SB-F/BS

“The Communist Party credits itself with ‘lifting millions from poverty,’ but it is more accurate to say that the millions have lifted the Party.”--Link

***

The Hawaii volcano has become active. Is that a risk to global warming? Will the debris result in sun blockage and global cooling?

Should the volcano be capped?

***

One of the largest lithium battery storage centers in the world is in Escondido, California. But it can only store enough power for twenty-four thousand American homes for four hours. There are about 134 million households in the United States.

***

Ahmed Abdel-Basit Mohamed, also known as "Basit," was sentenced to death in Egypt for his role in deadly terrorist attacks there. He now lives freely in the US. Basit confirmed the Egyptian government's accusations when he publicly bragged about his involvement in a terrorist attack in Egypt in which 506 people were wounded or killed.
He operates from his New York apartment and often streams live videos from Times Square. During his multi-hour videos, Saber routinely incites terrorism, assassinations, kidnapping and torture in an extremely graphic manner. The calls for violence in his videos are viewed by millions of people across the world.
According to Basit's LinkedIn profile, he is currently an Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at Manhattan College.
He has a LinkedIn account!
(from Gatestone via Don)

SB-F/BS

Sam Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, is an MIT physics grad, who honed his trading skills at renowned quant shop Jane Street Capital. He noticed a disparity in crypto pricing across countries and began to arbitrage with success before launching a successful firm of his own, Alameda Research. In 2019 he founded crypto exchange FTX, hailed by some as the best derivatives platform ever built.

In addition to running the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried continued to run Alameda Research, essentially running both an exchange and a hedge fund.By March 2021, FTX had bought the rights to rename the home of the NBA’s Miami Heat as the “FTX Arena.”
As recently as September, FTX was believed to be worth $32 billion.

At the beginning of November, the website CoinDesk reported that “Bankman-Fried’s trading giant Alameda rests on a foundation largely made up of a coin that a sister company invented, not an independent asset like a fiat currency or another crypto.

FTX entered negotiations with the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, seeking to be acquired by the larger exchange. Binance declined, stating, “The issues are beyond our control or ability to help.”

FTX has since filed for bankruptcy, and John Jay Ray III, who managed the Enron restructuring, is running what’s left of the company, declared in the bankruptcy filing that basically no one at FTX left any records of what they were doing, and may well have never understood what they were doing when they were actually doing it. Ray wrote:

"I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.

Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."

“Many of the companies in the FTX Group, especially those organized in Antigua and the Bahamas, did not have appropriate corporate governance. I understand that many entities, for example, never had board meetings.”
“The FTX Group did not maintain centralized control of its cash. Cash management procedural failures included the absence of an accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, as well as insufficient attention to the creditworthiness of banking partners.”
“The FTX Group’s approach to human resources combined employees of various entities and outside contractors, with unclear records and lines of responsibility. At this time, the Debtors have been unable to prepare a complete list of who worked for the FTX Group as of the Petition Date, or the terms of their employment. Repeated attempts to locate certain presumed employees to confirm their status have been unsuccessful to date.”
“Employees of the FTX Group submitted payment requests through an on-line ‘chat’ platform where a disparate group of supervisors approved disbursements by responding with personalized emojis.”
“Corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors. I understand that there does not appear to be documentation for certain of these transactions as loans, and that certain real estate was recorded in the personal name of these employees and advisors on the records of the Bahamas.”
“The FTX Group did not keep appropriate books and records, or security controls, with respect to its digital assets.”
“One of the most pervasive failures of the FTX.com business in particular is the absence of lasting records of decision-making. Mr. Bankman-Fried often communicated by using applications that were set to auto-delete after a short period of time, and encouraged employees to do the same.”
(Culled from NR.)

With the infrastructure of the company inexplicable to experts, money vanishing, and investors losing everything, it is curious that the event is being seen by news and political analysts as a laboratory for socially conscious investing rather than incompetence and theft.  

The Kinds of Poverty

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.--The New York Times in 1921 on Robert Goddard's dreams of rockets in space
The NYT, listening to The Science

***

Former crack addict-turned-pillow entrepreneur and election denier Mike Lindell announced Monday he was running to unseat Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee.

***

The Commerce Department, under Raimondo’s leadership, is now poised to begin distributing nearly $100 billion — roughly 10 times the department’s annual budget — to build up the U.S. chip industry and expand broadband access throughout the country.

$100 billion in the hands of a government appointee.

***

The US soccer federation displayed Iran's national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic, saying the move supports protesters in Iran ahead of the two nations' World Cup match today.

Iran's government reacted by accusing America of removing the name of God from their national flag and called for FIFA to kick the USA out of the World Cup with a 10-game ban from soccer.

Politics, an airborne virus, penetrates everywhere, into every corner, especially where there is no light.

***

Over the past five years, global ESG funds have underperformed the broader market by more than 250 basis points per year, an average 6.3% return compared with a 8.9% return. This means an investor who put $10,000 into an average global ESG fund in 2017 would have about $13,500 today, compared with $15,250 he would have earned if he had invested in the broader market.

