A Fifth Column

On this day:
1178 BC
The calculated date of the Greek king Odysseus’ return home from the Trojan War.
1457 BC
Likely date of the Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.
73
Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Jewish Revolt.
1746
The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in Scotland after the battle many highland traditions were banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants.
1917
Lenin returns to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland.
1945
More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo.
1945
The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin, with nearly one million troops fighting in the Battle of the Seelow Heights.
2007
Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest spree killing in modern American history. Seung-Hui Cho, kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide.

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"Nothing is more suicidal than a rational investment strategy in an irrational world."--John Maynard Keynes

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Has the attack on Iran been so successful that we don't know who is negotiating their surrender?

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Culloden was fought between the British and the Scots, Catholics and Protestants, Highlanders and Lowlanders. The Campbells turned coat to fight for the Brits. I had a friend named Campbell who was refused service there because of his name.

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Does the Swalwell fiasco open the door to the Governor's mansion to Kamala?

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A Fifth Column

A new report from The New York Times highlights a significant change in the types of individuals and entities funding political campaigns across the United States. Rather than traditional individual donors, an increasing amount of political money is now coming from wealthy, anonymous sources, raising concerns about transparency and the influence of undisclosed interests in the electoral process.

Wealthy. And anonymous. 

Americans have a lot of concerns and interests. And not a lot of time or organization to do it. That's one reason we have governments. Governments can try to maintain the integrity of the nation. Safety. Protection from invasion and piracy.

We are constantly burdened with someone's idea of a brave new world as street activists and aggressive politicians try to reshape us. This NYT information suggests their ideas may not be their own. Other nations have big budgets; why not spend it here, trying to influence policy and money flow? It's probably cheaper than war.

One would hope these public servants would suppress their tendencies to be public reformers and just do the basics to protect us. We, not foreign money, should determine our future. We, not thieves, should determine where our money goes. If it is really true that 15% of the national budget is stolen every year, we should know and pursue that; with that volume, it should be easy to find.

Unless, of course, these "public servants" are complicit in this national and economic erosion.

Tax Day Conspiracy

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that the Justice Department is investigating more than 8,000 fraud cases, which he said represent over $1 trillion in taxpayer funds potentially stolen each year by "increasingly sophisticated and opportunistic fraudsters."

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Tax Day Conspiracy

Today is tax day. A day directly 182 days between the two first Tuesdays in November, voting day, would be May 5. So, tax day is two weeks or so as far away from election day as possible.

Is that an accident?

My suggestion is that tax day and election day be on the same day so the voters can keep both in mind. 

Let's see if it made a difference in the quality of people elected.

Lincoln

On this day:

70
Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions.
1294
Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong. I think this is Marlowe's Tamburlaine
1865
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1912
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
1986
1 kg hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1999
NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
2003
The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.

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If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an “alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.*--Sowell

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According to MLB.com’s Jason Mackey, Kelly turned down at least six interviews for managerial roles because he “felt like the best thing for [his family] was to be in Pittsburgh.”

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On this day, Lincoln is shot, and the repercussions continue to this day. And the Titanic finds her iceberg.

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Trump might be the most progressive president since, early in the 20th century, progressivism defined itself with three core tenets:

First, only an energetic executive can make modern government “wieldy” — Woodrow Wilson’s word. (“The president,” said Wilson, “is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”) 

Second, the separation of powers is a premodern mistake that permits Congress to meddle in government and allows the judiciary to inhibit the executive.
Third, conservatives see modern society’s complexities as reasons to avoid attempting dramatic social engineering, lest unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. Progressives think conservatives are worrywarts, too timid about wielding government.--Will

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Lincoln

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that the conspirators stalked General Grant to his train the same night. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

From the Annals of Willing Suspension of Disbelief

On this day:

1204
Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1829
The British Parliament grants freedom of religion to Roman Catholics.
1861
American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
1873
The Colfax Massacre takes place.
1941
Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed.
1943
World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility. The Nazis were shocked!
1970
An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.

