This is a short week, so I’ll keep this week’s offering short and sweet.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day.  The usually accepted, that is to say, artificial story of the origin of Thanksgiving is that in 1621, the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony celebrated their first harvest by inviting the Wampanoag Indians to a feast.  The part of the story that was left out was retold by the late Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.  Rush recounted that the original charter of the Pilgrims called for the colony to be administered as a commune, in which no colonist owned any private property.  The Pilgrims survived, but remained near starvation until William Bradford decided to trash the commune system.  Bradford realized that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive, so Bradford unharnessed the power of free enterprise by introducing the capitalistic principle of private property.  If people had a stake in the outcome, they worked harder.  Hard work in one’s self-interest led to prosperity, and the prosperity that was created by capitalism is the engine that made the United States the envy of the world.  That’s the story they don’t teach in school.  In fact, that’s the story that the Socialist’s who’ve been running our schools for a hundred years have been suppressing.  Because the truth is that, but for the capitalist system embraced by William Bradford so many years ago, America wouldn’t have the wealth that the Woke imbeciles are trying to steal from us today.  Early on in our republic, presidents declared days of thanksgiving.  In 1817, New York adopted an annual Thanksgiving holiday.  In 1863, Abraham Lincoln set the Thanksgiving holiday as the last Thursday in November.  It stayed that way till 1939, when the last Thursday in November was November 30.  A group of retailers, worried that the late Thanksgiving would hamper holiday sales, asked FDR to move Thanksgiving up a week to extend the holiday shopping season.  FDR agreed, and since 1939, Thanksgiving falls on the second to last Thursday of the month.  As with most of our holidays, we’ve largely abandoned the original meaning of Thanksgiving, which involved thanking God for providing what was necessary for survival.  Nowadays, we have the 99 year old Macy’s parade, followed by multiple football games and the conspicuous consumption of thousands more calories than we need, or are good for us.  Regardless of the fact that we’ve lost the true meaning of the holiday, we still have many things to be thankful for.  We should be thankful to have our families around us, or at least  the ones we can stand to tolerate around the table.  But most of all, we should be thankful that next year we’ll have an opportunity to remove the Woke imbeciles from office and rededicate our government to sanity, where the truth is the truth and the law is the law.

On October 7, an army of Hamas Islamic terrorist scum crossed the border from Gaza into southern Israel and carried out barbaric attacks against Israelis.  At least 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children were slaughtered, and hundreds taken hostage.  The dead and captured included 32 dead Americans and an unknown number of American hostages.  Attacking Israel is nothing new for members of Hamas, whose most popular hobby is constructing missiles to be fired over the Israeli border.  But October 7 wasn’t isolated attack; it was a well planned, coordinated invasion, made to start a war, and carried out with a brutality reminiscent of the Medieval Crusades and Nazi Germany.  Indeed, many commentators, including Mark Levin, have taken to calling the Hamas murderers Nazis, and that’s not just hyperbole.  In point of fact, the comparison of the Hamas maniacs to Nazis is all too apt.  Adolph Hitler’s Germany persecuted Jews, and tolerated Christian religions to the extent that they could be used to foster Nazism as the true State religion.  Hitler’s relationship with Muslims was something else again.  Hitler admired Islam, telling Albert Speer, “It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion.  Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?”  He considered Islam a Männerreligion—a “religion of men.”  The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise,” which Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.”  In 1941, Hitler met with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  The Mufti, al-Husseini, told Hitler that the Arabs and Germans had common enemies in the English, Jews and Communists.  The Mufti, who also called on Benito Mussolini, shared the Nazi goal of “uncompromising war against the Jews,” and he called on Arabs to kill Jews.  The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Eygpt in 1928, was trained in the tactics of guerilla warfare by Nazi commando leader Otto Skorzeny.  This was basic training for those who later became Islamic terrorists.  One of Skorzeny’s students was Yassar Arafat. We’re told that Islam is a religion of peace, and for most adherents that’s true.  