The first photographs of the Earth from space were taken by a US V-2 rocket fitted with a movie camera.
The News covered the prior days speech by Truman, but with an awkward headline.
Kurt Daluege was executed at Pankrác Prison in Prague.
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You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom
Matthew, Chapter 24.
I never cut my neighbor's throat;
My neighbor's gold I never stole;
I never spoiled his house and land;
But God have mercy on my soul!
For I am haunted night and day
By all the deeds I have not done;
O unattempted loveliness!
O costly valor never won!
Marguerite Wilkinson
October 19, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Victim of Russian missile strike:
The Siege of Oviedo, which had started on July 19 with a Republican investiture, ended in a Nationalist victory.
Newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook called on King Edward VIII and informed him that he would help enforce a voluntary media blackout on the king's relationship with Wallace Simpson.
Paris conducted a nocturnal practice air raid.
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September 20, 2026
The Houthis hit the Saudi capital of Riyadh with drones.
September 25, 2026
The Senate voted against a resolution demanding an end to the war or Congressional authorization 50 to 49. Four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted in favor. Spinless wimp John Barrasso of course voted against.
October 5, 2026
The US withdrew its strategic bombers from the United Kingdom in reaction to some sort of attempted attack on a US installation.
Frankly, at this point, it's impossible to know what's a legitimate US. action vs. Trump drama.
October 10, 2026
The Houthis hit the airport at Riyadh again.
King Donald has declared there will be no strikes on Iran until after the election.
October 15, 2026
A container ship with 2,500 containers hit a mine and sank in the Strait of Hormuz.
King Donald stated yesterday that the war will end as soon as he wants it too, which he said will be soon.
Last edition:
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom
Matthew, Chapter 24.
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
July 26, 2026
China v. Taiwan
The Houthis hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia yesterday.
So, in keeping with that, a prediction.
July 29, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
The U.S. Senate advanced Russian energy sanctions legislation Tuesday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the Capitol. The vote was seen as a tribute to the bill’s author, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the day of his funeral, which was widely attended by politicos.
Trump fell asleep during it as J. D. Vance seemed oblivious to the dozing octogenarian and Bessent looked nervous about it, but then he always looks nervous.
July 31, 2026
Israeli Hamas War
The Bored of Peas has supposedly worked out a peace plan in Gaza. Sober analysts a 4th Grade level have severe doubts about it.
August 1, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Now Trump is backtracking and saying the US won't license Patriot missile production to Ukraine.
August 2, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine has run out of ballistic missile interceptors. This comes at the same time that the US supply is seriously depleted due to Donald Trump's illegal moronic war against Iran.
King Donny should free up what remains of the US supply and give them to Ukraine, and start emergency production for the US. As for Iran, we can solve that problem simply by pulling out. Better yet, pulling out, putting every senior commander who agreed to fight in a clearly illegal war on trial, and impeaching Donald Trump.
Crisis in Ceuta
Not a war but requiring Spanish military deployment, a mass flood of immigrants crashed into the Spanish North African city of Ceuta.
About 50,000 North African immigrants stormed the city, leading to dramatic news footage and MAGA "see, it could happen here" claims. Missed in the story is that 48,000 of them returned to Morocco within 48 hours.
A bigger question may be why Spain retains a city that you would figure should be part of Morocco, but it does.
Italy defensively suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain.
August 10, 2026
Israel v. Hamas.
Israel had rejected the "Board of Peace" peace plan, refusing to enter into a peace deal with Hamas until it is definitely disarmed.
Another blow to King Donny.
August 17, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Both sides exchanged heavy missile and drone attacks yesterday. A NATO jet on patrol shot down a drone that had strayed into Romania.
August 18, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Robert Shaheiev, 49, formerly of the Ukrainian Navy who defected to Russia early in the war died in an explosion in Sevastopol.
Whether he was targeted or not, Ukrainian operatives have proven effective at hunting down figures in the Russian military that they find particularly responsible for various matters. Shaheiev defected with a submarine.
