My November Guest

A poem by Robert Frost.  

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, 

     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain 

Are beautiful as days can be; 

She loves the bare, the withered tree; 

     She walks the sodden pasture lane. 

Her pleasure will not let me stay. 

     She talks and I am fain to list: 

She’s glad the birds are gone away, 

She’s glad her simple worsted grey 

     Is silver now with clinging mist. 

The desolate, deserted trees, 

     The faded earth, the heavy sky, 

The beauties she so truly sees, 

She thinks I have no eye for these, 

     And vexes me for reason why. 

Not yesterday I learned to know 

     The love of bare November days 

Before the coming of the snow, 

But it were vain to tell her so, 

     And they are better for her praise.

Cold November Rain

Two rock ballads, unusual fare for the Hall, both employing grey November skies and rains to talk about death. The first one was about a woman who killed herself because she contracted HIV, which these days is treatable and may soon be preventable. In her day it was a death sentence. AVI was just talking about that. She was a real woman; her rage at God and suicide both are terrible to remark on these feast days pointed at the dead. 

The second one, also from the early 90s, is a power ballad by Guns & Roses with a murky plot in which a young woman marries, dies, and is mourned over the course of a lengthy guitar piece.

It is chilly today, and grey, and rainy. November came in true to form. 

The Feast of All Saints

The first of November has been the date for this feast since Pope Gregory III, though the feast itself is older than that. The National World War I Museum notes the significance of both this feast day and tomorrow's, the Feast of All Souls, especially in those areas of Europe where that war was fought. Ironically the armistice ending that war did not come until the 11th of November, which here is now Veteran's Day; those wishing to honor the departed had to wait a little longer to enjoy the safety and peace that would enable them to build monuments to the dead.

Holding Breath

The stock market is way up, but hiring is way down. One supposes that is because investors believe things are going to get better, but they're waiting to be sure of it before taking on the significant costs entailed by hiring employees.

Richard Fernandez helpfully recasts the current moment in mythic terms.

They say there are only two kinds of stories: ones that begin with a man leaving on a journey and ones that start with a stranger riding into town. But there is a third type: one about a man who goes on a journey and returns four years later with a bunch of formidable-looking strangers.

In that genre, the townsfolk know the significance of these arrivals and understand the meaning of the sudden burst of activity down at the Hall, the heightened vigilance, the preparations for defense. They cast anxious glances at the calendar, reckoning the time 'til Nov. 5, when they expect things to come to a head. Instinctively they gather into groups, the loners staring out of windows, wondering....

The people of the town doubted that the newly arrived strangers fully comprehended the power of the Hall and understood its monstrous strength and resilience. Could they know that it could be razed to the ground yet recover the instant they left? Did they suspect that many a man who believed himself the site’s new master would awake at night to find themselves covered with vines sprung overnight from the ground and borne whence they were never seen again? November 5 would be their doom.

But that is the appeal of stories involving men who leave on journeys and return as strangers with mysterious companions. They have been somewhere and perhaps returned with knowledge that the townsfolk and maybe even people in the Hall do not know. Or else why would they have returned?

Much of what he says in the full piece explains why it's almost impossible to believe that the system will accept a defeat; all of its powers will be used in the interest of self-preservation. It is vast, it is rich, it is powerful, and it has deep roots among power structures themselves old. These include the governments of most of the major cities, where voting has been corrupt at least since Tammany Hall, and probably since voting started.

The power structure's only weakness is that part of its self-preservation entails maintaining the illusion among its supporters that it has been freely chosen. That illusion remains in effect. The Washington Post this week did a survey of supporters from both sides, and finds that it is the Democrats who would be troubled more if they lost, but also the Democrats who believe the result will be fair. 

Trump supporters don't expect the election to be fair, so they won't be as surprised -- or as hurt -- if the result allows their opponents to remain in power. They'll know they've been cheated, not rejected. Because the illusion of consent has been retained among the supporters of the power structure, losing would create a psychic effect of rejection of their model by America itself.

The system could defend itself more powerfully by discarding the illusion, and like Egypt just openly stating that only certain candidates will be allowed to win. That would do away with the challenge, but also a major source of the system's power -- somewhat like destroying the Ring unmade Sauron and his challenge to the freedom of the age, but also destroyed the work of the Three and the ability of the world to sustain magical things like elves. The system seems to think of its challenger as being Sauron-like in evil, given their choices of analogies for him. Will they destroy the Ring to stop him? The loss of this illusion would protect the powerful, but they would retain only a shadow of their power, only what they could hold onto by naked force and coercion.

