On this day:
1554
A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.
1593
Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
1689
The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1999
President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2001
NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.
1593
Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
1689
The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1999
President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2001
NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
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“We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.”-- Sharma, on AI
“We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.”-- Sharma, on AI
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1976 Senate special committee charged with emergency powers reform was appalled that four national emergencies were in effect at that time, yet “today we live under 50 active national emergencies, several of which date back decades and all of which unlock broad executive powers—under IEEPA mainly but also several other US laws—that are typically reserved to Congress or delegated to the president in a much narrower fashion.” --Lincicome
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Greenland's strategic importance—missile defense, Arctic access, and denial of Chinese or Russian influence—is real and longstanding.
Why must it be confrontational now?
***
Señor Bunny
The NFL made history with the Superbowl show in two ways. For the first time, it had a performer who sang in a language that about 85 percent of the U.S. population doesn’t speak, a victory for gratuitous inscrutability. (Were none of the stars who sing in English available?)
Also, for the first time ever, the NFL gave its stage to a performer who sought to put the country in its place. So often, inept builders resort to tearing down their surroundings, seeing the relative change as an enhancement of their position. So Mr. Bunny sought to undermine the US claim to be called “America.” That is, to make America generic. To make the world's first written democratic republic one of many faux democracies. And, in the New World, to make freedom geographical. As Obama said, American exceptionalism was a provincial thought. After all, aren't we all El Salvadore?
To think that, once upon a time, the likes of Prince and Katy Perry simply aimed to put on a good show.
In an echo of singer Billie Eilish inveighing at the Grammys against America stealing land, Mr. Bunny said of his language proficiency in a pre–Super Bowl press conference, “English is not my first language. But it’s okay; it’s not America’s first language either.” Like so many bumper stickers, this sounds clever until you give it a moment’s thought. Mr. Bunny’s first language, Spanish, was a colonial imposition in the Western Hemisphere beginning in 1492. If the rapper wanted to associate himself with languages before this wave of European settlement, he’d have to sing in, say, Nahuatl or Algonquian.
The Spanish language indeed got a head start over English in what’s now the United States, when Ponce de Leon showed up on the Florida peninsula in 1513. But so what? English speakers forged a permanent presence at Jamestown in 1607. They then populated the Eastern Seaboard, won their independence, stood up enduring institutions of representative government, and made English the most important and widely spoken language in the world.
That the country they founded goes by “America” is an affront to elements in Latin America and on the left. They consider it insulting to everyone else living in North America or South America. Aren’t they Americans, too?
Certainly not everyone feels this way. The Canadians have as little interest in being called “Americans” as they do in becoming the 51st state. It is people hypersensitive to any Yanqui imperialism, including “linguistic imperialism,” who complain about us hogging the name “America.”
Sad to say, they are late to the game. Americans began calling themselves Americans in the 1700s to set themselves apart from the British. An anonymous writer in the Virginia Gazette in March 1776 referred to “the united states of America,” and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence said it was a statement of “the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (subsequently changed to “the thirteen united States of America”).
Once we were the U.S.A., the question became how to refer to our people. As “United States men and women”? Various solutions were tried out before we settled on “American,” which now denotes not just our country but a set of clearly defined cultural traits. And political concepts.
It’s bizarre that the NFL had a half-time show that questioned this understanding, although in the league’s defense, surely, few people picked up on it — or understood anything else said.
And why do the Spanish-speaking countries want to be named after an Italian cartographer anyway? Maybe it's just an attempt to ride on the success of others.--much from NR
In an echo of singer Billie Eilish inveighing at the Grammys against America stealing land, Mr. Bunny said of his language proficiency in a pre–Super Bowl press conference, “English is not my first language. But it’s okay; it’s not America’s first language either.” Like so many bumper stickers, this sounds clever until you give it a moment’s thought. Mr. Bunny’s first language, Spanish, was a colonial imposition in the Western Hemisphere beginning in 1492. If the rapper wanted to associate himself with languages before this wave of European settlement, he’d have to sing in, say, Nahuatl or Algonquian.
The Spanish language indeed got a head start over English in what’s now the United States, when Ponce de Leon showed up on the Florida peninsula in 1513. But so what? English speakers forged a permanent presence at Jamestown in 1607. They then populated the Eastern Seaboard, won their independence, stood up enduring institutions of representative government, and made English the most important and widely spoken language in the world.
That the country they founded goes by “America” is an affront to elements in Latin America and on the left. They consider it insulting to everyone else living in North America or South America. Aren’t they Americans, too?
Certainly not everyone feels this way. The Canadians have as little interest in being called “Americans” as they do in becoming the 51st state. It is people hypersensitive to any Yanqui imperialism, including “linguistic imperialism,” who complain about us hogging the name “America.”
Sad to say, they are late to the game. Americans began calling themselves Americans in the 1700s to set themselves apart from the British. An anonymous writer in the Virginia Gazette in March 1776 referred to “the united states of America,” and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence said it was a statement of “the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (subsequently changed to “the thirteen united States of America”).
Once we were the U.S.A., the question became how to refer to our people. As “United States men and women”? Various solutions were tried out before we settled on “American,” which now denotes not just our country but a set of clearly defined cultural traits. And political concepts.
It’s bizarre that the NFL had a half-time show that questioned this understanding, although in the league’s defense, surely, few people picked up on it — or understood anything else said.
And why do the Spanish-speaking countries want to be named after an Italian cartographer anyway? Maybe it's just an attempt to ride on the success of others.--much from NR
