Newscastoris Leftus Profundis and Pettifogery

On this day:

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

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

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

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Patrick Queen is 26.

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

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


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

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Newscastoris Leftus Profundis and Pettifogery

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

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

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

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

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

Significance grew from this humble seed.

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

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

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

News

 

News

From the news last night:

The Houthis attacked several U.S. ships last night.

Melania has declined the 'transition tea' with Jill Biden because Jill insulted her family during the campaign. She's becoming one of my favorite Americans.

Chris recommends the podcast 'Sold a Story' on Spotify, on American education. It is very good, upsetting and surprising. Two amazing stats: 35% of 4th graders can not read. 85% of Black students in 4th grade can not read. And the reasons are infuriating.

Target has a Merry Christmas campaign for the first time in years.

Trump’s election drove the largest single-day increase in the U.S. dollar in more than two years, and the third largest in the last decade.

Kamala's campaign spent $1 billion. Billion. And they paid the entertainers who appeared for her. $1 million to Oprah.
 
Some remarkable Trump announcements last night.

---Huckabee to Israel; hopefully he will be busy and will do fewer ads. 

---Rubio to State; a turnaround from 'little Mario.'

---Homan, a real bull, is 'Border Czar; his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, will be Kristi Noem, the diminutive puppy assassin. It's hard to imagine that relationship. And DHS is a big job

---Pete Hegseth as Defense? He is a decorated veteran from several tours in the Middle East with a Princeton and Harvard background who has been a vocal critic of how the military has been organized and marketed. So this might be an innovative and revolutionary appointment. But he has run only a charity. And this is a really big job. On the other hand, has Lloyd Austin done a good job?

---Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to overhaul the federal government, leading what is called the Department of Government Efficiency. These are actually good, important ideas and I guess there's no reason they can't be entertaining.

Several of his foreign policy appointees are pro-Ukraine. Surprising.

The crucial positions of Education and Attorney General are pending. Both departments have been nightmares and need serious guidance.

Business and government are logical mergers. But are they? Herbert Hoover's election was powered by his engineering background, the success he had earlier in repatriating Americans caught in the first war, and his managing the Americans' effort to feed Europe after the war. His election was felt to be a victory for efficiency and objectivity in government with more than a dash of philanthropy. The depression and his position in it were complex but he was blamed and that positive narrative was destroyed.
In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. The Executive benefitted from both commissions’ recommendations.

So the Department of Government Efficiency run by successful entrepreneurs is not new but success is not a certainty.

Stuff

Stuff

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.--Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century,” first published in French 1851; translated by John Beverly Robinson (1923), pp. 293-294.
(Proudhon was an anarchist, perhaps the first.)

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On Nicaragua: 

Freedom of thought and expression also had to go. In September 2022, the online news outlet Confidencial reported that Mr. Ortega had “closed 54 national and local media in 13 departments, there are 11 media workers in jail, and more than 140 journalists in exile.” Mr. Ortega has closed or seized at least 26 private universities, according to an Aug. 17 report from CBS News in Miami.--O'Grady

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As a group, immigrants had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for the last 150 years. Moreover, relative to the U.S.-born, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960: Immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated (30% relative to U.S.-born whites). This relative decline occurred among immigrants from all regions and cannot be explained by changes in immigrants’ observable characteristics or immigration policy. Instead, the decline likely reflects immigrants’ resilience to economic shocks.
...
We interpret these results as evidence that immigrants’ attitudes toward other immigrants respond to the lack of a selective immigration policy: namely, if successful immigrants run the risk of being perceived as related to undocumented or uncontrolled immigration, they respond by embracing an immigrants’ anti-immigration view.---2 papers

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The ARC classifies 27.2 percent of North Appalachian counties as distressed but only 9.6 percent of South Appalachian counties that way. Over 70 percent of counties in South Appalachia have grown in population since the 2020 Census. North Appalachia lost 17,131 people in total, while South Appalachia gained 127,585. The difference in net in-migration is even more stark. While the North posted positive net domestic in-migration of 22,563, the South tallied almost 300,000—13 times as high. The story is similar for jobs, with the North losing 227,049 positions since the pre-pandemic year of 2019, while the South actually exceeded its pre-Covid levels by 66,377. In other words, much of South Appalachia is seeing a population inflow and is growing in both population and employment.