Can the system be defeated? Is the need to retain the illusion strong enough to limit the amount of cheating to an amount that can be overcome? We will find out in a week or so.

Do bots program her teleprompter?

It's bad enough that she doesn't seem to have a thought in her head, but what about her puppetmasters? "Let's move forward and find out where we are" ranks with "we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it." Sensing that she might be losing the crowd, Harris reverted to her reliable applause line, "You know, like abortion!"

Look Thy Last Upon October

Always my favorite month, October this year was beautiful and exciting. I’m grateful to have lived through it. 

All-Hallows Eve pumpkin, carved by my wife.

My mother’s little dog, Tubby.

UPDATE: 

The pumpkin seizes control of a fire truck.

Headed for the Harbor

Newspaper of Record

Headline: “Biden Calls On Deplorable Garbage Nazis To Tone Down The Rhetoric."

That ship has sailed, I believe. 

More on Communication in an Emergency

A couple of weeks ago I posted my thoughts about various means of communication in an emergency. Before that, I had posted about Thomas Witherspoon, a ham radio operator in Swannanoa, NC, whose mountain community was caught in Hurricane Helene.

Witherspoon has a new post up where he discusses his own community's plan to prepare for communication in future emergencies. He discusses some options I did not, including Meshtastic and PLMRS, and explains why his community settled on GMRS. He explains it all better than I can, so check it out over there if you're interested.

He has also continued posting on the recovery there and has one link that will take you to all of his recovery posts.

In the comments in my original post, Janet (who knows a lot more about this than I do) said in the next few years our normal cell phones will be capable of satellite communication, so all of this will be easier when that rolls out. Until then, I still think satellite communications are best if you can afford it, and GMRS is probably the best cheap radio option when the cell phones are down, unless you want to study for and take the ham test, and maybe even then depending on where you live. For comparison, the Garmin InReach is about $400 with a $15 / month subscription. Residential Starlink is $349 for the equipment and $120 / month subscription. GMRS handheld radios start at $15-20 each and require a $35 license (but do not require a test) renewable every 10 years.

If you want to look for GMRS repeaters to see what's around you, you can go to https://mygmrs.com/.

If you want to look for ham radio repeaters, check out https://repeaterbook.com/.

All of that said, the ham radio technician license is pretty easy. If you are at all interested, it's worth getting the license and trying it out. If you would like recommendations about how to study for it or have questions about it, feel free to ask in the comments.

Outlawed Tunes on Outlawed Pipes

I’m happy with my birthday present. Today I mounted Cobra pipes on it. 

These pipes are illegal except for racetrack use in California, but here in the mountains of Western North Carolina the opinions of California legislators are a source of great humor. 

A Brutal Ad

This ad is oddly framed, because it's mostly a return to Tulsi Gabbard's initial criticism of Harris: that she was evil as proven by her actions as a prosecutor. That's what most of the ad is about, and most of the voices you hear are female: her own, or those of a woman whose life she ruined or a daughter of a mother whose life she ruined. 

Why, then, does the ad begin and end framed as a masculine complaint against Harris? It's a three minute ad, but only the first 15 seconds and the last seventeen seconds are about the frame. Discarding the frame entirely, the ad remains devastating and compelling -- in her own words she tells you what her intentions are, and her victims spell out what it meant to them that she behaved as a prosecutor exactly the way she says she did. 

"As men and protectors of women and children," it closes, "you are simply a risk we are not willing to take." 

Sisters

The work continues.

When Father Richard Sutter, a former U.S. Army Airborne Ranger Infantry Officer, summoned a handful of his strong-backed St. Gabriel Catholic Church parishioners for what he called a recon mission to Swannanoa, North Carolina, a community devastated by Hurricane Helene, we did not hesitate.

Once there, we were surprised to learn that the earlier-arriving boots on the ground were not boots at all, but sandals, and small ones at that. Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity were already at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, our designated rally point, by the time we gents had arrived in town.

I was aware of the Missionaries of Charity and their service to the poorest of the poor. But I’d never seen them in action, and certainly never expected to do so two hours from my home. The strength of the hurricane notwithstanding, theirs was a masterclass display of the most powerful force in the universe: love.

The author doesn’t intend this as a comment on gender or gender roles, but it’s interesting to see that come out in a natural way. The important thing, though, is the work of helping people.

UPDATE: A video from the NC DOT showing work they're doing to 'put the river back so we'll have a place to rebuild the road.'

Satire/serious?