***

The Kinds of Poverty

"...grid electrification — which nearly everywhere means mostly fossil fuels — significantly positively affects household income, expenditure and education. A study in Bangladesh showed that electrified households experienced a 21 percent average jump in income and a 1.5 percent reduction in poverty yearly.

The biggest deception is that rich world leaders have somehow managed to portray themselves as green evangelists, while more than three-quarters of their enormous primary energy production comes from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Less than 12 percent of their energy comes from renewables, mostly from wood and hydro. Just 2.4 percent is solar and wind.

Compare this to Africa, the most renewable continent in the world, with half of its energy produced by renewables. But these renewables are almost entirely wood, straws and dung, and they are really a testament to how little energy the continent has access to. Despite all the hype, the continent gets just 0.3 percent of its energy from solar and wind.

To solve global warming, rich countries must invest much more in research and development on better green technologies, from fusion, fission and second-generation biofuels to solar and wind with massive batteries. The crucial insight is to innovate their actual cost below fossil fuels. That way, everyone will eventually switch. But telling the poor to live with unreliable, expensive, weak power is an insult.

There is already pushback from the world’s developing countries, who see the hypocrisy for what it is: Egypt’s finance minister recently said that poor countries must not be “punished,” and warned that climate policy should not add to their suffering. That warning needs to be heard. Europe is scouring the world for more fossil fuels because the continent needs them for its growth and prosperity. That same opportunity should not be withheld from the world’s poorest."--From Lomberg

A Reverse Coverup

 

But there is also a cost to overemphasizing its [...racial...] impact. A black kid who believes he will face daunting societal obstacles is likely to underinvest in trying to climb society’s rungs. Every black student in the country needs to know that his return on investment in education is, if anything, higher than for white students.--fryer

***

It’s actually insane that fully self-driving cars will be everywhere without our consent but a bus or bike lane needs years of community and environmental outreach. It’s honestly cruel.--a guy on Twitter

***

Thermal coal imports by the European Union from Australia, South Africa and Indonesia increased more than 11-fold. Meanwhile, a new trans-Saharan gas pipeline will allow Europe to tap directly into gas from Niger, Algeria and Nigeria; Germany is reopening shuttered coal power plants; and Italy is planning to import 40 percent more gas from northern Africa. And the United States is going cap-in-hand to Saudi Arabia to grovel for more oil production.

Meanwhile, back at the Global Climate Summit...

***

Shooting the messenger used to be the hyperbolic suggested response to bad news. What if the "bad" news isn't "unpleasant," just "sub-standard?"

"The political campaign against the Supreme Court continues, relentlessly, and the latest example is a claim that eight years ago Justice Samuel Alito leaked word ahead of time about a Supreme Court ruling. We’d ignore this except that Democrats and the anti-Court media are treating it like a capital offense.
To call this story uncorroborated is to overstate its credibility. Rob Schenck, a pastor who has since turned against his former evangelical allies, claims he heard from a woman who heard from Justice Alito at a dinner party in 2014 about the pending opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a religious liberty case. Justice Alito denies leaking anything, and the woman denies hearing about it."--WSJ

So the messenger may be more at risk of just being ignored?

***

A Reverse Coverup

Recent events have raised questions 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.

The Thanksgiving Miracle

The Biden administration has approved plans to build the nation's largest oil export terminal off the Gulf Coast of Texas, which would add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity. Curious.

***

Only 45MW of 3.3GW on offer was awarded in Spain’s latest renewables tender as a price cap of around €47 ($49) per MWh failed by far to “reflect the real cost of energy”, the country’s wind energy association (AEE) claimed.
The slow pace of permitting and processing also contributed to the failure of the auction.
The price cap neither took into account the impact of inflation on the costs of new renewable installations, nor the prospects for future electricity prices, the AEE said.

***

Senior Biden officials who have been pressuring the World Health Organization to rename monkeypox have succeeded in their efforts. Monkeypox has been rebranded MPOX. The White House requested the name change because of its racist connotation. (Politico)

What?

***

Interesting observation in the Globe that the NYT is reassessing some of its opinions. One is its position on charter schools.
The NYT noted that charters “typically outperform district schools in math and reading on state standardized tests,” that “the vast majority of students in charters are Black and Latino” and that “families in New York have clamored for more access to charters.” More: “Most Democratic lawmakers remain firmly opposed to allowing any expansion of the schools,” but teachers’ unions, as “major political players,” are a key stumbling block.

***

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?

Kennedy #2

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. --Alexander Pope

***

The English department at the University of Greenwich in London has issued a trigger warning for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' Not only does the 1798 poem feature the shooting of an albatross with a crossbow, which is clearly upsetting to the anxious, herbivore students of today, it also contains references to “supernatural possession” and “human death.”

***

Another serious problem to worry about. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform warns of the foreign danger in a Nov. 2 report titled “A New Threat: The National Security Risk of Third Party Litigation Funding.” Foreign financiers might see this opaque third-party funding mechanism as an exploitable fissure in the U.S. legal system through which to weaponize the courts for strategic goals.
Foreign adversaries can fund frivolous litigation to overwhelm U.S. courts, target lawsuits to weaken critical industries, or obtain confidential materials through the discovery process. Enemy funders might also push theories or use court filings as part of the well-documented disinformation campaigns they already wage through social media.


