On December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 launched, the last of the Apollo Moon missions. Later that day, one of the astronauts — either Ron Evans or Harrison Schmitt — snapped the photo that would later become famous as “The Blue Marble.”
On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3,000 years.
King Tut, as he is now popularly known, started life as “Tutankhaten.” The future pharaoh’s name references the 18th Dynasty conception of a deity as represented in the sun disk, the monotheistic worship of which was the point of the Atenism of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), who reigned when he was a boy. During the reign of Tut, the religious revolution instigated by Akhenaten was overthrown, and the Amenist cult and its priesthood restored to preëminence. Thus the name change referencing another conception of a sun god, Amun.
Tutankhamun (c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC) died before age 20 and his burial appears to have been hastily made in the Valley of the Kings. He was succeeded by Ay, and then a general, Horemheb, who tried to erase from the records the “Amarna Period” pharaohs and any mention of the Atenist monotheistic revolution associated with pharaohs Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay. The tomb designated KV62 had been left intact, its grave good astounding the world, hence the April 19, 1923, issue of Life, reproduced in the image above.
The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
Thomas Sowell, “Big Lies in Politics” (Townhall, July 31, 2012).
On November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed by Jack Ruby while in custody.
In my experience, whenever many politicians push for a ballot measure in order to supposedly “fix” an already-established right of citizen initiative, the goal is usually to make it harder for people to get a question onto the ballot.
Three questions on state ballots this November exemplify the pattern. Fortunately, voters have rejected the sly politicians’ gambit in each case.
In Arizona, Proposition 136 would have let opponents of a ballot question force a doubt about its constitutionality to be adjudicated before the measure can be placed on the ballot. (Nothing prevents a measure from being challenged in court after passage.) Of course, sometimes litigation, whether sincere or not, can’t be entirely resolved before proposed urgent deadlines, like the deadline for submitting signatures to place a question on the ballot.
Arizona voters clobbered Prop 136 with about 64 percent of the vote.
In North Dakota, voters had to again defeat a lawmaker-referred measure to weaken citizen initiative rights. Among other arbitrary burdens, Measure 2 would have increased the number of signatures required to send a question to ballot.
Voters killed it by about 56 to 44 percent.
Lastly, Colorado’s Amendment K sought to impose an earlier deadline for submitting initiative signatures. This, too, voters declined by about a ten point margin.
Good results. Voters tend to see the elite’s designs and react appropriately.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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These Kamala Harris voters are not really going to kill themselves. It is just something to say on Twitter.
I really hope I’m not wrong about this.
I’ll leave to others the counsel of life. That is the job of friends and family and emergency hotline dispatchers. My counsel is different: talking about suicide because your candidate lost is undemocratic. If the authoritarian pronouncements of both major candidates alarmed you about the danger of anti-democratic trend, this fad should raise the alarm several decibels.
The whole point of democracy is to allow a transition of power sans bloodshed. And that requires both contenders and supporters not to shed each other’s blood … or their own. When they fail.
It’s a requirement. Not to over-react.
The losers have to accept the loss, and the winners have to refrain from using the state to punish the losers further.
It’s sort of that simple.
Resignation is key, as scientist Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) indicated: “Going to bed, reasonably resigned to Trump win at this point as it seemed to me from a distance for some time. He may be a nut, a liar, and a crook, but the bright side is a likely boost free speech and due process at unis and bump in tech sector, if we survive the rest.”
We will survive. If Trump wins the Electoral Vote (I’m going to bed, too, before a final determination), or if Harris does.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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