Korean War
Donald Trump has signaled that the US is going to scale back it's participation in joint exercises with the South Korean Army.
What's going on here is terribly unclear. The US has maintained troops in the ROK since the 1945 and the threat of North Korean invasion is very real.
I should note that this isn't entirely unprecedented. Jimmy Carter actually campaigned on the idea in 1976 and tried to implement a phased withdrawal, which was abandoned over conservative and military objections. Since the 1980s, military support of South Korea has been very strong.
Trumps move comes at a time when the US is losing an illegal war with Iran and is having to pull naval assets out of the Pacific. It also comes at a point at which the longtime Red Chinese goal of forcibly reunited Taiwan with the mainland is at its highest point. Combined with that, Trump's administration is packed with National Conservatives who have a sort of Neo Nineteenth Century view of where the U.S.'s foreign policy should be focused.
Given that, Trump's decision could be the result of his listening to National Conservatives, or it could be because or logistical situation is much worse than admitted.
It could also be because South Korea refused to participate in the illegal war, like every other nation on earth did. Trump has not taken that well. Nobody seems to be pointing out that South Korea did participate in the Vietnam War, which Trump did not. Trump himself, at any rate, referenced South Korea's lack of willingness to get into the losing war with Iran.
Because of Trump's other actions, however, there's widespread commentary about whether Trump is a Russian asset and this is influencing him on the world stage. As radical as that sounds, there are reason to raise this question. Certainly no other President has hurt US interest, and just the US in general, more than Trump, and he's a fanboy of Putin.
We've noted it elsewhere, but we've been worried about a Chinese strike on Taiwan in the near future. The combination of the failed Iran War and Trump's other actions make that inevitable . The question is whether that will come this Fall, or next Spring.
September 4, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
In an attack Ukraine is an intentional Russian signal to the United States, Russia hit a Coca Cola plant in a drone strike.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has killed a House vote on Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill which passed the Senate in July, stating “We have to build consensus around that final product".
Oh, um, . . . not hat doesn't look a little weird. . . . and doesn't raise any questions, um, like Дональд Трамп — агент России?
What is it with this administration and Russia? Why is Дональд Трамп a Russian asset? Just stupidity and a like for flashy gold things?
September 20, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Ukraine launched a massive drone raid on targets in the Moscow region.
September 22, 2026
Pakistan v. Afghanistan
Pakistan conducted air raids into Afghanistan yesterday.
October 1, 2026
US in Iraq
The U.S. is now completely out of Iraq.
October 4, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Russia hit Ukrainian bridges over the past few days. This appears to be an economic targeting.
Russia also indicated it would resort to the use of nuclear weapons to defend Kaliningrad if it needed to, which it would never need to, as nobody is threatening the Baltic city formerly known as Königsberg.
October 5, 2026
Russia
Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old researcher at an anti-plague lab died following suspected exposure to a “particularly dangerous infection.” which people believe is likely pneumonic plague. Some 200 people are under observation for exposure to the highly infectious disease which might have killed the young woman due to a lab accident.
Some fairly knowledgeable people assert that there's reason to believe that this may be a weaponized variant of the disease, which the Soviets were working on prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adam Kinzinger is urging all flights out of Russia to be halted.
God grant that this be contained, whatever it is.
We would note that no country has reacted by banning flights so far. We might also note that with Trump in office the US is extraordinarily impaired in reacting to a threat like this. MAGA still continues to believe that COVID 19 was no sort of a threat and it's unlikely that Donald is going to react until it really turns out to be a weaponized virus that starts killing a lot of people.
October 6, 2026
Yemeni Civil War
Yemeni government forces retook the Bab el-Mandeb Strait up to the city of Mocha.
October 11, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Over the last couple of days Donald Trump entered into some sort of deal to supposedly purchase Russian diesel fuel. We reported on this on another thread:
Sigh. . .
As noted, this isn't going to do anything to the price at the pump and quite frankly it's unlikely any Russian diesel gets here. The whole idea is amazingly dim.