***

Well, this is curious. And, if real, might be significantly negative for Trump. Kanye West released screenshots of text messages and a video after his dinner Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump that suggest in addition to dining with the rapper this week, the former president met with an openly white nationalist and Holocaust denier named Nick Fuentes.

***

Kennedy #2

An industry has arisen to continue the mythology.

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

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

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

Nast and Thanksgiving

Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté. -Margaret Atwood, novelist, and poet. Hmmm

***

CNN anchor was at a loss for words after learning that a gay club mass shooting suspect identifies as non-binary. This has been a recent repeated headline, as if 'crazy' has demographics and some groups are excluded.

***

Former Attorney General William Barr on Monday called for a new leader of the Republican Party, warning in a blistering rebuke that former President Trump “will burn the whole house down.”

***

Washington Post analysis has found that more vaccinated people are now dying of the Covid disease and 58 percent of coronavirus deaths in August in the US "were people who were vaccinated or boosted".

***

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

They plan to block the sun.

***

                            Nast and Thanksgiving

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

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

 

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

Happy Thanksgiving

"yeah…that's not all of it but it's a lot."--SBF when asked if ethics is "mostly a front?"

***

A Leeds schoolboy scored the highest possible score in a Mensa test - beating Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

***

Fauci funded 0 randomized control trials of masking; 0 of masking kids; 0 of bivalent boosters, etc.; most of his policy recommendations lack data.

***

NHS leaders in Scotland have discussed abandoning the founding principles of the service by having the wealthy pay for treatment.
The discussion of a "two-tier" health service is mentioned in draft minutes of a meeting of Scotland's NHS leaders in September.
They also raise the possibility of curtailing some free prescriptions.

***

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

Samuel Palmer's "Harvest Moon:"

Kennedy #1

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 (2018; Jerry L. Jordan, ed.)

***

3 out of 8 American homes are rentals, Eberstadt writes, and “an astonishing half of all female-headed renter families reportedly had barely $2,000 in net worth in 2019.

***

Nobel Sustainability Trust Foundation recognizes China’s green efforts while entrepreneur Bruno Wu awarded for his carbon-neutral initiatives. (A headline)
The NST Directors also awarded a Special Recognition Letter to the Government of the People’s Republic of China for outstanding contributions to advancing carbon neutrality.

Imagine.

***

The Pirates announced they’ve designated infielder Hoy Park for assignment. Park landed in Pittsburgh alongside Diego Castillo in the increasingly regrettable deal that sent reliever Clay Holmes to the Yankees.

***


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--an 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.

November 22, 1963

Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

***

Two self-described “frontline” California doctors, Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols, formed No License for Disinformation (NLFD) in September 2021.
As its name suggests, the organization’s purpose is to promote policies that use the threat of medical license revocation to discourage doctors from spreading information it believes to be false.

***

From Senik's book on Grover Cleveland:

At the age of forty-four, the only elected office Grover Cleveland had ever held was sheriff of Eric County, New York — a role he had relinquished nearly a decade earlier, returning to a rather uneventful life as a workaholic bachelor lawyer. In the next four years, he would become, in rapid succession, the mayor of Buffalo, the governor of New York, and the twenty-second president of the United States. Four years later, he would win the popular vote but nevertheless, lose the presidency. And in another four, he’s become the first — and to date, only — president to be returned to office after having been previously turned out.

***

From Twitter, or somewhere:
Random thoughts and observations after 24 hours in Barcelona, Spain:
1. Spain’s median household income (Purchasing Power Parity) was $28,365 in 2021 which is 39% less than the $46,511 household income in the state of Mississippi, America’s poorest state. If Spain became a US state, it would be America’s poorest state by far.
And yet, compared to the US:
2. No signs yet of a single homeless person.
3. No signs yet of a single panhandler.

***

The U.S. economy is producing millions fewer barrels of oil per day than it did during the 2017–2020 boom.

***


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

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

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

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

Scientism

But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.--Mills

***

This is from an editorial on the Colorado gay bar shooting that was written by a law professor:
"This latest shooting, in which at least five people in Colorado were killed late Saturday night when a gunman once again opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, follows six years in which far-right leaders have led American politics down a fearful blame spiral fueled by homophobia, xenophobia and racism."


***

Humans could stay on the Moon for lengthy periods during this decade, a Nasa official has told the BBC.
Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft program for the agency, said habitats would be needed to support scientific missions.

***

The World Cup rules recall some strange COVID rules actually devised by grownups. Downing Street set rules that prohibited pub customers from singing, especially loudly, because it was considered a transmission risk. The government's guidance covered any hospitality venue for that matter, not just pubs, and included restaurants, bars, and similar places serving food or drink as well. I don't know about singing in the shower, as logic is clearly not in play here.

***

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte announced this week that it would allow Sikh students to wear a kirpan, a ceremonial knife, on campus.

***

Can anyone explain that strange World Cup opening? 

