1453
Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.
1660
English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1780
American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s Continentals, allegedly after the Continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1914
The ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives.
1919
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1931
Born October 19, 1899, in Sardinia, Michele “Mike” Schirru, Anarchist against Fascism, U.S. Citizen, is executed by an Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. The U.S. Government did nothing to help Schirru.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.
***
If you do not take the money from someone who has earned it and do not give it to someone else who hasn't, is that a "transfer of wealth?"
***
Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration, who was accused of data fraud.
In 2018 and 2019, she was the fifth-highest paid employee at the prestigious school, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Another View of Biden
I think this Biden episode is a threat to the stability of the nation, vastly worse than Nixon. And it creates an undercurrent of faithlessness in the voting public. It was aristocratic, manipulative, arrogant, and mendacious. It destroyed the executive specifically, politicians in general, and the Press. It should destroy the Democrat Party. It should be a constant topic of discussion.
I think it's treason.
This is from The Contrarian, written by Jennifer Rubin. She resigned from her position at the WashPo to join Substack. It is her take on Biden. She thinks he is a noble statesman; I think he is an undistinguished, evolved racist hack. She believes the major problem with his presidency was the mismanagement of its last months that allowed Trump to sneak into the White House. Generally, she thinks all of the problems I see in the Biden presidency are present only in Trump's. There is a wistful longing for those European hierarchies we thought we buried long ago.
This is a woman of accomplishments, and her thinking is hard for me to understand. It seems very much like a deep and virulent religious zealotry from a mysterious foreign culture. Nor, from what I read and see, is she alone.
She sees " racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here" where I see a deliberate attempt to subvert the basic constitutional structure, perhaps before the 2020 election but definitely after--when Trump was defeated and gone. The Regency had nothing to do with Trump for years. It just got more prominent when the election came around again. The enmity she feels toward Trump and his supporters is based on I know not what.
We face staggering problems, none as great as that of defining ourselves. The importance of the individual citizen and how he chooses leadership is the essence of the nation. Undermining that is revolutionary--and criminal, in my mind. Creating a sham government is criminal. Then come the other problems: immigration (20 million illegals, including 40,000 young Chinese men--or, if you prefer, 40 divisions,), our defensive capabilities, our ability--or willingness--to educate our young, among many.
And the great circling plane, our astonishing debt of $36 trillion--with us fussing about how much money we do not have to give away. That plane, at some time, will land.
I do not know if Trump can solve any of these problems. We have promised too much to others. We must, however, keep those promises we made to ourselves. The Biden coup has shown the Democrats can not.
But I should give some hearing to other views, and here is Ms Rubin's.
Joe Biden
The confluence of former President Joe Biden’s terrible cancer diagnosis and a highly promoted book on his supposed mental and physical decline has resulted in a great deal of breathless, heartless, dumb commentary. People need to get a grip and exercise some basic humanity grounded in basic truths.
First, a dedicated public servant (whose contributions to America will need to be recognized by later generations, given the utter lack of seriousness in the current political-media climate), a father, a husband, and a grandfather has received news all of us would dread. That he and his family must endure this ordeal during a time of pearl-clutching and angry accusations underscores the meanness that now courses through our politics. Instead of “Who knew what, when?” the appropriate question is “What will we lose when he passes from the scene?” (The answer: A statesman who defended the post-WWII world order and a clear-eyed, center-left champion of the middle class.)
Second, the notion that Biden was a feeble, inert, and nonfunctional figurehead during his presidency is utter nonsense. He made decisions, delivered some marvelous speeches, crafted far-sighted foreign policy alliances, and presided over a flurry of productive, bipartisan domestic bills. On his worst day as president, he was more insightful, knowledgeable, productive, and effective than not only Donald Trump (as would be any sentient being) but many other presidents.
Third, none of this excuses those around him and, yes, Biden himself, for failing to recognize sooner that he lacked the verbal acuity and forceful presentation skills needed to run a successful campaign. He should not have decided to run. It was his worst decision, enabled by advisers who could not bring themselves to level with him. As a result, we are undergoing untold horrors in Trump 2.0. Depending on the success of pro-democracy forces in defending our fragile system, Biden and his inner circle will have played a role in the human, economic, and constitutional damage his successor will leave behind.
Fourth, for all the media caterwauling, when the heck are they going to level with voters about the current president’s mental and emotional descent into utter incoherence? Trump crafts his lies and then reflexively imbibes his own disinformation, conspiracies, and lies. By continuing to treat him (during his presidency) as if he is all there and by absolving Republicans of playing along, the media repeats—at the worst possible time—the profoundly irresponsible, lazy treatment of Biden they now bemoan. They are picking over the remains of a presidency allowed to persist too long (as did Woodrow Wilson’s, for example) while ignoring the five-alarm fire of insanity currently consuming the White House.
The utter refusal to systematically reveal, analyze, and hold him accountable for his divorce from reality constitutes the worst media malpractice imaginable. At some level, voters know corporate and billionaire media refuse to level with them, which is why so many news consumers have fled to The Contrarian and to other independent media outlets.
Finally, expecting every Democrat to have perceived what the media did not (Biden’s accelerated decline) and expose what the media failed to do is rich, even for a corporate media already corrupted by desperation for access and self-interest. Aside from those in the inner circle, most saw what the press did—an aging but still effective president.
It’s quite something for the media to demand Democrats take responsibility even as the corporate media ignore their own obtuseness while refusing to engage Republicans on the latter’s astounding deceit and lack of constitutional loyalty in enabling Trump to trash our economy, democracy, and national character.
Where does that leave us? Essentially, where we have been since the November election. The fate of our endangered democracy is the seminal challenge of our time. Recriminations about the past and idle speculation about 2028 distract us from the task of solidifying a broad coalition to defeat the racism, fascism, disinformation, and xenophobia that we foolishly told ourselves would not take hold here. It has.
Only if we focus on ripping out the MAGA menace root and branch will we spare ourselves of the horrors that Europeans have experienced over millennia. Perhaps that is why EU countries have consistently chosen center-left leaders in the Trump era. They know exactly what is at stake.
No comments:
Post a Comment