What it does do, however, is make the United States openly declare assistance to Russia, which is completely inexcusable. People are negatively reacting and Trump, who hates criticism, lashed out at Zelensky in defense, claiming he could have ended the war on many occasions and that Ukraine needs a new president.
It's the United States that needs a new President. Like him or not, that man of multiple names would be leagues better than Trump. Trump should be removed via the 25th Amendment, or if the numbers are there, impeached in January.
October 12, 2026
Russo Ukrainian War
Trump is claiming the warring parties have agreed to an "energy ceasefire".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said today that he “didn’t know about it. We learned from the media" while the Kremlin stated that ”contacts are ongoing”.
So, no ceasefire.
Ukraine has been hitting refineries as well as Russian data centers, which caused this interesting observation by Adam Kinzinger:
Weird. Most of my haters have disappeared in the last 24 hours. What happened?
Oh…. Russian data centers went bye bye
Related threads:
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I've been expecting it all along. It just came in a surprising fashion.
Deep hatred of Catholics is the last acceptable form of outright bigotry in the United States, although there's been a general rise of bigotry and racism during the illegitimate Trump interregnum. Trump's a populist, and populist tends to boost ignorance, with bigotry feeding on that. Most of the major populist movements a person can recall, the Nazis, the Communists, the Know Nothings, featured a lot of really ignorant people who were willing to be lead around by a others, sometimes a charismatic, to them, other.1 MAGA is a populist movement, masquerading as a conservative one, as Nazism was a populist movement that claimed conservatives within it. It's not too surprising, therefore, that we're seeing more of this sort of thing than we have at any point since the 1960s.
Quite a few of the more ignorant members of MAGA claim they support Trump as he's Godly, which is patently absurd, but there's no denying that far right wing Evangelicalism is a major component of MAGA. The Press, which isn't very well educated on religion anymore, just keeps calling them "Christians", which is really misleading. Some, but not all, far right Evangelicals supporting Trump hold religious beliefs that are very recent and very novel and well outside the mainstream of Apostolic Christianity and also out of the mainstream of most Protestant beliefs. Almost all MAGA Evangelicals fit into the ignorant of theology and Church history camp that's strong in the United States of being "Bible Believing Christians" who are pretty ignorant of a rule on the history of the books of the Bible.
Around the periphery of MAGA, however, there's been some Apostolic Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who have been, if not fully in the Trump camp, at least allowed to pitch a tent on its edges. Some of this is just flat out opportunistic on their part, and it looked like it would have a major impact on the Trump administration due to Trump's flat out ignorance and laziness. Inside the administration you have the example of J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, and outside of it you have people like Kevin Roberts. You even have Peter Thiel, who claims not to be a Catholic but who keeps popping up in certain Catholic circles, as does Jordan Peterson and the Orthodox pundit Rod Dreher.2 National Conservatism has a strong right wing Catholic element to it, which is interesting in that it's sort of the intellectual heir of Fr. Charles Coughlin whose movement was shut down and who remains not widely admired in mainstream Catholic circles.
Most CAtholics that have supported Trump, however, have done so for one of two other reasons. The thinking ones have done so as it seemed like he was probably the only candidate who would address long held Catholic concerns, like abortion. People know that Trump himself was a louse, but they were willing to "hold their nose and vote". Others were Protestantized Catholics, of which there are a lot in the United States in the Boomer and Gen. Jones generations. These people are victims of the bad Catechization of the 1970s and as the US is a Protestant country, they've picked up a lot of Protestant beliefs.
Throughout Trump's second claim to power I've worried that the "Christian", i.e., far right Evangelical support of Trump would result in two things for Catholics. The first, which we will not address here, is that the association of "Christian" with Trump would result in Christianity taking a major hit. Evangelicalism definitely will. The second is that getting on the bus with Evangelicals would result in them beating us up as soon as we weren't of use to them.
And that's starting to happen.