***

Scientism

From an article by Kheriarty:

Scientism is the philosophical claim—which cannot be proven scientifically—that science is the only valid form of knowledge. Anyone who begins a sentence with the phrase, “Science says . . . ” is likely in the grip of scientism. Genuine scientists don’t talk like this. They begin sentences with phrases like, “The findings of this study suggest,” or “This meta-analysis concluded. . . .” Scientism, by contrast, is a religious and often a political ideology. “It has been evident for quite a while that science has become our time’s religion,” the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben observed, “the thing which people believe that they believe in.” When science becomes a religion—a closed and exclusionary belief system—we are dealing with scientism.

The characteristic feature of science is warranted uncertainty, which leads to intellectual humility.

The characteristic feature of scientism is unwarranted certainty, which leads to intellectual hubris.

Science is a process, not a state of affairs.

Sunday/Universe

Liberalism has always been a theory against and therefore about coercion. When my left-wing friends, of whom I have many, claim with a knowing smirk that in admiring markets I am “ignoring power,” I have a way of responding: no, dear, it is you who are ignoring power, the power of the monopoly of coercion called a government.--McCloskey

***

A jackrabbit is a hare, not a rabbit. It is called a jackrabbit because of its long ears, as if those of a jackass. The metaphorical use is from a jackrabbit’s sudden movement.

***

China has stolen more personal and business data from Americans than all other nations combined, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Tuesday. Wray says China has an expansive hacking program targeting U.S. citizens, and went on to say that Chinese apps like TikTok represent significant data threats.
Wray's statement comes just weeks after FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for the U.S. to outright ban TikTok.

***

Orion is currently about 134,000km (83,300 miles) from the Moon.

***

Norway is Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer.
The first of 11 floating wind turbines in Equinor’s project off Norway is now generating clean electricity — which will be used to power an oil platform.

***

Sunday/Universe

Today is the Sunday of Christ the King. King of the Universe. The gospel is the Good Thief gospel.

Ancient men were overwhelmed by natural events and sought explanations of things like storms and volcanoes in gods. We're beyond that. Now we look into the universe and quantum mechanics and are so overwhelmed by the size and complexity of nature we think it is beyond the capacity of any god.

Penrose and Hawking, neither a theist, theorized the odds against an ordered universe happening by random chance are 10^10^30th to 1, against. The odds on life are spontaneously appearing 10^10^123rd to 1, against. 

As an aside, Penrose believes "Consciousness must be beyond computable physics."

Overwhelming.

Taylor Swift and Economic Depression

“We are asking ourselves about the cost-benefit ratio of these machines." --A Parisian official on the discussions in Paris to ban e-scooters.

***

While the DOJ claimed in an indictment filed on November 9 that the officers opened the door themselves, body-cam footage viewed by the San Francisco district attorney’s office confirms that it was Pelosi who let them into the home, a source who personally viewed the footage told the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit.

***

The Republicans have the majority in the House. In their first press conference, they explained their immediate plans were to hold hearings on Hunter Biden. There was no mention of inflation, the border, crime, or China.

***

Orion wasn’t alone when it left Earth for this historic trip. A total of 10 low-cost cubesats were tucked inside the SLS upper stage, each designed for different missions to study the Moon, Sun, Earth, and a nearby asteorid. After Orion separated from SLS to begin its journey towards the Moon, an upper stage adapter sequentially deployed each cubesat using a timer, according to NASA. The cubesats were developed by various organizations, including the European Space Agency (ESA), the Italian space agency (ASI), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).


***

Taylor Swift and Economic Depression

There are only so many seats for Taylor Swift's new concert. Ticketmaster or ten Ticketmasters. Supply matters.

Berlin plans to increase organic farming in Germany to approximately 30 percent of all agriculture until 2030. As science journalist Axel Bojanowski points out, this policy would turn Germany from a self-sufficient grain producer into a net importer of grain.

This would be a disaster with global repercussions. Western nations’ decision to reject domestic gas exploration in favor of buying gas on the global market has driven up prices to a level only they can afford – while in developing nations like Pakistan the lights go out. Germany’s move towards organic farming, which the rest of Europe is expected to follow, will have a similar effect on the price of grain and other foodstuffs.

And the Dutch are cutting back on farming and farm animals, turning them into a net importer. And the Americans have given up their position as a net producer of energy and have become an importer.

So all of these global warming cultists are turning their nations into net importers.

From where?

Artemis 1

One of the great ironies of climate change activism today is that many of the movement’s most vocal proponents are also horrified by global income inequality. They are blind, however, to the fact that the costs of the policies they demand will be borne disproportionately by the world’s poorest. This is because so much of climate change policy boils down to limiting access to cheap energy.--Lomborg

***

Nucleic Acid Testing Now Accounts for 1.3% of China’s GDP.

***

"Musicaster" is a mediocre musician. The pejorative suffix -aster (meaning something that is inferior, small, or shallow) gives us some delightful words when it comes to name-calling. A reviewer brands a poet a poetaster (an inferior poet) and the poet might call the reviewer a criticaster. There are also the terms mathematicaster and philosophaster.

***

The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday. (CNN 2003) Huh? Where was that from?

***

Artemis 1

Artemis SLS rocket and Orion capsule are up for Artemis I's month-long test flight. At the end, the pearly white Orion capsule will travel a total of 1.3 million miles, circling the moon for a week, and returning to Earth.

