The best posts of the week of November 8, a week which for 2026 will be infamous.
Sunday, November 8, 1936. Nationalist attack at Madrid.
Tuesday, November 9, 1926. Queen Marie visits Casper.
Saturday, November 9, 1946. First flight of the Lockheed R6V Constitution.
Tuesday, November 9, 1976. Smokey Bear dies.
This is absolutely horrific:
The Worst Assault on Public Lands since the Indian Wars.
This needs to be stopped at all costs.
Heavily weighted towards industry, Interior intends to sell public lands.
Doug Burgum needs to be sent home immediately. Let the Billionaire disgrace from North Dakota stench up his own state, which largely lacks public lands. He's all about money.
This plan needs to be stopped.
Trump administration plan to sell public lands draws congressional pushback
Which is going to be hard to do. FLPMA allows Interior to sell Federal property of 2,500 acres or less. And contrary to what some people claim, it'll be easy for it to declare it for sale.
Because this is a plan, and not a rule, there's no way for the public to object to it. You an write your people in Congress. Montana's people have already come out in opposition.
Wyoming's representation in Congress was utterly useless when the Senator from Deseret tried this last go around. They all supported it in spite of the majority of Wyomingites being adamantly opposed. There's no reason to believe that Lummis, on her way out, is going to do anything about anything. John Barrasso is a complete spineless wimp. He might be scared into opposing it if he intends to run again. Harriet Hageman was for land raping last time but she should be contacted.
Chuck Gray promised this wouldn't happen as one of his campaign platforms. Now's the time to put his tiny little feet to the fire.
You need to say something.
You can object to a rule that proposed to shorten commentary on BLM matters. The rule is RIN 1004-AF53 and you can object in the Rule Making Portal: Federal eRulemaking Portal
This horror, by the way, is right out of Project 2025, which Trump claimed in the election to know nothing about. People warned about appointing Stevan Edward Pearce to be head of the BLM.
This must be stopped.
Doug Burgum should be removed from office.
Things continue to go downhill, electionwise, for MAGA, even while it gets more fascistic.
The 2026 Election. 28th Edition. The Count (before the coup).
Saturday, November 14, 1876. The Powder River Expedition begins.
Truly, the spirit of our times:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 163d Edition. Aviation Ground Stop, Fascist Monuments, and the Wealthy and Eyes of Needles.
Yesterday there was a massive aviation ground stop:
The human inclination not to waste, which is why people don't throw out leftovers they can't stand to eat, or old people pack their houses to the ceiling with stored crap, works against this. Some well meaning snowflakes like to say "it could be a homeless shelter. . it could be renamed for Barack Obama. . ."
2026 Aviation Ground Stop
Yesterday, at 3:45 EST the FAA issued a ground stop. It was lifted at 8:15 EST.
Right now, while the FAA is attributing this to a communications equipment failure, it's pretty much impossible to know what actually occurred, and with the Trump regime in control, it'll be hard to have anything trustworthy on this for awhile.
Of interest, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy three days ago:
For years, severe weather could mean hours of delays for your flights. We’re changing that.
@FAANews
is expanding its SMART platform nationwide, cutting flight times, saving millions of dollars in fuel, and keeping traffic moving even when storms hit.
On this event
They lifted the ground stop
The Trump administration is blaming it on antiquated communications equipment and says it needs lots of money to fix this.
The trouble is, at this point, it's pretty much impossible to believe anything the Trump administration says about anything. They lie much more often than they tell the truth. We don't know what caused this, and we don't know if it's been addressed.
We do know, and they are likely unrelated, that the day before there was a massive Microsoft Outlook failure. It was on a global scale.
Sean Duffy, by the way, was the guy who wanted you to wear suits to the airport. . .
On big expenditures, one thing which money is being burned on is the ballroom. Current estimates are that it'll cost $600 million, up from initial estimates of $200 million and later $400 million. We don't know how much of this is definitively privately funded, but we do know internal project documents from contractor Clark Construction show roughly $307 million in public funds allocated or committed to cover security enhancements like an underground bunker, a medical facility, and a rooftop drone center.
