

6. While greed and hubris are crucial elements in the victim, anonymity is its core. There is no risk of retaliation, no revenge possible. This is coincident with the confidence a perpetrator must have in the morality of its victim: the victim is expected to hold its fire against a suspect because of the cascade of potential consequences that might involve the innocent. that confidence may be misplaced with some leaders.

7. The speed and advantage of this technology make the demand for it insatiable. The impatience is so immediate that no one is willing to delay its use to evaluate its provenance.

8. This anonymous, ubiquitous, muscular tool gives more power to the individual than the Gutenberg Bible.

9. Hide the women.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

On this day:

401
The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
1421
A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
1686
Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France’s anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants
1803
The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
1903
The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
1916
World War I: First Battle of the Somme– in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.

1926
George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize”.
1949
The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
1961
United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
1978
In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
1999
In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59 ft Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.

***

The Democrat polling apparently shows their supporters want them to "fight." Over what? What is their point? Epstein, files they've controlled for the entire Biden Regency?

***

“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” --Paul Krugman

***

The Dems say they are looking for a leader. When a group has Stockholm Syndrome, who do you send out to negotiate?

***

Is citizenship simply a matter of geography? American principles are demanding, and not everybody may qualify. Certainly not all philosophies are consistent. Thacher said America was an idea. Can you qualify simply by showing up?

***

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Today is the anniversary of the final Iran-Contra Report in 1987. As time has gone by, few can discuss the particulars, though, at the time, it was a serious scandal among people who cared about government in the U.S. In essence, the American government illegally sold weapons to Iran, an antagonist nation, in hopes of securing the release of American hostages taken by Iran, and used the money to fund a rebel group in Nicaragua in violation of U.S. law.

All this started when the Iraniams, angered by American support for the Shah, took an entire embassy hostage. A series of inept American reponses resulted, Carter's reelection damaged, and Reagan was elected.

The world was horrified by the attack on the embassy, the Americans furious and warlike, and Reagan defused everything--and supported some friendly South American rebels. Those responsible in the government were indicted and eventually were pardoned by Bush.

The government works on its own script, works around the law, and, when caught, forgives itself.

Some in government believe they are working for a higher purpose and must subvert the country to save it. In this instance, the administration felt that war was a serious option that the Iran-Contra trade averted. A little crime to prevent a large one. A small sin to save many. This risk is always with us because some delude themselves that their personal vision is so much grander, wiser, and precise than the laws agreed upon by all. They, personally, know more than the republic.

New visions of righteousness are stirring, posing a risk to the nation unseen since the insinuation of homicidal Marxism in the 50s. Three notions specifically designed to distort the vote and empower a minority are in open discussion: gerrymandering, expanding the number of states to distort the legislature, and packing the Supreme Court to ideologically alter the country's nature and vision. These three ideas would violate the country's founding principle, the creation of a government subservient to the people. These three notions manipulate the country for the partisan vision of a few--in essence proving the original criticisms of the country's founding correct: that power can never be diffused, that a few men will always scheme to take that power, and that most men will accept it.

Sunday/The Nature of Nature

On this day:
1532
Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa
1849
A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.
1857
Second relief of Lucknow – twenty-four Victoria Crosses are awarded, the most in a single day.
1904
English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube).
1940
World War II: in response to the leveling of Coventry, England by Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe two days before, the Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg.
1943
World War II: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway.
1944
Dueren, Germany is destroyed by Allied bombers.
1945
Cold War: Operation Paperclip – the United States Army secretly admits 88 German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology.

1965
Venera program: the Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, which will be the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet.

***

The truth is that the jobs numbers have become more volatile in recent years because of declining business survey response rates. It’s similar to the problem political pollsters face getting representative samples.

***

In an interview, David Brooks argues that America’s core problems aren’t economic but sociological—rooted in the destruction of our “secure base” of family, community, and moral order that once gave people existential security.