Artemis I is the precursor to Artemis II, a crewed mission around the moon, and then Artemis III, the first to return humans to the surface. Artemis I is designed to be the only uncrewed test flight of the SLS, which places a lot of pressure on it to deliver big.

The follow-up mission, Artemis II, will feature three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency. The fate of that mission rests on the coming weeks and Artemis I. At present, it's scheduled to launch in May 2024.

That will be followed by Artemis III, which is the "Apollo 11" of the Artemis program. Artemis III will endeavor to land humans on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, sometime in 2025. It will feature the first female astronaut to leave a boot print in lunar soil.

The Future of Health Insurance?

The midterm elections indicate that a growing number of voters seem inclined to make cool-eyed calculations as unenthralled adults: Do not seek the best imaginable political outcome; seek instead to avoid the worst.--Will

***

Michael Gerson, a neo-con political advisor--especially for Bush, speechwriter, evangelical Christian, and editorial writer for the WashPo has died of kidney cancer. A controversial guy. In October 2017, Gerson referred to President Trump's "fundamental unfitness for high office" and asked whether he is "psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?" He cited "the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims"

***

The New York Post buried Trump's 2024 campaign launch on page 26: "Florida Man Makes Announcement."

***

Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday launched Amazon clinic, a virtual platform where users can connect with healthcare providers to help treat common ailments like allergies and skin conditions.

***

...he thought that monopolists are “like *Incubusses* (who) doe suck the very vital spirits, and drive into one vein that masse of blood which should cherish the whole body.” Those who were excluded from membership in this fraternity and those who had to bear the increased costs caused by monopoly, were forced to suffer “a kind of slavery upon him in his own country” which Thomas Johnson wanted to see abolished as soon as possible.--Thomas Johnson (1645) reviewed by Hart

***

The Future of Health Insurance?

Things change, sometimes for good reason. Except for health care. Everyone knows that single-payer systems are best. And inevitable. All roads lead to single-payer.

But here is another view.

In 2000, around 100,000 Swedes had private health insurance. Today, there are seven times as many, in a country of 10 million people. In 60% of cases, the insurance is paid for by the employer. According to the Swedish insurers’ organization Svensk Försäkring, the rate can vary from 300 to 600 crowns on average per month. For those dealing with health problems, the advantages are quicker consultations and avoiding long waiting lines.

Single-payer systems are failing.

Single-payer’s magic has historically worked via just a few channels:
1. Some amount of monopsony allows the government to bid down medical services below market rates.
2. Political imperatives lead to lower training burdens, lower staffing ratios, and lower certainty in diagnosis and treatment.
3. Obfuscation of possible alternatives diminishes demand for costlier care.

The author (Cowen) concludes that the demographics of the modern West are simply growing and changing too fast to allow for economic management by single payors.

Sweden and Crime

Hume’s further concern is chiefly to show that it is only the universal application of the same “general and inflexible rules of justice” which will secure the establishment of a general order, that this and not any particular aims or results must guide the application of the rules if an order is to be the result. Any concern with particular ends of either the individuals or the community, or a regard for the merits of particular individuals, would entirely spoil that aim.--Hayek

***

The word 'fan' is an abbreviation of fanatic which originally described a religious maniac as if possessed by a deity, from Latin fanum (temple).

***

It is fascinating that anyone can argue intermittent and indefinitely mandatory face coverings don’t constitute a loss of freedom. If mandates are not a loss of freedom, what is?

***

...we show that Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K–3 are 9 percentage points (13 percent) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points (19 percent) more likely to enroll in college compared to their Black schoolmates who are not. Black teachers have no significant long-run effects on White students.--from a research paper

***

Sweden and Crime

For the first time, crime tops the list of voters' most important concerns in the run-up to the elections.
Of the more than 8,200 people the Swedish police counted as being members of criminal gangs by late 2021, almost 15% were under the age of 18.
Sweden has in just two generations gone from being one of the safest countries in the world to being one of the most dangerous countries in Europe. During the same time, mass immigration has dramatically altered Sweden's population. 1.2 million of those eligible to vote in the elections in September 2022 were born outside Sweden.
Sweden has one of the world's worst recorded rape rates. In 2018, the state broadcaster SVT revealed that 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the previous five years were born abroad.

This is from an article in Gateway and contains a lot of worrisome observations. The question is, are the implications valid? Does crime have cultural roots and nourishment? Is globalization destabilizing? Is cultural continuity valuable and can it be easily disrupted? Does rape have a cultural interface?

We are developing a fluid world, for better or worse. We must have a better idea of who we are, individually and in groups.

Access to Education

The single most impressive result of the mid-terms was the failure of the anti-government movement to influence the school boards, despite all the storm and fury. Only one-third of those slates won. Now, what does that mean?

***

One month after leaving the Democratic Party, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is joining Fox News as a paid contributor.

***

By the time he was in the sixth grade, Larry Summers had created a system to calculate the probability that a baseball team would make it to the playoffs in October based on its performance through the Fourth of July. In 1965 the Philadelphia Bulletin described Summers as the most qualified eleven-year-old oddsmaker in baseball.