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This is astounding.
Humankind struggled to survive during a 100,000 year period during the early Pleistocene, according to researchers who used a computer model to discover a severe population bottleneck in our species’ ancient past.

The bottleneck occurred between 813,000 years ago and 930,000 years ago, and reduced an ancestral human species to less than 1,300 breeding individuals. The issue persisted for 117,000 years, and aligns with a chronological gap in the African and Eurasian human fossil records in that period. The team’s research on the bottleneck was published in Science.

Some News

 

Some News:

CNN (12/8, McPhillips) reports hospitals in the US “are more full than they’ve been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a CNN analysis of data from” HHS. CNN adds, “More than 80% of hospital beds are in use nationwide, jumping eight percentage points in the past two weeks.” This comes as “the broader respiratory virus season is in full swing across the US.”

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A top MEP has been suspended from her party after police launched an investigation into alleged illicit lobbying activities by Qatar, in what threatens to blow up into a major crisis at the heart of the European Union.

Belgian police searched 16 homes and detained at least four people in and around Brussels on Friday as part of an inquiry into what prosecutors called “criminal organization, corruption and money laundering,” as first reported by Belgian media and confirmed to POLITICO by Belgian federal police.

European Parliament vice-president Eva Kaili, from the Greek socialist party Pasok, was said to be among those detained. She was suspended from the Socialists and Democrats group in the parliament “with immediate effect, in response to the ongoing investigations,” the EU-level group tweeted late Friday. Kaili was also expelled from the center-left Pasok party in Greece.

Kaili, one of the parliament’s 14 vice-presidents, recently called Qatar a “frontrunner in labor rights” after meeting with the country’s labor minister...

Qatar is accused of targeting officials “with a significant political and/or strategic position” at the Parliament, sending them “substantial amounts of money” and “important gifts,” according to the prosecutor’s statement.

“This is the most shocking integrity scandal in the history of the EU,” said Alberto Alemanno, a law professor at HEC Paris and outspoken activist on transparency issues.

(Politico)

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Closing out a 25-day voyage around the moon, NASA's Artemis 1 spacecraft closed in on Earth Saturday, on track for a 25,000-mph re-entry Sunday that will subject the unpiloted capsule to a hellish 5,000-degree inferno before splashdown off Baja California.

If all goes well, NASA plans to follow the Artemis 1 mission by sending four astronauts around the moon in the program's second flight — Artemis 2 — in 2024. The first moon-landing would follow in the 2025-26 timeframe when NASA says the first woman and the next man will set foot on the lunar surface.

News

News 

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's first mobilization since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Ukraine, warning the West he was not bluffing when he said he'd be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia. 

In this mendacious world, it is unsure if he really believes the West wants to impair Russia's integrity or if he has lost his mind.
The announcements are likely efforts to discourage West support for Ukraine. And no one knows our response as no one knows who is running the country. From what we see, there is no guarantee of quality in leadership regardless of who it is.

240 million dollars were stolen from the food program in Wisconsin.

NEWS

 NEWS

Good news. The Biden administration's disinformation czar claimed in a book she authored this year she will not be "silenced" on social media as she pushed back against what she considered to be "harassment" from men whenever she shared opinions online.
She claims the "infrastructure of the internet is built for men."

A lot of people feel she's unfit for the post but perhaps the whole idea is so goofy, she's perfect.

The State Department said it is "closely monitoring" the investigation into what left three Americans dead at a Bahamas Sandals resort, and a fourth hospitalized.

Salvation Army of Sarasota County: Starting in May, the agency was forced to cut its free dinner and shower services for members of the public who are not enrolled in its programs. 

An officer said. “In the last three to six months, we probably lost I would say 20% to 30% of our staff due to the fact that they can’t afford to live in the area and they need to move.”

Sinn Féin will be the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time, pushing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) into second place.

“The War on the West” claims that perhaps as many as 12 million Africans were trafficked across the Atlantic in the Transatlantic slave trade. At the same time, as many as 18 million were sold to the East from Africa in the Arab slave trade. The author asks why are there no descendants of slaves in the Arab lands as there are in this country? Because, he says, the Arabs castrated all the male Africans they bought so that there would be no next generation.