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"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."--Frank Borman (ex-Eastern CEO)

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The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. An estimated 62–153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan

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Estimates of the number of Polish citizens executed at three mass murder sites in the spring of 1940 range from some 14,540 to 21,857 to 28,000. Most of those killed were reserve officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Polish September Campaign, but the dead also included many civilians who had been arrested for being "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners, and officials."

Between 250,000 and 454,700 Polish soldiers had become prisoners and were interned by the Soviets, following their invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, three weeks after Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was a little over two weeks after the initial invasion of Poland by Germany, on September 1, 1939.

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Spanish Prime Minister's wife charged with corruption. Sometimes the high road is short.

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From the Annals of Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Life is full of surprises and contradictions. Some are enlightening. Some are unsettling. Public politics is beginning to be more under the heading of "Diagnosis." Examples:

-Iran, disarmed, defeated, and humiliated, continues to posture as a tough guy. Are they trying to fulfill their martyrdom? Their's may be desired, but their citizens' may not be. Is this an Eastern example of the government enforcing a 'greater purpose' on its citizen-victims?

-America's enemies shudder at the blockade as 'an act of war.' What did they think was going on here? And what about Iran's blockading itself? Are they declaring war on themselves? Sometimes martyrdom is harder to achieve than you would think. Is two beligerents blockading one belligerent a tie?

-Is threatening the Iranian culture a lot worse than Death to America?

-Iran's negotiations started with their demands that everything return to before the war and that the US pay reparations. What explains that mindset? In light of their recent self-blockade, are they negotiating with themselves?

-Mamdami just declared a socialist victory in NYC without having done anything yet. Does that remind you of Iran, or is it just politics?

-Why is it a logical step with a past heavily laden with accusations of sexual assault to run for governor? Do these politicians, like Mamdani's victory dance, live in a parallel universe?

Sunday/Thomas

On this day:

1204
The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.
1550
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, English politician (d. 1604), is born

1861

American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
1864
American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
1934
The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire
1945
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.
1961
The Russian (Soviet) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
1970
Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.

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"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else."
--Winston Churchill

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It is estimated the average college graduate has a working vocabulary of 3000 words. The poet Ben Jonson's vocabulary was estimated at 7,500. The estimate of the playwright Shakespeare was 20,000. Many argue this astonishing number proves Shakespeare was more than one man. (Or an alien.) Of the other heretical ideas about his 'true' identity, deVere is a strong candidate.

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New perspective since I can't get cable. The BBC thinks:
--that Iran's nuclear ambitions are defensive.
--that Iran's preconditions are reasonable groundwork for peace, when I think they caused the war in the first place.
--that Melania's request that the Epstein accusations be specific and based on testimony and not hearsay is unreasonable.
--that Starmer's move toward the EEU is statesman-like and not desperate


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Sunday/Thomas

Today's gospel is the "Doubting Thomas" gospel. It could be a short story. Unfortunately, it is an insight that has become a cliché, and for the wrong reason.

The Thomas of the gospels is not a fickle guy; he is a brave, committed man. When Christ wants to return to a town where they had previously tried to kill Him, Thomas, after losing the argument against going, announces he will go with Christ so they can die together. His caution over the talk of Christ's resurrection stems from only one thing: his desire for the truth.

"Thomas" means "twin." Doubting Thomas is a twin. ("Doubt" has its origin in "duo.") The other side of doubt is belief, the product of doubt. Doubt and belief are linked. Twins. But that is not true for all.

Solipsism is the position in metaphysics and epistemology that the mind is the only thing known to exist, and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. It is a skeptical hypothesis that leads to the belief that the entirety of reality, the external world, and other people are merely representations of the individual self, lacking independent existence, and might not even exist. It is not the same as skepticism (the epistemological position that one should refrain from making truth claims at all).
Some people make their living talking like this.