***

China announces change of Covid strategy:

“Identify population base of the elderly, patients with underlying diseases, pregnant women, patients with chronic diseases and other groups, and formulate health and safety protection plans for them.”

***

Access to Education

The Black population of the U.S. is 13.6%. That is a large portion of the population to be unproductive. The education of children is seen as a lynchpin for advancement in the culture and the focus of improving the circumstance of Blacks in the economy.

But...

Chronic absenteeism in the San Francisco Unified School District has more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, rising from 14% to 28%, according to preliminary data for 2021-22. Students are considered chronically absent when they miss 10% of the 180-day school year.

Chronic absenteeism doubled for most students–chronic absenteeism among Asians, for example, doubled from 4% to 9%–but chronic absenteeism increased from 38% to a stunning 64% among African Americans. As a result, some schools with a large percentage of African American students have 80% or more of their student body chronically absent.

That is not a problem that is going to be changed by education techniques.

Questions

Questions

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. -Claude Monet, painter (14 Nov 1840-1926)

***

A secret unmanned US spaceship landed in Florida after circling the Earth for three years, sparking UFO fears and a causing sonic boom.
After a record 908 days in orbit, the solar-powered X-37B landed at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.

***

Germany will pull out of the 1994 energy treaty that has been widely criticized for protecting investments in fossil fuels, a spokesperson for the government said Friday.
Europe's largest economy joins France, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland in withdrawing from the pact.
The other countries have said the pact is incompatible with their commitments to the 2015 Paris accord to combat climate change.

***

66% of voters disapprove of Biden's energy policy, 52% disapprove on climate, 62 concerned about climate change, 45 approved energy policy,

***

"White" designation in college admission diversity requirements includes not just Europeans but people from North Africa and Asia west of India. It comprises “Welsh, Norwegians, Greeks, Moroccans, Chaldeans, Afghans, Iranians, and North African Berbers.”

Sunday

AI can be stupid.
KFC Germany issued an apology after a "semi-automated" push notification system promoted "tender cheese with crispy chicken" as a way to remember the anniversary of a Jewish massacre.
"It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" the message said according to the BBC.

***

“I don’t think the conflict will be resolved with Russia and Ukraine until Ukraine gets out of — until Putin gets out of Ukraine,” Biden said. “Anyway, you guys, I’m heading down to — first of all, going to Cairo for the environmental effort, then heading over to Colombia and then — I mean, Cambodia. I was thinking — I’m thinking the Western Hemisphere.”--Biden

***

Of the hundreds of millions of Covid vaccine doses given in the U.S. since late 2020, there have been around 1,000 reports of vaccine-related myocarditis or pericarditis in children under age 18, primarily young males, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of those who developed the condition have fully recovered, although research so far has only looked at how well they're doing after several months.

***

Sunday

Just when you're sailing along in the poetry and abstractions of the gospel, you get a gospel like this. Today's is a casual bible reader's nightmare--and a theologian's dream.

Starting with the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, Christ moves into the various enemies of the spirit from empires to families. He then discusses false prophets, using the word 'to deceive,' an active evil force. Then the faithful are promised torture and death--then promised not a hair of the faithful would die.

An embattled Christianity with the backdrop of the to-be-destroyed temple, life as a spiritual siege. A grim picture for The Children of Light.

A Funeral

A Funeral

We are creatures of ceremony and the funeral I went to yesterday is probably representative of the last of the modern ceremonies. Most are, or have been, social initiation ceremonies: baptism, marriage. Birthdays are very personal celebrations. Funerals are an exit, felt by all.

In Catholic funerals, the gospel read is often the brilliant Road to Emmaus gospel. where two of Christ's apostles are on their way to the town of Emmaus. They are leaving Jerusalem where Christ's recent death has devastated the community. They are joined by Christ, whom they do not recognize. He joins the conversation and explains the life and death of Christ, particularly in the context of prophecy. The travelers reach a point in the road where it seems the new man who joined them is going to go his own way. The men encourage him to continue with them to Emmaus. They eventually recognize him at the breaking of the bread at dinner.

This story is especially interesting in its connection to the Eucharist but what is fascinating is the journey of men, met by Christ whom they do not recognize and the moment where they, the travelers, must initiate the true development and enhancement of their understanding. Without their positive efforts, Christ will move on alone.

The travelers return to Jerusalem to confirm the resurrection.  Christ has given death a context.

Returning to Covid

Returning to Covid

From an article by Topol who is very discouraged by the government's response to Covid. He supports the Chinese position of Zero Covid Deaths, taking a moral rather than scientific high ground. It's an interesting thought process, assembling points to create a collage, then vaulting to a program. Unsettling.

"Prior to Omicron we could, with a booster, assume there was well over 90-95% vaccine effectiveness vs severe disease. It is clear, however, from multiple reports, including the UK Health Security Agency and Kaiser Permanente that this level of protection has declined to approximately 80%, particularly taking account the more rapid waning than previously seen.