The reason it started is because Pete Hegseth, who is festooned with Crusader themed tattoos announced that the U.S. Army is going to livestream the execution of former US Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed thirteen unarmed U.S. soldiers in 2009. 3 4
The Catholic Church is opposed to killing people. It's opposed to killing people in pretty absolutist terms and always has been, claims of Catholic haters aside. It's always been opposed to infanticide, including abortion. Early on in Church history there were serious debates if Christians, which were all Catholic, were required to be pacifists, and there are some saints who were. St. Martin of Tours, who had been a Roman soldier, famously told his commander "I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight." Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, went to his death in Nazi Germany rather than fight for the Nazi state. Ben Salmon, an American Catholic layman who has not been beatified went to prison as a conscientious objector during World War One as he held the view that all war was immoral. 5 And starting with Pope John Paul II, the Church has opposed the death penalty.
Catholic Bishops immediately responded to Hegseth's live stream the killing announcement by condemning it. Quiet a few individual priests with a net presence did as well. And then almost immediately after that Pope Leo XIV did, stating:
Los of hte comments immediately cited the Old Testament, which is a bit ironic as frankly the CAtholic Church uses the Old Testament much more than any Protestant group does. There's a number of quotes from the Old Testament that address the death penalty, for example:
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.
Genesis 9:6
Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:12
So there you go. . .but wait:
Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.
Exodus 21:16
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."
Leviticus 20:10 (Adultery)
If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Leviticus 20:13
Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them."
Leviticus 24:16
Okay then, if we apply to the Old Testament, we need to be killing anyone cursing their parents, kidnappers, adulterers and adulteresses, homosexuals and blasphemeres.
Indeed, if this was fully applied, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Paula White, and Scott Bessant wouldn't be in Washington D.C. as they're either adulturers or, in Bessant's case, a homosexual. Shoot, probably about 1/3d of the congregation of Protestant congregation would have to be offed, based on my observation that they don't take divorce or pre marital sex as a sin.
Well, what the heck? Why aren't we imposing the death penalty with sweeping abandon?
Well, that's because the Apostolic Churches and the Mainline Protestant Churches hold the view that Christ fulfilled the law and the Mosaic law does not apply to Christians. There are a pile of laws in the Mosaic Law that nobody seeks to apply to Christians due to the Catholic Church having alway taken this view. That's why Christians can eat shellfish and pork. Protestants who are running around declaring that the death penalty is Biblically mandated are apparently ignorant of the Bible and is laws, or they'd be killing adulterers, blasphemers, parent disrespecters, homosexuals and not eating shrimp.
Indeed, this was the case from day one. One of the very first debates in the Church was whether converts had to be circumcised. Nope, no longer applied. The dietary laws no longer did either.
It's also odd to see how all of these people aren't citing the New Testament. While the law was fulfilled by Christ, Christ did set down some pretty strict behavioral requirements. We are, for example supposed to love our enemies. That's a tough one.
Some have tried to drag out Church history, of which they're largely ignorant. "Well, the Church has always killed people. . ."
Nope. Indeed, from antiquity it's tried to stop it.
As Christ led you from death to life, so you should try to save not only the innocent, but also the guilty from death.
Pope St Nicholas the Great.
Now, I suppose you could argue that Pope St. Nicholas was talking about eternal life, but you sure are't going to save a guy by killing him.
And of course, there's the customary ignorant citation to the Black Legends were demonstrably untrue, but which lots of people still believe.
The Church as been against killing of all types right from the onset. But people, deep in their hearts, like killing. Lots of people make compromises with their Faith to justify their own acts and desires. Today, for example, is the anniversary of the murder of Hymie Weiss, the gangster who sanctioned hits, but who also carried a rosary in his pocket. As noted, plenty of very conservative Catholics have tried to say "well, I know that the Popes have said no death penalty, but it's still okay . . "6
It isn't.
And the real surprise to those not paying attention will be how prolife Catholics really are. Indeed, I've seen surprising statements in support of the Pope from completely secular sources.