***

Hayek pushes the point that markets are about price discovery. In controlled systems, the price is arbitrary. "Price discovery."

***

The Epstein Affair is now suddenly very important. Trump's vulnerability is, newly, that he "knew" rather than "did."

It is a seriously impaired topic, neither revealing trees nor forest, but, as usual, filled with innuendo.

The Left is now talking about Greene as if she were a hallowed political seer.

But Epstein was texting advice to a House representative during--DURING--a House hearing.

What a cathouse.

***

Sunday/The Nature of Nature

In today's gospel, Christ talks about the Apocalypse, where natural processes turn against mankind.

From Plato onwards, philosophers have generally agreed that living well means aligning with the rational order of things. ‘Live in accordance with nature,’ Marcus Aurelius urges in his Meditations. For these thinkers, nature serves as the ethical guide for our actions.

This view has somehow survived the Enlightenment. This picture of the Universe still informs how we think we should live. Our despair over the so-called Anthropocene, the notion that our planet has been fundamentally altered by human action, is essentially moral; our lives are threatened by our misalignment. We should join the Swedish Climate Cherub on the barricades to set things right and ‘get back to nature’.

But that is not the case. Energy and mass are constant, and energy is always declining. Throughout the entire universe, these two elements of physics seem irrefutable. The universe is in a constant state of dying. Running down like a pocket watch, solar system by solar system, galaxy by galaxy, until the entire universe is cold and dead. That is the true nature of nature: we, and it, are growing old. Space exploration is not so much an expansion as an escape option. At some point, we will need an alternative home. And at some later point, that will not be enough.

Penrose and Hawking did calculations based on their research on black holes. Two of their conclusions:

“The odds against an ordered universe happening by random chance are 10^10^30th to 1, against," and, "The odds against life are 10^10^123rd to 1, against.”

Now that's a real miracle.

Perhaps "a little child shall lead them" (like the Swedish Climate Cherub?) out of the globally warmed desert to the temperate Promised Land. But the actual Bible quote promises a lot more than that:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Isaiah 11:6-9

This quote discusses more than leadership skills and a good sense of direction; it predicts a negation of the very elements of natural behavior. A period of spiritual transcendence. It promises a time where ambition, intimidation, violence, and arrogant dismissiveness have passed away. That is, a world where the elements of nature's savagery have been overcome, not joined.

For you omen watchers, such a time has clearly not yet arrived. But it is much more in tune with reality.

SatStats

 

On this day:

655
Battle of Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
1532
Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day
1533
Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1777
American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1864
American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia and starts Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1920
First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva.

1942World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.
1943
Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.
1959
Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas.
1967
The only fatality of the X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
1969
Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1971
Intel releases world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1976
René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favour of independence.
1979
A package from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

2003
The first day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300. Additional bombings follow on November 20.
2007
Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

*
And today is the birthday of
Erwin Rommel, German field marshal, “The Desert Fox” (d. 1944)
Claus von Stauffenberg, German, leader of failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (d. 1944)

***

Progress in every sphere depends on improved health and steady economic growth. Every society that produces social surpluses for investments is dependent on fossil fuels, for which there is no near-term substitute.--Will

***

Subsistence for everybody was what we had before the Industrial Revolution, with all surpluses diverted to the pleasure and adventures of kings.

 ***

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the removal of the black box warning on low-dose Estrogen Therapy.

***

Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce update: A Delhi court concluded a property dispute after 66 years. Both the original litigants were dead. Still, the lawyer for one of the warring parties cautioned that the conclusion was in fact not the end, as the ruling would be appealed.

***

The Gerrymandering competition is a cynical, indecent exposure of the real concerns of politicians as they publicly sacrifice voter impact to their personal interests and power. Anyone supporting such policies is attempting to subvert the principles of representative government that distinguish this country from most others and from the behighted past.
Retaliatory oppression is not an excuse.