...we have a highly unfavorable picture of: (1) accelerated evolution of the virus; (2) increased immune escape of new variants; (2) progressively higher transmissibility and infectiousness; (4) substantially less protection from transmission by vaccines and boosters; (5) some reduction on vaccine/booster protection against hospitalization and death; (6) high vulnerability from infection-acquired immunity only; and (7) likelihood of more noxious new variants in the months ahead

During the Delta wave in the United States, vaccinated individuals accounted for 23 per cent of the deaths, whereas this nearly doubled to 42 per cent during the Omicron wave. This is attributable to waning of protection, lack of boosters, and the diminished protection against Omicron (BA.1).

...we should adopt the new policy of Zero Covid Deaths. This is diametrically opposed to Covid capitulation. This builds, in part, on the tools that we already have, knowing that the vast majority of deaths occur in people age 60 plus (92% of US hospitalizations have been in people age 50+). All such people need to have vaccination and booster coverage but our CDC has failed to convey their life-saving impact from the get go, a veritable booster botch job as recently reviewed by Kaiser Health News. That’s why we have 31% of Americans who had had 1 booster shot whereas most peer countries are double that proportion. And why we rank 60th in the world’s countries for boosters, and especially poorly among older Americans compared (<65%, age 60+) with many Western Europe and Asian Pacific countries (~85-90%). That doesn't even speak to the need for a 4th dose in this high-risk group or that lack of intensive monitoring of our 7 million immunocompromised people who are not getting help to guide their protection with assay of neutralizing antibodies, or receiving Evusheld monoclonal antibody preventive protection. But well beyond the use of boosters and vaccines, and easy, rapid access to Paxlovid, we absolutely need an aggressive stance to get ahead of the virus—for the first time since the pandemic began—instead of surrendering. That means setting priorities, funding, and the realization, unfortunately, that the pandemic is far from over. Our Covid vaccines and medications are an order of magnitude more effective than what we have for influenza, but even our current level of deaths (we have already had over 175,000 Covid deaths in 2022), no less what may be in store, is still >10-fold in excess of seasonal flu (about 30,000 per year). That is totally unacceptable, nearly totally preventable loss of lives at scale."

Election Questions

Election Questions

A rich guy named Caruso running for mayor in LA spent $100 Million of his own money on the campaign.

Money is important to politics. A lot is probably given without the expectation of a return. But a lot isn't.

Half the economy is governmental. So the government itself has an interest in elections as do its commercial partners.

This election had a very large youth vote so it is likely that the obviously unconstitutional and economically dangerous college loan forgiveness program was a positive to that group, not the cynical constitutional and economic error it really was.

Pre-election day voting is a big advantage to well-funded campaigns. Campaigns with less money must hold their advertising until late in the campaign; voters in early-voting states vote before they see those ads.

A survey of voters revealed that the vast majority of them believe the overturning of Roe was an outlawing of abortion rather than what it was, the realignment of constitutional responsibility. That may have been a factor in the mid-terms.

Biden said in his presser that he would change nothing of what he had done or was doing. There's a lot in that statement. One thing is a lack of appreciation of supply and demand. In this he may be sharing a deep misunderstanding of how things work with the young people who voted.

November 8, 2022

November 8, 2022

I am amazed that this economy did not dramatically overturn the government. If the disasters of the last two years did not mobilize a rejection, what will? Is it that, despite the problems and anxieties, the Republicans are not seen as a solution?

This election could be seen as typical of midterm elections--not any type of rejection--and could encourage Biden to run again.

The abortion issue on post-vote surveys was surprisingly strong, often ranking second behind the economy. If I were the Democrats I would put an abortion state amendment on every ballot on every election cycle for the rest of time.

Fetterman's winning is astonishing, both physiologically and philosophically. His provincial ad campaign may have had nativist overtones that were overlooked and effective.

The Democrats' funding of poor Republican candidates in their primaries worked. Mastriano in Pa. hurt Oz. And I overestimated Kerri Lake. It's dishonorable and creepy, but legal.

Military Rebuilding will probably be muted.

This seems to mean the border policy, declining military spending, and the suicidal energy policy will not only continue, but are actually approved of by the electorate. I would have expected the energy policy alone would have cost the Democrats the majority.

Can O'Rourk and Stacy Abrams stop now and go away?

Chris Delusio and Summer Lee were elected to the House in Western Pa. to probably join The Squad.

Desantis looks like a serious national candidate. I thought Va.'s Youngkin was surprisingly absent.

Trump is going to be a problem if he continues to try to be the face of the Republican party. And if he is not accepted and splits the Party--at least in 2024--it will be worse.

Election Day

Interesting energy update. The annual global warming conference is underway, The U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP 27. It's being held in Egypt. Among those not attending are China, Russia, and India.

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Election Day

This election will review the last two years and judge it. That will not be enough.

I just heard a conservative commentator say there will be a big vote against 'Biden's failed energy policy.' If that is true, the nation is in serious trouble. Biden's energy policy was to create precisely what we have; these people want to destroy cheap energy in favor of another source we have not yet developed. Their next step will probably be to burn our farms.

The policy of the Left is much like the policy of an invading enemy army. Opposition to this approach must be based on more than the price of gas. The policies of the Left are fundamentally opposed to the basic marrow of the nation. An electorate that underestimates that will always be taking one step forward and two steps back. Eventually we will be back to some pre-petroleum economy. And a pre-enlightenment government.