Powerline's Week in Pictures featured this headline, which I assumed was a joke: "New Study Reveals That People Who Make Good Decisions Have an Unfair Advantage." No, it's a real article title, but I will say that the point is not necessarily that making good decisions is itself an unfair advantage. The authors appear to be arguing that white supremacy unfairly endows the wrong kind of people with a magical power of making good decisions, and in that sense the healthy results of the good decisions are an unearned benefit. The argument still gets a high Lame-O-Meter rating from yours truly, but it's not quite as absurd as the headline implied.

Here's the crux:

[T]hose who make good decisions tend to enter a virtuous cycle: good decisions lead to better outcomes, which in turn provide more opportunities and resources to make even better decisions in the future. This compounding effect also leverages white supremacy to result in an ever widening gap between those who make consistently good choices and those who do not.

The idea is that people make bad decisions because they lack the opportunities and resources to make good ones. One example might be starting a savings account early in life and benefiting from the power of compound interest.

I'm afraid the argument leaves me unmoved. Granted, the more money you have in youth, the easier it would seem to be to set some of it aside as savings. Honestly, though, it's not a pattern I've ever detected in real life. Whether people live within their income appears to be remarkably untethered to whatever their income happens to be. Some people are dirt poor and manage to make ends meet and set aside money for a rainy day; my Depression-Era parents were a good example. Others are rich as Croesus and consistently overspend. It's not a question of how much you earn but of your ability to see reality clearly and control your own impulses: if you can't afford it, you can't afford it, no matter what you think you deserve to be able to afford.

World War... VII?

Since people stopped keeping track after II, it's hard to say how many more such conflicts have occurred; the GWOT was supposed to have been IV, as I recall from twenty years ago. The current conflict is at least six.

That the current conflict is a world war became crystal clear this week when the WSJ printed proof that Russia has been providing targeting solutions to the Houthis. Such solutions have been used for attacks on shipping, allowing the almost-closing of the Red Sea global supply route. The Houthis have been presented as chiefly an Iranian proxy, and indeed they are also that; but they have also been carrying on a Russian effort to punish the rest of the world for supporting the war in Ukraine. 

And indeed, such a move by Russia is entirely fair play within the rules (such as they are) of warfighting. It isn't even aggression, but reprisal: the United States has been providing targeting solutions to Ukraine that have allowed damaging attacks on ships offshore (and many other targets). The United States and NATO countries have also been providing weapons to Ukraine, though these come with restrictions on just how far the strikes with those weapons are allowed to penetrate. 

We could see an end to this war starting this week, if everything goes right. As this podcast linked by AVI notes, the Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel demonstrated a capacity to cause damage that Israel cannot prevent even with US efforts. Last night's strikes by Israeli F-35s demonstrated a parallel capacity that Iran cannot stop. Both parties stopped short of damaging their opponents' energy sector -- Israel has only a handful of major power plants; Iran's oil and gas fields, its shipping ports, and also its nuclear technology facilities are likewise vulnerable. Both sides now know their opponent can hurt them fatally if it decides to do so; both sides also know that doing so will not disable the enemy's reprisal blow, as the time delay between suffering the damage and dying will not prevent the counterstrike from occurring. They are both heavily incentivized to stop fighting, according to the once-doubtful logic of Mutually Assured Destruction. 

Especially if the election here brings about a regime that will seek peace in Ukraine on terms at least minimally acceptable to Russia, the closing of that theater will also reduce pressure on the Middle East. The Houthi could lose their capability to effectively close the Red Sea; weapons shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah could be reduced; the proxies themselves are badly degraded already. The war could close with minimal Russian gains in Ukraine balanced by massive strategic losses in manpower and equipment, with Iran's proxy war network exhausted for years, and Israel relatively secure but newly chastened about its ability to escalate without consequences. 

Peace is at hand. Maybe; bad decisions by anyone could tip the scales towards another round of escalation instead. That could be ruinous as only World Wars can be, especially since the China/Taiwan theater hasn't tipped into action yet. One cannot hope in the wisdom of elected officials, nor in the unelected ones; but perhaps we might hope, at least, that their sensitivity to pain will suffice. 

Voices of sanity

Mark Halperin has been getting good press today. I found this YouTube broadcast featuring Mr. Halperin and a campaign pro from each party, with time set aside for viewers' questions. There are annoying signal glitches with one of the pros, but the information that gets through is interesting and delivered civilly. Around the 29:00 mark, the public comments give some excellent insight into what motivates people to choose a candidate. The first speaker is a libertarian who is disenchanted with the Democratic party, sat out the last two presidential elections, and now has concluded she must vote for Trump. The next speaker is a strident Harris supporter who can't articulate what's good about Harris and is obsessed with outrage over Trump. Halperin works hard to keep the discussions on track, very gently attempting to steer the conversation back to particulars rather than extended venting.