However, whatever one’s view of Islam, it’s fair to say that Islam is not now, nor has it ever been known for its tolerance.  That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact which certainly isn’t unique to Muslims.  The history of Christianity surely is marked by episodes of extreme intolerance and cruelty in the name of God.  Untold thousands were hacked to death by Crusaders who were sent out to kill with Papal blessings.  The Massacre at Beziers is a good example.  During the Albigensian Crusade in Southern France in 1209, soldiers asked the Papal Legate, Amalric, how to distinguish the heretics from the faithful.  The priest told them, “Kill them all.  God will know his own.”  That advice was a far cry from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, but religions have a habit of evolving, or perhaps devolving from “love thy neighbor” to “kill the stranger.”  Muslims are no exception.  Hatred of Jews was not a founding principle of Islam.  Far from it.  Muhammad considered Jesus to be the greatest of God’s messengers, and preached tolerance for “People of the Book” (Muslims, Christians and Jews).  Among his 9 wives, Muhammad numbered a Jewish woman and a Coptic Christian.  After Muhammad’s death in 632 things changed.  The truth is that Muslims don’t just consider non-Muslims to be infidels; they’ve been fighting amongst themselves for 1,400 years.  When Muhammad died, his friend Abu Bakr became the Islamic leader, or Caliph.  Some Muslims, now called Shiites, believed that the line of succession should run from Muhammad’s cousin Ali, instead of through Bakr.  War broke out.  This 7th Century schism was led by the so-called Kharijites, who divided Muslims into two groups, those who agreed with them (The People of Heaven), and those who disagreed (The People of Hell), which sounds a lot like today’s Democrat Party.  Anyhow, the first four Caliphs were murdered, and Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting ever since.  Mideast violence also is nothing new.  Muslims opposed the creation of a Jewish State, and have fought several wars against Israel since 1948.  The Palestinians, who could rightly be considered the locusts of the Muslim world, sow violence and dicontent wherever they go.  They turned Lebanon from a peaceful Mediterranean country into a terrorist Hellhole.  They tried to overhtrow the King of Jordan.  Consequently, they’re not welcome in any Arab State.  Israel agreed to a Palestinian homeland 23 years ago.  Yassar Arafat vetoed the agreement.  In 2005, Israel gave the Palestinians control of Gaza.  The next year, in their one and only election, Palestinians chose Hamas to govern them.  Therefore, the calls for freedom for Palestine shouldn’t be directed at Israel.  When you hear calls for “a two State solution,” remember that they’re one State short.  Palestinians rejected Statehood in 2000, and chose Hamas instead.  The Hamas Charter consists of 36 Articles, all of which promote the goal of destroying the State of Israel.  One of the Articles says, “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad (holy war).”  There’s no negotiating with that.  Since October 7, Israel has been waging war against Hamas.  It’s been ugly and bloody, but they have no choice.  What has disgusted me more than anything else has been the reaction to Israel’s defense of their homeland in this country.  You expect blatant anti-Semitism from the Muslim world, but the attacks on Israel and Jews on our college campuses is a disgusting reminder of the educational malpractice that has been perpetrated on our children by the Woke imbeciles who populte college faculties.  They employ the tactics of the Left, preferring mindless chanting to truth, and consider facts to be mere annoyances to be denied or ignored.  The Hamas butchers produced videos of their own atrocities.  Those videos are in the public domain.  Reportedly, journalists from CNN and other outlets went along with the terrorists on their raids.  Yet, again reminiscent of the Holocaust, some blue and green haired college educated dolts have had the gall to express doubt whether Hamas really attacked Israel.  Congresspersons, mostly from the Squad, are calling for a cease fire, which would permit Hamas leaders to escape and rearm.  Maybe thjey should be renamed the Jihad Squad.  Israel has remained steadfast.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden and filthy company have wavered, calling for a pause in the fighting.  They’re torn between courting the votes of Jewish Americans, and trying to appease Muslim voters.  If we’re lucky, this rift will tear the Democrat Party apart, just in time for the 2024 election.  Hopefully, the Palestinian protesters will use their 1,400 year old feud do for Democrats what what they did for the Lebanese.  Palestinian unrest could be the 2024 version of the Wuhan virus for Democrats.  Meanwhile, let’s hope the Israelis are able to eradicate the Hamas virus from their borders.  Those cockroaches need to be hunted down and exterminated.