Neo 1619

“What is clear is that electrification is a technology chosen by politicians, not by industry. Given the current European energy mix, an electric car needs to drive 70,000 kilometres to compensate for the carbon footprint of manufacturing the battery and to start catching up with a light hybrid vehicle, which costs half as much as an EV (electric vehicle).”--Carlos Tavares, boss of the Stellantis Group that includes Peugeot, Citroen, Alfa, Fiat, and Jeep.

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Tatis signed a monster 14-year contract, then hurt his shoulder, then broke his wrist, then began fighting with his infield coach, then got suspended for 80 games for PEDs. The talk in San Diego is that he may have lost his infield job to Kim, his temporary replacement.

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The Washington Post reported that "more than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments. Wait...


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More than 400,000 square miles of land will be required for wind and solar farms, which is more than 10% of the contiguous U.S. Imagine.

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According to Pugh, the U.S. is 28th in the world in reading, 40th in math.

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Neo 1619

Many of the opinions on the modern Left are not just debatable in logic, history and morality, they adapt to revelations and criticism. Here is a critique of the evolution of the NYT's 1619 nonsense:

The history of the American Revolution isn’t the only thing the New York Times is revising through its 1619 Project. The “paper of record” has also taken to quietly altering the published text of the project itself after one of its claims came under intense criticism.

When the 1619 Project went to print in August 2019 as a special edition of the New York Times Magazine, the newspaper put up an interactive version on its website. The original opening text stated:

The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. [emphasis added]

The passage, and in particular its description of the year 1619 as “our true founding,” quickly became a flashpoint for controversy around the project. Critics on both the Left and Right took issue with the paper’s declared intention of displacing 1776 with the alternative date—a point that was also emphasized in the magazine feature’s graphics, showing the date of American independence crossed out and replaced by the date of the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia.

For several months after the 1619 Project first launched, its creator and organizer Nikole Hannah-Jones doubled down on the claim. “I argue that 1619 is our true founding,” she tweeted the week after the project launched. “Also, look at the banner pic in my profile”—a reference to the graphic of the date 1776 crossed out with a line. It’s a claim she repeated many times over.

But something changed as the historical controversies around the 1619 Project intensified in late 2019 and early 2020. A group of five distinguished historians took issue with Hannah-Jones’s lead essay, focusing on its historically unsupported claim that protecting slavery was a primary motive of the American revolutionaries when they broke away from Britain in 1776. Other details of the project soon came under scrutiny, revealing both errors of fact and dubious interpretations of evidence in other essays, such as Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project piece attempting to connect American capitalism with slavery. Finally back in March, a historian who the Times recruited to fact-check Hannah-Jones’s essay revealed that she had warned the paper against publishing its claims about the motives of the American Revolution on account of their weak evidence. The 1619 Project’s editors ignored the advice.

Throughout the controversy, the line about the year 1619 being “our true founding” continued to haunt the Times. This criticism did not aim to denigrate the project’s titular date or the associated events in the history of slavery. Rather, the passage came to symbolize the Times’s blurring of historical analysis with editorial hyperbole. The announced intention of reframing the country’s origin date struck many readers across the political spectrum as an implicit repudiation of the American Revolution and its underlying principles.

Rather than address this controversy directly, the Times—it now appears—decided to send it down the memory hole—the euphemized term for selectively editing inconvenient passages out of old newspaper reports in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Without announcement or correction, the newspaper quietly edited out the offending passage such that it now reads:

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Discovery of this edit came about earlier this week when Nikole Hannah-Jones went on CNN to deny that she had ever sought to displace 1776 with a new founding date of 1619. She repeated the point in a now-deleted tweet: “The #1619 Project does not argue that 1619 was our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.” It was not the first time that Hannah-Jones had tried to alter her self-depiction of the project’s aims on account of the controversial line. She attempted a similar revision a few months ago during an online spat with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

But this time the brazen rewriting of her own arguments proved too much. Hannah-Jones’s readers scoured her own Twitter feed and public statements over the previous year, unearthing multiple instances where she had in fact announced an intention to displace 1776 with 1619.

The foremost piece of evidence against Hannah-Jones’s spin, of course, came from the opening passage of from the Times’s own website where it originally announced its aim “to reframe the country’s history” around the year “1619 as our true founding.” When readers returned to that website to cite the line however, they discovered to their surprise that it was no longer there.

The Times quietly dropped the offending passage at some point during the intervening year, although multiple screencaps of the original exist. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine suggests the alteration came around late December 2019, when the 1619 Project was facing an onslaught of criticism over this exact point from several distinguished historians of the American founding.

It wasn’t the only edit that the newspaper made to further conceal its previous denigration of 1776. Prompted by the discovery of the first deletion, Twitter users noticed another suspicious change to the project’s text. The print edition of the 1619 Project from August 2019 contained an introductory passage reading:

In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed.

 The website version of the 1619 Project now reads:

In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.

 This additional reference to the 1619 origin point, underlined in the original print version, is no more.

Whatever the exact occasion for the changes, the Times did not disclose its edits or how they obscured one of the most controversial claims in the entire 1619 Project. They simply made the problematic passages disappear, hoping that nobody would notice. (can't remember where)