And there's utterly no support for making this execution a public spectacle. We really are in the last days of the Roman Empire if we've reached that state. "War, inflation, . . . don't worry, look at my shiny baubles, come watch somebody die." Panem et circenses.
A danger of politics is that, for people who have a religion, even slightly, that it becomes easy to confuse your politics or your personal beliefs with your religion. The various flavors of the American Civil Religion are packed with that. Divorce is okay, and even extramarital sex, unless it's homosexual. . . Trump must be a Godly man as he's doing what I want him to, even if he's a liar and a serial polygamist.
There was always going to be a day when the Evangelical far right discovered that the Catholic Church is the Universal Church, it's everywhere, and that local politics are secondary to it. We're not right, not left, we're Catholic, the original Christians.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
But he will answer, "I don’t know you or where you come from."
Luke 13:22-30.
This warning applies to us as well. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Luke 12:48. We really can't ignore the barbarism of the Trump administration any more. We've invaded a foreign nation without cause, we're killing Iranians in an undeclared war, and we're murdering people on the high seas. The Nuremberg Defense or just ignoring it all doesn't work.
Well, we were always going to be hated. Frankly, as Catholics, when everything is going well for us, it's not going well.
Footnotes:
1. Hitler was reportedly very charismatic, although watching him from the outside, it's hard to see why. To his followers, Trump is charismatic, while to most other people he certainly is not.
2. I'm not claiming that Peterson is influential in the administration, but rather he's in the Catholic end of the National Conservatives even though he is not Catholic. His wife is. Dreher was Catholic at one time and converted to Orthodoxy, where he remains with one foot in the Catholic door and nearly, for that matter, in the back pews. Dreher is partially responsible for the intellectual atmosphere that made Trump possible even though he now outright holds Trump in contempt.
3. Hegseth is some sort of Evangelical on the far right. Actual Crusaders would have regarded him as a weird heretic.
4. The fact that the killings occurred in 2009 is a really good argument against the death penalty in and of itself as it takes so long and is so expensive that the punishment aspect of it is nearly lost by the time the sentence is carried out.
5. St. Augustine famously developed the Just War Theory, which people sort of naively regard as a Catholic free pass to war. It isn't. The theory has always been fairly restrictive and even though Catholics have waged and been in a lot of wars, a lot of wars don't fit the category of being "just".
Even when they are, finding a war that's justly waged is difficult. World War Two probably stands out as a war which, for the Allies, was just, but the Allies clearly took deeply immoral actions in it, the nighttime bombing raids of the RAF, and the USAF nuclear bombings, being the two primary examples for the Western Allies.
Recently Pope Leo has further clarified the doctrine and while I do not think that his statements actually develop it in any fashion, they caused shock waves and they probably should as Catholics really need to consider if they can morally serve in the U.S. military at this point.
6. No Pope has declared the death penalty invalid ex cathedra, so a slim ability to argue it's still okay exists. But it's very slim.
One of the things about killing people is that people who kill people get used to killing people.
Sure, later on, their psyche may recoil from it. And even at the time, some, indeed a lot, of people will recoil from it. But societies that kill get used to killing.
American culture is used to killing infants. Our abortion laws are basically the most "liberal", where abortion is allowed, in the Western World.
Nazi Germany didn't start out murdering all the Jews. It started out murdering some of them, and then the numbers, and categories of victims grew. It was killing Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and disabled people. In the end, it went down in a sea of blood.
The Department of Defense, according to the Secretary of Defense, will broadcast an execution.
That's barbaric.
The death penalty, for that matter, is barbaric. But broadcasting it is horrific.
This should not be allowed to occur.
This administration started off claiming an abhorrence of war. Trump sincerely seemed bothered by death in war.
We seem to have gotten over all of that.
The MacArthur influenced Constitution of Japan was approved by the House of Representatives of Japan.
The instrument renounced war as a Japanese political and diplomatic option.
The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox 3–0 at Sportsman's Park in Game Two of the 1946 World Series.
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