Let’s get all the cliches out of the way up front.  What goes around comes around.  Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.  Everything old is new again.  You get the point.  Currently, we live in a world that’s been turned upside down.  Just take a look around.  The inmates are running the asylum.  The border has been erased, and more than 10 million invaders have been admitted.  Now we’re expected to support them.  Illegal drugs, which were made illegal due to their lethality and tendency to ruin people’s lives, are now legal.  The government, instead of “just say no,” is saying “yes,” and actually aiding and abetting drug addiction.  And it’s not just drug laws.  We live in a world where it’s considered extremist or racist to enforce any law.  Crime is rampant in the streets.  Government permits it.  Organized theft gangs are emptying stores.  Police are handcuffed, and if the store owners dare resist, they’re prosecuted.  The law’s not the law anymore, or more precisely, some laws are not the law anymore.  On Saturday I visited friends in New York City.  We wanted to smoke cigars outdoors, but we had to be careful, because cigar smoking is illegal in Central Park, so we had to be sure to remain outside the park to avoid arrest.  Conversely, if I was smoking a giant Jamaican doobie instead of a cigar, no problem, as the constant stench of cannabis smoke wafted down every street in the City.  But I digress.  The truth’s not even the truth anymore.  The government, and the lapdog media tell us things like, “the border is secure,” “the crime rate isn’t going up,” and “the economy’s great,” and we’re supposed to believe it.  A large segment of our population has become numb.  It puts me in mind of the Soviet author who observed, “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”  And the Hell of it is that outside forces haven’t done this to us, we’ve done it to ourselves.  Our own government has sown the seeds of destruction.  What is government for anyhow?  Thomas Hobbes saw government as the social contract we make to protect some our personal rights from the all-out warfare that would ensue without it.  Our Framers made it clear in the Constitution, which was enacted to, “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”  Has our government failed?  Do we have justice?  Is our nation tranquil?  Is it secure?  Can we promote the general welfare when we’re $33 trillion in debt?  Have any of you been blessed by liberty lately?  I sure haven’t.  The entire social fabric of our country has drastically changed, but it’s nothing new.  It’s happened before.  At the beginning of what came to be called the Roaring Twenties, the government unintentionally ushered in a period of lawlessness by enacting Prohibition.  Over night, the production and sale of alcohol was made illegal.  It was done with the best of intentions.  A bunch of straight-laced, God-fearing folks were going to put an end to alcoholism, thereby ending domestic violence, and ensuring that families were protected.  It didn’t work.  People didn’t like being told they couldn’t do what they wanted to do.  The well-intentioned 18th Amendment was largely ignored.  When the legal alcohol dried up, people turned to illicit means to obtain it, and groups that were not well-meaning took full advantage.  The prohibition of alcohol permitted mobsters to corrupt otherwise law abiding citizens and public officials, and to make millions of dollars.  We’re still feeling the effects of what was called The Noble Experiment today.  What does any of that have to do with today’s fiascos?  Plenty, because the insanity we’re experiencing is attributable to the opposite of prohibition.  We’re falling apart because of entitlement.  In 1920, government told people what they couldn’t do, and things went to Hell.  A hundred years later, it’s telling them they can do whatever they want, with the same result.  Not prohibition, but entitlement is to blame.  The Left has been marching steadily toward the precipice on which we’re now perched for a long time.  Since the 1960’s they’ve been breaking down our senses of morality and propriety.  Morality and propriety were tied to religious values, so religion was ridiculed and the religious smeared as extremists.  I don’t want the government in our bedrooms any more than the Left did, but there’s a lot of territory between Puritanism and our current Sodom and Gomorrah.  Ever notice how any attempt to restore order is denounced as “a threat to our freedom?”  I’m all for freedom, but it’s not freedom the Left is selling, it’s license.  There’s a difference.  Personal freedom exists within a framework in which your freedom does no harm to others.  When you’re free to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences, that’s license.  It’s where the word “licentious” comes from, and we’ve run amok.  The trend toward condoning crime was born out of the misguided notion that law enforcement equals racism.  So if you want to protest the police by burning down your city, including police stations and courthouses, we have to “give you space” to act out.  If you’re angry (and not a Trump supporter) you’re entitled.  If you want to be stoned on hard drugs all day and night, who are we to judge?  You’re entitled.  Government will supply you with needles and even Narcan to bring you back when you overdose.  And as the America we once knew is carried away on a wave of license, keep this in mind.  During Prohibition the bad actors who took advantage of the disruption of society were mobsters.  The people taking advantage of the Age of Entitlement are also mobsters, only they’re working for the government.  It’s the Leftists in government who, in the name of democracy, are slowly but surely eroding the freedoms promised to us by the Founders for their own purposes.  The bootleggers just wanted to make money.  These bastards are actively encouraging behaviors that are designed to and inevitably will lead to the collapse of our Republic, in favor of their imaginary Socialist Worker’s Paradise.  We ended Prohibition by passing the 21st Amendment.  Ending Entitlement won’t be so easy.  We’ll have to convince the victims of educational malpractice that there is no free lunch, that bad actions do have consequences, and that hard work is better than entitlement.  That’s a hard lift.  Prohibition ended during the Great Depression.  It may take another crash to cast out license and restore freedom.