Several modern currents of thought are rushing us toward the rapids. One is doubt itself, as a philosophy, a tenet of modern life. For many, doubt is the endpoint.

When Descartes asked, "What can I know?" he described us as isolated individuals whose knowledge was individually subjective. But this comes at a price. I can doubt the existence of the external world, and I can doubt the existence of what appears to be my body. But when I try to also doubt the existence of my inner self, my thinking, then I find that I am still there--as a doubting mind. Doubting is the thing that, in the end, I cannot doubt. Doubting, however, is thinking, and the existence of thinking implies the existence of a thinker. Hence, Descartes' famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am." So the self sees us as isolated individuals, prioritizing our subjectivity above all else. The agent of thought is doubt. And, unlike Thomas, those doubts are never answered.

This has implications for more than the individual. "Community" implies shared beliefs, things held in common. So doubt, as an endpoint, is as destructive, isolating, and paralyzing as any heresy. It is the redoubt(!) of the immobile and the somnolent. Like the pacifist, doubt requires the efforts and the sacrifices of others to exist.

When Christ appeared the second time, He was probably really happy to see Thomas.

SatStats

On this day:

1689
William III and Mary II are crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.
1814
The Treaty of Fontainebleau ends the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte, and forces him to abdicate unconditionally for the first time.
1868
Former Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces, marking the end of the Tokugawa shogunate.
1951
Korean War: President Harry Truman relieves General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea.
1968
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium.

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"You unconsciously stand up straight in a cathedral. The art, the sweep, the ceilings are so high that you aspire even in your posture. You crouch down low to enter a darkened shack. The sound of our leadership now makes us all crouch too low.

Why do we recoil when a leader is vulgar and violent in his language and thinking? Coarse language obviously implies coarse thinking, and no one wants that in a leader entrusted to bring peace and prosperity. Beyond that, throughout history political authority has come wrapped in a certain formality and ceremony. Dignity enhanced power. A British king even 500 years ago didn’t think himself free to speak in public like a fishmonger or a street whore. He had to present himself at a certain height so people would look up to him."--Peggy Noonan

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Tokugawa Yoshinobu (born Oct. 28, 1837, Edo, Japan—died Jan. 22, 1913, Tokyo) was the last Tokugawa shogun of Japan, who helped make the Meiji Restoration (1868)—the overthrow of the shogunate and restoration of power to the emperor—a relatively peaceful transition.

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After 16 years in power doing Russia's bidding in Brussels, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party is at risk of losing power in Sunday's parliamentary elections, with challenger Peter Magyar significantly ahead in polls.

 An internal intelligence report for Russia’s SVR intelligence service, revealed in March, outlined a strategy dubbed “the Gamechanger”, which included staging an assassination attempt against Orban to “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign”.

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The right is obsessed with the idea that mysterious forces of fraud have run off with all the money, while the left has convinced itself that billionaires aren’t paying any taxes.

But it’s not some huge secret why it seems like the government keeps spending and spending without us getting any amazing new public services — it’s transferred to the elderly.

(Not to say there is no fraud. See Below)

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SatStats

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that the Justice Department is investigating more than 8,000 fraud cases, which he said represent over $1 trillion in taxpayer funds potentially stolen each year by "increasingly sophisticated and opportunistic fraudsters."

*

In 1938, 11 percent of blacks were born to unmarried women. By 1965, that number had grown to 25 percent. Now it’s about 75 percent. Even during slavery, when marriage between blacks was illegal, a higher percentage of black children were raised by their biological mothers and fathers than today. In 1940, 86 percent of black children were born inside marriage. Today, only 35 percent of black children are born inside marriage.

*

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent full-year calculations, accounted for $4.2 trillion of a total $7 trillion in spending for 2025.

*

Consistent with previous years, in 2025, TB disease disproportionally affected non-U.S.–born persons. Among non-U.S.–born persons, there were 7,858 (77%) provisionally reported TB cases, with a corresponding rate of 15.4 per 100,000 persons. Among U.S.-born persons, there were 2,252 (22%) provisionally reported TB cases with a corresponding rate of 0.8 per 100,000 persons.