***

SatStats

81 percent of women aged 18-29 voted for the Democratic Socialist, as did 57 percent of those with bachelor’s or graduate degrees. Mamdani won Asian voters by 28 points, and LGBT voters by 67 points. If you’ve lived in the city for less than 10 years, chances are you went for Zohran—he swept the newcomer crowd by 66 points

*

There are now:

~60 state-based and ~120 non-state conflicts, the most since 1946


--a record 92 countries involved in conflicts beyond their borders, and


--a record 120 million people displaced from their homes.

*

Natural emissions are about 10 times greater than human-caused emissions annually

*

In the 1950s, Pittsburgh reached its peak population of 675,000. Now, about 308,000 people live in the city.

*

About 86% of U.S. healthcare spending is outside the realm of prescription drugs

*

US debts National debt: $38.2 trillion Personal debt: $26.4 trillion Mortgage debt: $21.3 trillion Student loan debt: $1.8 trillion US total debt: $105.2 trillion

*

Half the population that came to the colonies in the 18th century came as bonded servants.The Revolution attacked bonded servitude and by 1800 it scarcely existed anywhere in the US.

*

47.8 million immigrants were living in the U.S. as of 2023. 
immigrants comprised 14.3% of the U.S. population in 2023. 
from 1850 to 2023, the portion of the U.S. population comprised of immigrants ranged from 5% to 15%, with a median of 12% and an average of 11%:

*

China and Saudi Arabia among nations receiving climate loans, analysis reveals
Investigation by Guardian and Carbon Brief finds just a fifth of funds to fight global heating went to poorest 44 countries

*

In 2023, 42% of Mexican and Central American immigrants aged 25–64 did not have a high school diploma or GED, as compared to 5% of people born in the U.S. in the same age group. The rates for other groups were as follows:

[88] [89]

Basic Conflicts

On this day:

1002
English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice’s Day massacre.
1642
First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green – the Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London.
1918
Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
1947
The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles.
1956
The United States Supreme Court declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1970
Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night. This is regarded as the 20th century’s worst natural disaster.
1971
The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.
1982
Ray Mancini defeats Duk Koo Kim in a boxing match held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kim’s subsequent death (on November 17) leads to significant changes in the sport.
2001
War on Terrorism: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.
And Happy Birthday, Saint Augustine of Hippo, North African theologian, born 354 (d. 430)

***

I don’t think I agree that nationalism is racism. I do think nationalism is like black magic: People who think *they* will be able to control *it* are often clueless about the forces they’re playing with.--Lincicome

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The US captured Guam in the 1898 Spanish-American War. There is movement to make it a state.

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The Jomon people living in prehistoric Japan had "little to no" Denisovan DNA, suggesting their ancestors may not have been in contact with this now-extinct group of Eurasian humans, a new study reports.

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Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italian tourists who allegedly paid £70,000 to shoot innocent people in 'human safari' hunting trips to Sarajevo, with extra charged to kill children.

In the article, these pathological killers are called 'gun enthusiasts'.

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Gambling is a vice. Should the government benefit from it? What about other vices like prostitution?

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Basic Conflicts

"We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about. For years, those in City Hall have only helped those who can help them. But on January 1st, we will usher in a city government that helps everyone."--Mamdani

Here, a candidate with national exposure running for office in an important city is proclaiming confidence in government that directly contradicts the basic founding principles of the nation.

Promises like this defy not just history but reality. Like the aim of bruiseless falls and bananas, such a promise is not limited just by our imaginations; they confront basic laws of physics and man. They are result of different views of basic nature.

It's easy to dismiss these people. They come from a long history of violence, terror, and failure. They assume power over areas they do not influence at all. (The New York mayor, for example, has very limited ability to tax his constituents. A mayor cannot enforce a treaty with a foreign power or entity, like the International Court; trying to enforce a treaty the nation has rejected is even more of a peculiar promise.)

What is so alarming is that one million voters in New York City voted for this malignant nonsense, nonsense that is antithetical to the ideas of the nation's creation. And anything is possible with an uneducated, shallow, self-obsessed electorate.