This week I want to take a brief step away from the usual political discourse, away from the wars, the inflation, the border, the debt, and other looming disasters.  Instead, I want to explore just why we put so much time and effort into supporting one sports team or another.  When my late grandfather observed someone who was obsessed with something he would say, “It’s a sickness.”  Of course, when he said it it came out sick-i-ness, but you get the point.  Last year, Americans spent over $100 billion to go to sporting events. Americans tend to work more than people in other countries, so our leisure time is at a premium.  That being the case, why do we spend so much time, money, and energy rooting for sports teams?  It can’t be for the satisfaction of seeing one’s team win because some of the most rabid supporters are rooting for incredibly bad teams.  Take it from me.  I root for the New York Giants and the Mets, and this has not been a satisfying year.  Yet we keep coming back.  Case in point.  Last Sunday I went to the Giants-Jets game.  The weather was miserable, and both teams have been putrid all year.  Game tickets on the secondary market were going for a minimum of $250 to $300 apiece for average seats.  Torrential downpours moved the pregame tailgate under a makeshift tent.  It didn’t matter.  We were happy to be there.  Then there was the game.  We were treated to the worst excuse for professional football I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching for 60 years.  It doesn’t matter.  This Sunday, I’ll watch them again.  I can’t help it.  The best thing I can compare it to is going by the scene of an auto crash.  You know it’s going to be terrible, but you have to look.  What’s driving our mania?  We’re just fans.  The origin of the term “fan” to describe a sports team supporter is uncertain.  It’s likely derived from the word “fanatic.”  Fanatic comes to us from the Latin “fanaticus,” which meant mad, enthusiastic, or inspired by a god.  In the 1520’s, “fanatic” was used to describe an insane person.  That seems about right.  In the 17th century, “fanatic” was used to describe an avid enthusiast or a devoted follower.  The shortening of the word to “fan” dates to the 1880’s and has been attributed to baseball manager Ted Sullivan, and Cincinnati sportswriter Ren Mulford.  Wherever “fan” came from, you get the point.  Fan, fanatic, insane – OK, we’re all nuts.  We have to be crazy.  Whether he actually said it or not, Albert Einstein is credited with the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”  I’ll be watching the Giants again this week, so score one for Einstein.  And it’s not just the time we spend at the game or watching the game.  Every waking minute between the end of one game and the beginning of the next is consumed with talking about, complaining about, and reliving the game.  As I said, the teams most often lose, and even when they win, victory is fleeting, but we rehash it over and over again.  And the media outlets are fanning the flames.  Back in the dark ages, before 24/7 cable TV, you might see an article about the game in a newspaper.  There was no ESPN, so you saw NFL highlights, if at all, at halftime during Monday Night Football.  Now you can’t escape from pregame and post-game analysis.  I can turn my TV on on a Saturday and watch dozens of college football games, some from colleges I never heard of.  Then there’s Thursday night football and Monday night football.  On Sunday, there are live network games and RedZone, which broadcasts the best parts of all live games.  For a price, you can watch every game.  And when the games are over, there’s Sports Talk radio, which will harp and harp on the same stupid crap all day and all night.  And we’ll listen all day and all night because we’re fans.  Winston Churchill said, “A fan is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”  Turn on WFAN radio any day and you’ll see Churchill was right.  We’re gluttons for punishment too, because the commentators and the callers invariably are not extolling the accomplishments of our teams, but instead are dissecting their failures, ad infinitum, and we revel in it.  I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t watch sports to experience what Jim McKay used to call the thrill of victory.  We watch them so we can bitch about the agony of defeat.  Sports are a diversion from the horrors of reality.  We have to bitch about something, so it might as well be about the latest sporting contest, the result of which, in the final analysis, is irrelevant.  As my grandfather observed, “It’s a sickness.”  Let’s hope we never recover.

