On December 15, 1791, the United States’ Bill of Rights became constitutional law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.
On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that had, by enabling the Volstead Act, prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for any other than medical and industrial uses.
December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad, 1861, first Head of State of independent Finland, serving in this capacity first as leader of the Senate and then as Protector, or Regent. In 1930 he became Prime Minister, and in 1931 was elected President, leaving office in 1937.
During the Civil War of 1918, his anti-socialist refugee government, Valkoiset, or “Whites,” opposed the “Reds,” a Social Democrat Party faction, for control of the government as it transitioned from Russian rule as a Grand Duchy, to independent status.
On Thursday, Paul Jacob addressed the wave of UFOs over the North American east coast and elsewhere, mostly thinking of them as drones. At that point, ufologists had not taken up the story in a big way, and it was local and national news sources that had been covering the story.
But UFO historians, enthusiasts, and theorizers have discussed them, to some extent, both before and since. On her “Earthfiles” channel, on Wednesday, Linda Moulton Howe chatted with a very speculative Whitley “Communion” Strieber about the issue. And on Friday, Richard Dolan, author of a multi-volume history, UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, looked at the subject with some care:
Meanwhile, the fascinating YouTube channel “Earth Watchman” by “MrMBB333” presented extended plane-controller conversations about truly outré UFOs over Oregon. These are not propeller-driven drones, but classic “woo-woo” UFOs. The New York Post covers this story too:
“You are cleared to maneuver as necessary left and right to avoid the UFO out there.”
The LifeFlight pilot, 37-year-old Joe Buley, told KGW he and two medics onboard the fixed-wing aircraft reported flying from Aurora, Colorado, to North Bend, Washington, when they saw the orange lights.
“The biggest thing that stood out was it was changing direction. Usually, things don’t change directions unless it’s an aircraft,” Buley told KGW Thursday.
So the subject just gets stranger and stranger. While much of the east-coast phenomena seems drone-like, if breathtakingly advanced, simultaneous encounters elsewhere suggest more traditional “alien” interpretations.
An interesting part of the human reaction was noted by Mr. Dolan: “You get a real local-national divide here.” The federal level is not helping locals deal with what looks like an invasion of sorts.
Meanwhile, The New York Times dutifully feeds readers the official nothing-to-see-here-folks line:
Federal authorities investigating the sightings have provided few answers about what the objects are or their origin, leaving residents unsettled and local leaders frustrated.
U.S. officials on Thursday said that they had been unable to corroborate the reported drone sightings, and suggested that many of the objects might in fact be manned aircraft, such as airplanes or helicopters.
That latter suggestion from officials seems extremely dubious regarding the New Jersey sightings, and preposterous regarding the “above Oregon” ones — though the debunking interpretations of those Oregon encounters finger Starlink satellites, no matter how dissonant that explanation is with the pilots’ descriptions of maneuverings.
The east-coast/west-coast differences have not been lost on the Post, which mentions the breadth of speculation, as well:
On December 14, 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne.
In 1939, on this date, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.
On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States.
“If you vote for me,” President-elect Donald Trump promised the delegates at the Libertarian Party national convention last May, “on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served.”
That is eleven years so far. “We’re going to get him home,” insisted Trump.
Mr. Ulbricht, a libertarian cause célèbre, was sentenced in 2013 to double life terms, without parole, plus 40 years.
So, who did he kill?
At 26 years of age, Ulbricht created the Silk Road online platform, “an anonymous e-commerce website.” Used by some folks, certainly, to trade in drugs and other illegalities.
On a Change.org petition urging presidential clemency (which I’ve signed), his mother explains: “Ross is a first-time offender” and “an Eagle Scout, scientist and peaceful entrepreneur,” who faced only “non-violent charges at trial. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.”
That’s why she and many of us simply cannot stand the idea that now 40-year-old “Ross is condemned to die in prison.”
Indeed, it was a very smart political move, courting the Libertarian vote both by showing up and, specifically, by pledging to free Ross Ulbricht. Libertarians suddenly had a tangible reason to support Trump.
Will Trump keep his word? “I do think he’s going to free Ross Ulbricht,” Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle told Robby Soave on his “Rising” program.
I think so, too. I sure hope so. It would be refreshing to see the awesome power our Constitution gives the president to pardon crimes and commute sentences used for someone deserving of mercy.
Now that UFO sightings are ubiquitous, is it at all amusing that ufologists generally scoff at them, dismissing them as “drones”?
Out-of-place lights dot the skies of New Jersey and other east-coast states, and have for several weeks. Yet there is no panic that The Aliens Are Coming! The Aliens Are Coming!
Speculation as to what they actually are — and whose — is rampant.
And the government hasn’t helped.
The first congressperson I heard on the subject said there had been no briefing on the subject from the Pentagon. The second claimed to have confidential information that these were Chinese-made drones deployed by Iran. The Pentagon has denied this.
Governor Philip Dunton Murphy of New Jersey says there’s “no threat,” but how on earth would he know, since he seems to know nothing of consequence?
“Dozens of drones have been reported hovering over the state since before Thanksgiving mostly in northern areas about Route 78. The Democrat said he held a briefing Wednesday with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, senior officials from federal and state homeland security and State Police,” reports New Jersey 101.5. “‘We are actively monitoring the situation and in close coordination with our federal and law enforcement partners on this matter,’ Murphy said Thursday in a statement on his X account.”
So we are in the dark.
Or, very spotty light.
We don’t even know they are drones — as in the recent hovering/flying technology allowed by improved battery and computing technology, but relying on propellers, not anything as outré as Zero Point energy.
Considering that the rise of drone tech was something we could all see coming, however, why is government so incoherent on the subject?
Incompossible, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both — as Walt Whitman’s poetry and God’s mercy to man.
Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
Liberty, n. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.
Three entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).
On December 12, 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
On the same date in 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first former slave elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives. His father had emancipated him as a child, and he had worked as a barber before the Civil War.
National socialism, as operated by the actual Nazis, did not seize all the major industries and run them as collectives or state-owned businesses. The Nazis applied party control directly to big business, as a political-regulatory matter.
How different is what woke Democrats have been doing to business today, here in America, using multiple agencies of the United States federal government’s regulatory apparatus?
Marc Andreessen, investor, innovator, business genius, and early Internet pioneer, explained how in a discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, last month.
Start with debanking, which the regulators can tell banks to do to “politically exposed persons.” Mr. Andreessen told Joe about a friend who was debanked, apparently because his job title was involved in the business use of crypto-currency.
And debanking is exactly what you think it is: de-platformed from the financial system.
Don’t worry, statist: you are not “politically exposed.” This only applies to critics of our quasi-fascist system.
This commercial censorship is run pretty much like censorship on the social media companies after 2016, by soft pressure . . . the “raw power” of a “privatized sanctions regime.” Government functionaries notify a bank that a person or business is “politically exposed,” and the bank — fearing getting on the bad side of regulators — kicks the customer off the rolls.
Politicians can haughtily state that it was the bank that did it. Banks, after all, are not obliged to serve everyone! They can pick and choose their customers.
Besides, there is no First Amendment right to have a bank account.