The BBC and Mrs. Lincoln

On this day:

1215
The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ. .
1620
The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod

1675
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
1778
Cherry Valley Massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.
1831
In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
1864
American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.
1887
Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.

1918
World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour in the eleventh month on the eleventh day) and this is annually honoured with a two-minute silence. The war officially ends on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28th June, 1919.
1930
Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
1940
World War II: Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
1942
World War II: Nazi Germany completes its occupation of France.
1942
World War II: The British win the Second Battle of El Alamein in El Alamein, Egypt.
1961
Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force are massacred by a mob in the course of the Kindu atrocity.
1967
Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to “new left” anti-war activist Tom Hayden.

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My sister-in-law was transferred to a rehabilitation facility after a prolonged hospitalization. She was met by an employee at the door who said to her, "Welcome to Hell, that's what this place is."

Some things are difficult to legislate.
 
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The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the country.” But the righteous constantly purifies itself. The NYT has a fascinating article on the Sierra Club's circular firing squad. The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

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Researchers in the field of swarm robotics are training machines to behave like ants, bees and even slime molds—simple creatures that achieve remarkable feats through collective intelligence.

This is fascinating stuff. A great fictional take is in Crichton's 'Prey', where nanobots undergo epigenetic change.

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Near the Red Fort metro station in India's capital Delhi, an explosion in a car killed at least eight people and injured more than 20. It was so powerful that several vehicles nearby almost melted, and people could hear the blast from kilometres away.

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Pittsburgh went 2-of-11 on third downs against the Chargers while committing three turnovers and zero takeaways.

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The BBC and Mrs. Lincoln

BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, resigned several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by Mr. Trump in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The BBC had made Trump's benign cheerleading malignant.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah says: “This is a sad day for the BBC. Tim has been an outstanding Director-General for the last five years. He has propelled the BBC forward with determination, single-mindedness and foresight.

“He has had the full support of me and the Board throughout. However, I understand the continued pressure on him, personally and professionally, which has led him to take this decision today. The whole Board respects the decision and the reasons for it.

“Tim has given 20 years of his life to the BBC. He is a devoted and inspirational leader and an absolute believer in the BBC and public service broadcasting. He has achieved a great deal. Foremost, under his tenure, the transformation of the BBC to meet the challenges in a world of unprecedented change and competition is well underway.

“Personally, I will miss his stamina, good humour and resilience and I will miss working with him. I wish him and his family the very best for the future.

“This is an important time for the Corporation and the Board and I will continue to work with Tim in the interim while we conduct the process to appoint his successor.”

Here are some of the key points from Tim Davie’s all-staff call with BBC colleagues

Davie did not address the billion-dollar lawsuit threatened by US President Trump or the BBC’s potential response, and whether it would pay compensation to stave off the litigation.

On the offending video edit of Trump’s speech, Davie said: “We did make a mistake and there was an editorial breach and I think some responsibility had to be taken”. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen to resign, he said, along with the “relentlessness” of the role and the opportunity to clear the runway for a new director general in the lead-up to 2027 charter renewal.

"Some responsibility"?

He mentioned “transition” a few times, but did not disclose details or any timeline for his departure and replacement. Shah, who joined in the call halfway, said the board was in “succession mode”.

Davie acknowledged that senior news editors were unhappy that their journalism had not been more vigorously defended, and said that while it was important to be “out there making our case”, when it came to responding to attacks, “we have to make sure we’re getting it right when we go out” and a sense of proportionality was also communicated – the few mistakes for several hundred hours of content. “It’s important that we calmly communicate to people the wood from the trees.”

Of note, the BBC is government-funded.

This is like the old "Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" Here, everyone within earshot is rushing to the nearest microphone to defend the sensibilities of arrogant journalists who have distorted the truth for their own petty political biases and have violated the public trust.

"Wood for the trees" indeed.