There’s an old proverb, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”  There’s no doubt that our Fearless Leader, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, is a fool, but we might need to change the proverb a bit.  The Biden Crime Family has amassed a great deal of money over the years, from which they haven’t  easily been parted.  If foolish Joe wanted to blow his own money, no one would care.  The problem is that the Fool in Chief is parting with our money, not his.  Well, that’s not correct either.  He’s borrowing and parting with trillions of dollars; money that our children and grandchildren will have to repay in perpetuity.  What’s more, this out of control borrowing and spending is for no sensible government purpose, worse than that, our spending is downright counterproductive, ruinous, and insane.  The Biden spending spree would be disastrous even if we actually had the money he’s blowing, but we don’t.  Currently, our national debt stands at more than $33 trillion, which is 120% of our Gross National Product.  The only other time that’s happened was World War II.  That was a good reason for high spending and debt.  Today, there’s no good reason.  In today’s dollars, World War II cost the U.S. about $4.1 trillion.  That’s the total for four years.  Joe Biden is spending $6 trillion a year, and he wants to spend more next year.  I’ve written recently about the sea change in Congressional acceptance of debt.  When Democrat LBJ wanted to lower tax rates, other Democrats opposed him, until the federal budget actually was cut.  And in 1964, a “budget cut” really meant spending less next year than you spent this year, but not anymore.  Now, if you spend $10 billion this year, and plan to spend $15 billion next year, but only spend $12 billion, that’s considered a $3 billion budget cut.  Only it’s not a cut, it’s just another lie.  Our Congressional leaders, the people who are supposed to be the guardians of our national finances, and the protectors of our future as a nation, have become incurable spending addicts.  And they’re spending money we don’t have on stupid crap.  Recent Omnibus Budget bills have included such things as $750,000 for new fire alarms at the Metropolitan Opera, and $3 million for an LGBTQ museum.  Here’s a good one.  $15 billion “to save the entertainment industry.”  Save it from what?  Then there was $200 million for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund.  This was a vital outlay.  The Fund is dedicated to tackling “the disproportionate impact of Covid, climate change, conflict, and crisis on women and girls.”  Huh?  This puts me in mind of a old joke.  A deadly asteroid is about to destroy the Earth.  The New York Times headline-  WORLD ENDS TOMORROW, WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT.  But speaking of old jokes, let’s get back to our old joke.

     Joe Biden is spending money like he’s just jumped in a cab and told the driver, “Take me to Hell in a hand basket, the road to ruin is the fastest route.” First, Joe decides to destroy the oil and gas industry.  Our nation runs on oil and gas.  All of our industries, our military, the cars we drive, the trucks that deliver goods, heating our homes, cooking our food, and thousands of products we can’t do without depend on the availability of abundant and affordable oil and gas.  Without it we face massive unemployment, starvation, and ruin.  Simply put, without oil and gas America is a Third World country.  Biden’s actions have artificially increased oil prices, which along with ruinous spending caused high inflation that hurts every American.  The inflation resulted in high interest rates, which have crippled the housing industry.  Oh yes, then there’s the little problem of worldwide warfare.  Since Biden took office, Russia and Ukraine are at war, the Mideast is on fire, the Chinese are about to invade Taiwan, and Iran is threatening the world.  Joe Biden is directly responsible for all these calamities.  Russia has been called a gas station with nuclear weapons.  Russia invaded Ukraine only because the Biden increase in oil prices from $50 to near $100 a barrel made an invasion possible.  This was no surprise.  Oil spiked in 1980.  Russia invaded Afghanistan.  Oil spiked in 2014.  Russia invaded Crimea.  And now we’re funding both sides with borrowed money.  China’s aiding Russia.  We sell our oil reserves to China, aiding their eventual invasion of Taiwan, then we borrow money from China, turn around and send it to Ukraine, to fight the Russians, whose invasion of Ukraine we made possible.  It’s perverse.  And funding both sides has become a habit for us.  Hamas attacks Israel.  We’re allied with Israel.  We send them aid, and move our military to the region to fight Islamic terrorists, then we try to hold Israel back.  At the same time, we’re sending $100 million to the Hamas terrorists.  Biden calls this “humanitarian aid,” which again is perverse, as it’s being sent, no strings attached, to the same inhuman homicidal maniacs who butchered women, babies and the elderly.  Not crazy enough yet?  Hamas is financed by Iran.  Iran is the most notorious financier of international terrorism on the planet. Lately, there’s a lot of criticism of the fact that Biden unfroze $6 billion in Iranian assets.  That’s peanuts.  Il Duce Obama gave them billions more than that, including pallets of cash.  Biden undid the Trump sanctions on Iran, permitting them to sell oil worth over $60 billion.  And now Iran has threatened to attack the U.S. if we continue to aid Israel.  And imbecile Biden is doing exactly nothing to cut off Iranian oil income.  Instead, he’s lurching closer to a wider war in the Mideast.  And all of the Biden lunatic escapades are being financed by borrowing that will cripple the U.S. for generations to come.  It’s high time that the current Fool in Chief is parted from our money.  Biden’s response to those who might get involved in the Mideast war is “Don’t.”  That’s good advice.  Want to stop having our money pissed down a rathole?  Don’t reelect Joe Biden.