MAGA likes to say that "it's all privately funded", which suggests big ugly art is really cool as long as its privately funded. Well, this isn't. And not only isn't, maintaining the giant structure will cost piles of money, assuming it's not blown down by the next administration, which it should be.
The human inclination not to waste, which is why people don't throw out leftovers they can't stand to eat, or old people pack their houses to the ceiling with stored crap, works against this. Some well meaning snowflakes like to say "it could be a homeless shelter. . it could be renamed for Barack Obama. . ."
Idiotic.
As long as this structure is up, it'll be what it's intended to be, a monument to a despot. Despots erect monuments to themselves as they know that once they're gone, and Trump is nearly gone given his age, nobody else is going to do it.
It also needs to be done so it doesn't become a fascist monument. This is why the Soviets attempted to destroy the Führerbunker after World War Two and the job was finally finished after German reunification. It proved to be, we might note, exceedingly difficult, which is what Trump is trying to do here. Here's what that site looks like today:
By Deror avi - Own work, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2445660
The ballroom needs to be blown down on January 20, 2029. Plans should be developed for that now so that they can be turned over to the Corps of Engineers on that day. Ideally, things should be coordinated, to the extent they can be, so that the Corps of Engineers can get to work on it at noon, blow it down by 12:30, and scrape the rubble by 5:00 p.m. At that time, drilling rigs need to be brought in, it'll take several, to drill through the floor so that concrete pumping can commence the next day. It'll probably take about three days to accomplish all of this, although the concrete will literally take years to set up.
While they're at it, the air photos show the helipad to be absurdly huge as well. That needs to come out. Frankly, there's no earthly reason for the president ot have a massive dedicated helicopter, so that should just end. A light commercial one would do fine.
I know, but, but, but. . .bull.
Building a bunker at the executive mansion was a dangerous idea when Franklin Roosevelt caused it to occur. And both wings were always ugly. This just makes the ugly that much worse. The entire house should be restored to what it's supposed to be, a house. A good rule of thumb would be that if the Canadian Prime Minister doesn't have it, the President doesn't need it either.
This needs to happen. Leaving the ballroom up makes it a fascist monument.
On the private side of the funding, Nvidia, then led by then-CEO Jensen Huang, donated $25,000,000.
Huang weirdly fell from grace after it was found that he was screwing the coincidentally named Alice Huang (Huang Le), Kimberly Powell (Nvidia’s vice president of health care) and a third unnamed employee. It's unclear if he was banging all three in addition to his wife at the same time.
I don't understand why he lost his position.
I know that sounds facetious, but I don't. The claim is that Ms. Huang may have been a Chinese spy, so he fell victim to a honeypot.
Well, so what?
Trump is a serial polygamist and cheater. Two of his three wives were Eastern Europeans. Melanija Knavs and the late Ivana Trump were tracked by the Federal Government given their Eastern European origins. There's no evidence they were agents, but Trump did dally with Eastern Europeans and has a bizarre fondness for Vladimir Putin. Trump's also credibly accused of being a rapist and was pals with Jeffrey Epstein.
Another Trump pal, Elon Musk, has fourteen children by four different women, only one of which he was married to, and he's been married to yet another. Pete Hegseth has been married three times and cheated on two of them.
Looked at this way, Huang is an underachiever.
Oh, the spy part.
Yeah, well there were indications that might be going on and the government did nothing about it. Damage done.
Huang is a victim of the oldest spy trap in the world, the honeypot or honey trap, which pits a human, and frankly particularly male, instinct against keeping stuff secret. It's been widely used since time immoral. It was very widely used by the Soviets at one time. I don't know about the Chinese, but there's no reason to believe they haven't long used it.
A good story on how they work by somebody targeted by one is here:
The thing here, however, is that this fits into a different category as well, which is victims of their own money.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God
Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25, quoting Jesus.