The dominant concern is that Harris will not reveal her policy.

I'm seeing a lot of commentators begin to emphasize the need to prepare for one's candidate to lose next month, no matter which candidate each of us supports.

Levers of power

I probably was drawn to this Zachary Faria piece because I am angry with Biden and the party that propped him up before they ditched him in order to position his even worse VP for success. But it's also interesting as an illustration of the sources of true power. No doubt the office of the President is a formidable tool, but the human being parked there still has to be able to use the tool in order to get any sizeable fraction of his country, or the wider world, to jump when he says "frog." Devastating tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot can't do spectacular damage without plugging into a widespread and elaborate social system that contains many individuals who are willing, for whatever reasons and to various degrees, to go along.

“No one is listening to [Biden] anymore, and his words have little power and less reach.” It was clear since he dropped out of the race that Biden was going to be an absentee president, but to have people who work for him admit that now “no one is listening to him” is a damning indictment of Biden when he is still the one ostensibly in charge of the executive branch for another three months.

This is what will cement Biden’s legacy as a failure. Biden spent three years ruining everything he touched: making inflation worse, botching the withdrawal from Afghanistan, watching wars break out in Ukraine and Gaza when he inherited a peaceful global situation, and running moral interference for terrorists while antisemites swarmed college campuses. There is not one aspect of Biden’s presidency that could be described as successful.

Meanwhile, the candidate I hope is going to blow him out of the water in a few days is literally Hitler, according to an unimpeachable source who discovered this five years, kept working for him afterwards until he was fired, then stayed quiet until a couple of weeks before the election. So we're definitely not to conclude that we're simply being lied to 24/7 and should decline to be alarmed or even interested in the next piece of garbage that is served up breathlessly to us.

On a lighter note,

When he left McDonald’s, [Trump] promised, if elected, to fix the ice cream machine and make Taco Bell pay for it.

Curses Foiled Again

Red State reports on Reddit witches:

In the subreddit "r/WitchesVsPatriarchy," user "feelmycocobeats" claims that witches have been mentioning that doing spells "directly against tRump are not as effective as we might hope as he seems to have some kind of protection around him." 

The user then begins to strategize about spell casting, saying a "freezer spell against Project 2025 would likely be useful," but even if what she was suggesting was actually based in reality, it wouldn't matter because Project 2025 isn't Trump's, it's the Heritage Foundation's plan. Trump's plan is Agenda 47. 

The user then suggested "uplifting" spells to help Kamala Harris and the Democrats.

This is apparently an ongoing thing. There are news articles at least from 2017 and 2020 about this. 

Hanging in there

My friend's grandson, the micro-preemie born at something like 23 weeks, is still doing pretty well for a micro-preemie. His weight gain stalled, but now he's begun to gain again. Although he's still tiny, not quite 2 pounds, we try to remember that he wasn't due to be born until December. His lung function has been surprisingly good from the start.

'The Remarkable Redneck Airforce of Asheville'

Run out of the Harley-Davidson shop, no less.

The relief effort after Hurricane Helene is powered by private citizens, and volunteers have discovered that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

At a Harley-Davidson dealership in Appalachia, one expects to encounter the occasional roar of some serious horsepower. 

Less expected is the sight that has accompanied that sound in Swannanoa, North Carolina, for the past three weeks: helicopters, many of them privately owned and operated, launching and landing from a makeshift helipad in the backyard of the local hog shop. According to the men who organized this private relief effort in the wake of devastating floods unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, more than a million pounds of goods—food, heavy equipment to clear roads, medical gear, blankets, heaters, tents, you name it—have been flown from here to dots all over the map of western North Carolina.

"We're not the government, and we're here to help," says one of the two men standing by the makeshift gate—a pair of orange traffic drums—that controls access to and from the Harley-Davidson dealership's parking lot and the piles of donated items neatly organized within it. "We can do it quicker, we can do it efficiently, and we genuinely just want to help our neighbors." He identifies himself only by his first name and later asks that I don't use even that. It's an understandable request, as what he's doing is probably not, strictly speaking, totally legal. 

From Reason magazine, the story of bikers and helicopter pilots and former Green Berets, churchgoers and the 101st Airborne falling in on and taking orders from civilian volunteers who know better where they're needed. 

It's everything you ever wanted to believe about America, and it's really true. Read the whole thing.

Cave Emptori

Long-time Milblogger CDR Salamander has a reminder for anyone who might think about bothering now-balding Generation X gentlemen shopping at Home Depot.