This is a beautiful country.
John Brown, last words (December 2, 1859), as quoted in John Brown and his Men (1894) by Richard Josiah Hinton, p. 397.
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John Brown
Author: Redactor
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Against the Coercive Acts
On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress denounced the British Parliament’s Intolerable Acts and demanded British concessions.
Called the “Coercive Acts” in Great Britain, the Intolerable Acts were a series of five punitive programs directed against the American colonies after the Boston Tea Party. Opposition to them led to armed conflict in April 1775 and to a Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the volumes were large-sized — around 8.5 x 11 inches, like a textbook.
When Democrats produced oversized pseudo-replicas of the 900-page policy blueprint as visual props to mock Republicans during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, they made the tomes much, much larger, as if hauled off a monastery shelf.
Why? Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow on August 19, and Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on August 20 — and others each night — sought to symbolize its “weighty” and “extreme” nature.
The giant scale of the replicas amplified the visual gag, with McMorrow quipping about it being “heavy” as she dragged it out.
That is how seriously Democrats said they were taking Project 2025.
So when Donald Trump got elected, and the document’s author, Russ Vought, took on his current position as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget on February 7 — sworn in by the left’s very noirest of bêtes noir, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — you might think that Democrats would be very careful dealing with anything Vought touched.
Like scuttling the Continuing Resolution at the beginning of the month, thereby shutting down the federal government. For lack of funding.
As covered yesterday in a Weekend Update on this site, Vought’s axe, poised to gut the EPA or Treasury, was at the ready, sharpened to make substantial and semi-permanent cuts to many departments.
The Democrats’ nightmare come true.
So, why did they blunder into it?
Smart money has it that the party, made unpopular by its far left, is now running scared of that very same far left. Senator Chuck Schumer (D.-NY), once a dealmaker, now cowers like a schoolboy before a possible 2028 challenge from AOC, the Squad’s top brand and a Bernie bro.
Democratic leadership couldn’t risk containing the political ambitions of the leftist radicals in the party.
A breathtaking moment, especially if Vought truly plies his Project 2025-branded axe. Those monastery-sized tomes, brandished like holy relics to smite Trump, a year ago, now stand as tombstones for the Democrats’ own strategy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Doris Lessing
An individual may be told she, he, is to die, and will accept it. For the species will go on. Her or his children will die, and even absurdly and arbitrarily — but the species will go on. But that a whole species, or race, will cease, or drastically change — no, that cannot be taken in, accepted, not without a total revolution of the deepest self.
Doris Lessing on the slated role of the Giants on Earth, in her novel Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (1979), p. 38.
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A Bad Day for the Templars
At dawn on Friday the 13th, in October of 1307 — a date that lent weight to triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13 — King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume” — “God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”
These “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon,” most commonly known as the Knights Templar, figure heavily in the literature of Grand Conspiracies, and in the lore of heresy and the occult.
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Steve Wright
When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.
Steven Wright, classic one-liner.
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The West Indies
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas, thinking he had reached “the Indies.”
The main islands of the Caribbean (south of the Bahamas) were, for many centuries, known as “the West Indies,” perhaps to both contextualize and commemorate Columbus’s mistake.
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Why Congress Can’t Budget
Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.-R) explains the budgeting process on X:
He is recirculating an old video. But that is OK: Congress is recirculating old arguments for the budget impasse.
Every Continuing Resolution and government shutdown is an argument for term limits!
So what has been happening this time around?
September 30–October 1: The shutdown began at midnight after Senate Democrats rejected a House-passed “clean” CR (extending funding at current levels through November 21) in a 55-45 vote. Republicans held slim majorities (House: 221-214; Senate: 53-47), but the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
October 2–6: Senate voted on competing bills, failing five times. Democrats’ alternative (funding through October 31, plus ACA extensions) was rejected 47-53. Republicans blamed Democrats for obstruction; Democrats accused Republicans of ignoring healthcare needs.
October 7–8: Two more failures (sixth and seventh votes). Only three Democrats (Sens. Fetterman, Cortez Masto, and King) crossed the aisle for the GOP bill. Senate adjourned without progress, with Republicans considering standalone funding for key agencies.
October 9–10: Shutdown extended into a second week after the Senate adjourned until October 14. The House GOP bill failed again (54-45), with no additional Democratic support. Speaker Mike Johnson noted “some discussion” of shortening the CR timeline due to delays, but no decisions were made. The Congressional Budget Office reported a $1.8 trillion federal deficit for FY 2025, highlighting fiscal pressures.
October 11 (Today): No new votes scheduled over the weekend. Discussions continue amid growing public frustration — polls show 60-67% of Americans blame both parties, with Republicans and President Trump slightly more faulted (10-17 percent gap).
Paul Jacob has been writing about Continuing Resolutions and Congress’s habitual, repeated budget impasses for decades now, most recently on October 3rd, with “Pleistocene Politics.”
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Robert Langs
There is only one defense against existential death anxiety — denial, which banishes these feelings from consciousness to the deep unconscious.
Robert Langs, as quoted in Ajit Varki & Danny Brower, Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origin of the Human Mind (2013), p. 123.
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General Washington
October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution, Public Law 94–479, to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948) is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.