*

American families collectively have a jaw-dropping $34.1 trillion in home equity as of the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve

*

Almost 20% of full-time workers tapped their 401(k) plans for loans last year — the highest share since the company started tracking the data.

Full-time workers cut their contribution rate in 2025 to 8.9%, from 9.2% a year earlier, while one in four workers reduced their annual savings in their 401(k) or other types of employer-sponsored accounts.

*

The number one job in NY is social services.

*

There is a greater percentage of Sikhs in Canada than there are in India…

*

The NY state comptroller: spending on services for the NYC street homeless population ran to $81,705 per person last year, up from $28,428 pp 6yrs ago. Figures do not include all kinds of other spending, such as supportive housing, policing costs etc.

*

Canada has observed the largest decline in happiness in the world (along with the UK)

*

The richest 10% of South Africans hold 71% of the wealth, while the poorest 60% hold just 7%.

Newscastoris Leftus Profundis and Pettifogery

On this day:

1815
The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth’s climate for the next two years. (note to sunlight-tampering climate believers)
1821
Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Ottoman government from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
1826
The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Missolonghi start leaving the town after a year’s siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
1912
The Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage
1919
Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
1963
129 people die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
1972
Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.
1972
Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.

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"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it."--Henry Kissinger

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The Mount Tambora volcano expelled as much as 150 cubic km (roughly 36 cubic miles!) of ash, pumice, and other rock, and aerosols—including an estimated 60 megatons of sulfur—into the atmosphere. As that material mixed with atmospheric gases, it blocked the sun's rays, eventually reducing the average global temperature by as much as 3 °C (5.4 °F). The immediate effects were most profound on Sumbawa and the surrounding islands. Some 80,000 people perished from disease and famine, since crops could not grow.
In 1816, parts of the world as far away as western Europe and eastern North America experienced sporadic periods of heavy snow and killing frost through June, July, and August. Such cold weather events led to crop failures and starvation in those regions, and the year 1816 was called the “year without a summer.” (from Britannica)

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Patrick Queen is 26.

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Across 45 agencies, the Mamdani plan is organized into seven domains and contains more than 200 agency goals, 800 strategies, and 600 indicators.

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The best estimates suggest that, during Newsome's governorship, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers. During this period, there were more applications for unemployment than there were Californians over 18.


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At this moment, we have sent 4 humans around the moon and are precisely targeting annoying Iranians from orbit. So why is it that I have two remotes for my TV, and I can't get either to work?

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Newscastoris Leftus Profundis and Pettifogery

Freedom of speech guarantees disagreements. And only in America can the slightest of slights, the most courteous of discourtesies, find solace and comfort in the redressing arms of an American attorney.

Enter Lawrence O'Donnell, a somber and stark reader of news. He recently unearthed a major national problem: within the joy and pride of the retrieval of the downed weapons officer in Iran, the generously tattooed head of the erstwhile DOD, Mr. Hegseth, reiterated the cliched promise to "leave no man behind."

Mr. O'Donnell felt the gates of Hell shudder. Only his Olympian duty forstalled a swoon. "Men? Just men?" The audience trembled as he dared open the Pandora's Box of Insincerity and Bias. But the intrepid Mr. O'Donnell stood firm. He knew what must be done.

The military was implying that they would not rescue downed women pilots.

If the military refused to rescue women, would they do worse? Would they aid the enemy and reveal the location of the stranded female pilot? Perhaps pin the women down with judicious fire while the enemy approached? JAG offices twittered. Would women dressing as men fare better? Case studies!

Significance grew from this humble seed.

Did Lincoln's "forefathers" inadvertently slip the leash of censorship and reveal an ugly American truth at Gettysburg?

Did Jefferson's "all men are created equal" invalidate the very Constitution it heralded?

One wonders what will befall us when these great minds move on to the truly egalitarian grave.