This is a well known quote, of course, but also very widely ignored. The reasons this is true is pretty apparent, however. People with little in the way of resources can stay closer to God as; 1) they depend on God more openly, and; 2) they lack the means to buy there way into sin in comparison to rich people.
This does not mean the poor are universally virtuous. Far from it. But it's pretty clearly the case that middle class and lower middle class people generally tend to have enough to avoid falling into the sins of despair while not be tempted by the sins of vast wealth.
Sexual sins are probably the most popular of all amongst everybody, as they tap so deeply into a basic very strong instinct.
I think it was C. S. Lewis, or it may have been Fr. Joseph Krupp, who observed that lust is so unique that there's really nothing that compares to it. Gluttony is a sin, for example, but in one of their observations, you will not find people paying to watch plates of food be set on a stage that you can't eat, but men will do just that in regard to strippers.
The Sexual Revolution has enormously decayed Western sexual morality, but even at that, most people keep their marriage vows. Supposedly 20% to 25% of men violate them, and 10% to 15% of women do. That means the overwhelming majority do not. A survey of serious millionaires some time ago, however, found that over 50% of the wealthy were unfaithful, which surprisingly broke down such that
61% of wealthy women were, whereas 43% of wealthy men had cheated.
Clearly there's something peculiar going on in that last figure.
Real serial libertines, in my observation, tend to be desperately poor and fairly well off, if not necessarily super rich. There's a lot going on there, but frankly to some degree with the women it seems to be opportunistic, they're seeking to advance their status by cheating. With the men, it's just sex.
This goes back with the wealthy as far as we can track it. Medieval European nobility, even though the age was deeply Christian, were notorious for cheating. Charlemagne, who was seriously Catholic, nonetheless had at least five mistresses during his lifetime and was rebuked by a cleric who knew him for still checking out the young women in his environs. He was married four or five times and altogether had about twenty children.
We don't have serious monarchs today, but we do have the seriously wealthy, and they're in a similar position. What we don't have is a monk in the palace saying "Geez, will you get your act together?"
There is no restraint.
In fact, we have the opposite. We have right now a man with a horrific moral history leading the nation, as already noted. The spiritual adviser in that household? Paul White, married three times.
Alcuin of York, part of Charlemagne's imperial household.
So the lessons? Well, there's a bunch, a bunch of which are obvious, and a few of which are not. But, in no particular order, there's this.
Rushing in a technology isn't a good idea.
Blowing down fascist monuments takes time, but it needs to be done.
The wealthy need to be taxed to reduce their actual wealth for their own good. Their nature won't keep them from trying to acquire more, but society needs the money, and it destroys their morals.
Last edition:
When this is all over, the next administration needs to blow the ballroom to the ground.
2026 Election Post Mortem, Part 3. Changes, accusations, resignations and developments.
The Agrarian Week:
In contrast to the land rapers in the the administration, we have the Pope.
We are not absolute owners, but custodians of a legacy.
Although the Church recognizes and defends the right to private property, it should always subject to a social obligation: the land and its fruits have been given by God to sustain all of humanity. We are not absolute owners, but custodians of a legacy.
Pope Francis XIV in Argentina.
Going Feral: The Worst Assault on Public Lands since the Indian Wars.
Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 163d Edition. Aviation Ground Stop, Fascist Monuments, and the Wealthy and Eyes of Needles.
The Feral Week:
Wyoming water district sues landowners to condemn private property for Alkali Dam and reservoir project
The Week in Aviation
2026 Aviation Ground Stop
Yesterday, at 3:45 EST the FAA issued a ground stop. It was lifted at 8:15 EST.
Right now, while the FAA is attributing this to a communications equipment failure, it's pretty much impossible to know what actually occurred, and with the Trump regime in control, it'll be hard to have anything trustworthy on this for awhile.
Of interest, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy three days ago:
For years, severe weather could mean hours of delays for your flights. We’re changing that.
@FAANews
is expanding its SMART platform nationwide, cutting flight times, saving millions of dollars in fuel, and keeping traffic moving even when storms hit.
On this event
They lifted the ground stop
Monday, November 9, 2026
Last edition:
