ONE MORE STEP TOWARDS THE SLEEPER DIET: Why eating red meat and dairy could actually prevent cancer.

Classical reference in headline:

SKYNET SMILES: Pentagon Considering Letting Weaponized AI ‘Autonomously’ Kill Humans.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY:

How it started: Losing Gordon Gekko. Wall Street has gone over to the Democrats. Should conservatives miss it?

—Kevin D. Williamson, NRO, February 19th, 2009.

How it’s going: Will New York Politicians Tax Wall Street Out of Existence?

—Stephen Moore, Hot Air, Thursday.

HMMMM: The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving.

What most people believe is a variation on what I was taught in public school in the 1960s. The Pilgrims came to Plymouth on a ship called the Mayflower. They were the first English settlers in America. They came for religious freedom. And they had a big feast with Indians, and that was the first Thanksgiving. That about sums it up. And that is what Chesterton calls “The Myth of the Mayflower.”

First of all, they were not known as “pilgrims” till about 200 years afterwards. They were Puritans, a radical Anglican “low church” sect that loathed the “high church” Anglicans that happened to include the King of England. In fact, about 30 years after the Puritans arrived in America, some of their fellow Puritans back in England arranged for King Charles I to have his head chopped off.

Secondly, there were at least nine other British settlements before the Plymouth colony. In fact, one of them was at Plymouth. All but one of them failed, including the first settlement at Plymouth. The Puritans who came to Plymouth in 1620 almost didn’t survive. Half the settlers died the first winter. They were saved by a Native American named Squanto, who taught them how to hunt and fish and grow corn.

But here’s what is really interesting:  Squanto was a Roman Catholic.

In 1614, he had been captured by an English party led by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) and taken on a ship to Spain where he was to be sold as a slave. He was rescued by some Dominican friars who instructed him in the Catholic faith. He told them he wanted to return to his people in America. They helped him get to England, where he met John Slaney, who taught him English and arranged for him to get to Newfoundland. Squanto served as an interpreter between the English and the Indians and crossed the Atlantic six times.  He was never able to return to his own tribe, because they had been wiped out in a plague.

Read the whole thing.

A POWER LINE SPECIAL WEEK IN PICTURES: Thanksgiving Day in Pictures.

Related:

All time champion community note. Will never be topped. https://t.co/gRZ1fTmY6J

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) November 24, 2023

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Idiot Terrorists Try To Enter Via Canadian Border When Southern Border Is Wide Open.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:

Shot: Climate change could soon make these staple Thanksgiving dishes more scarce.

—ABC News, Tuesday.

Chaser: Flashback: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015.

CURSE THOSE HOARDERS AND WRECKERS, COMRADES! Gavin Newsom Implies Inflation Pains Are A Conservative Lie.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Hamas Is Playing Games With Hostage Release Agreement.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM THE HAMAS WING OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! Pro-Palestinian protesters glue their hands to 6th Avenue, disrupting Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Late last month, we saw Greta Thunberg, on her 14:59 minute of fame, posing with pro-Hamas protestors and a highly antisemitic octopus toy that—whoops!—just happened to appear in the photo. And here are pro-Hamas protestors taking a page from the Just Stop Oil eco-mentalists, who love to glue themselves (using petroleum-based adhesives) to streets and art exhibits.

Blair’s Law dictates, “the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force,” but I’m surprised at how quickly the anti-Zionist and anti-energy crowds decided to merge into one giant, useless faction. Of course, as always: The Issue is Not the Issue.

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Rolling Stones tour sponsored by AARP as 80-year-old rocker Mick Jagger set to hit the road.

CHANGE: ‘Anti-Islam Bad Boy’ Geert Wilders Wins Big in Dutch Elections, Leftist Meltdown Begins Immediately.

ROGER KIMBALL IN THE LONDON TELEGRAPH: Liberals are realizing that Trump will probably win. And they are terrified.

If this story had sound effects, the primary noise would be what the Gospel According to Matthew called “fletus et stridor dentium”: wailing and gnashing of teeth. Remember Godwin’s law? That’s the contention, named for the writer Mike Godwin, that the longer an internet conversation continues, the greater the chances are that someone will be compared to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. The Times writers go full Godwin right at the beginning of their desperate handwringing.  “During a Veterans Day speech,” they wail,  “Mr. Trump used language that echoed authoritarian leaders who rose to power in Germany and Italy in the 1930s . . .”

Wham: three short paragraphs and Donald Trump is already being compared to Hitler and Mussolini. Then come the “experts” to provide cover. We’re not just wacko name callers here. We’re The New York Times. Trump warned that:

“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”

Lincoln actually took a similar line when he noted in his Lyceum Address of 1838 that “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” But you are not allowed to mention Lincoln and Trump in the same sentence, except to trash Trump, so the Times calls on “experts” to do the dirty work. This “turn inward,” they write, “has sounded new alarms among experts on autocracy who have long worried about Mr. Trump’s praise for foreign dictators and disdain for democratic ideals. They said the former president’s increasingly intensive focus on perceived internal enemies was a hallmark of dangerous totalitarian leaders.”

Well, if “experts” say it, who are we to disagree?

Later on in the piece, Messrs Bender and Gold allow that “Some experts on authoritarianism said that while Mr Trump’s recent language has begun to more closely resemble that used by leaders like Hitler or Benito Mussolini, he does not quite mirror fascist leaders of the past.” Well, praise the Lord.

But how does Trump compare to Naomi Wolf fever swamp fantasies from September of 2008? Sarah ‘Evita’ Palin to Usher in Rovian Police State.

(That would be the same Evita whom AOC compared herself to in 2019 in a classic self-own. Exit quote: “Look just because she’s favorably comparing herself to the lady that Franco liked a lot who sheltered Mengele doesn’t mean… OK, I forgot where I was doing with this.”)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Jeff Dunetz on Thanksgiving Dinner: How To Deal With a Crazy Anti-Semitic Uncle Who Ruins The Day.

I will tell my uncle it is time to let the cat out of the bag. But first, there is one thing he must first do. Help us convince nut-jobs like him ]much of the world’s” antisemitism is part of the plot to perpetuate the myth that we do not run the world. My uncle never believes that Jews are being honest, so as a person who wants to ruin Thanksgiving by bashing Jews and agreeing with everything the anti-Semitic marchers say. We agree with him, so he can’t argue.

Here’s one that will really shock my uncle: Barack Obama is actually Jewish. He converted 20 years ago because it was the only way to let him run for president). I will inform him I attended his bris. My wife even made a cheesecake.

But there is a downside. What if he doesn’t believe me? What if he doesn’t believe my stories. What if my uncle believes we have little control over world events? What if he thinks that the Jews are ancient people who survived only through their love of God and his Torah? What if he were to look at us not as world dominators but as teachers of how to love God and each other? After all, Christianity and Islam grew out of the Jewish faith.

What am I saying? Teaching people to love God and each other? That is what the chosen people mean, but no one would ever believe that!  

Heh, indeed. Happy Thanksgiving!

DEVELOPING: Bridge connecting US and Canada closed after vehicle explosion, FBI says “situation is very fluid.” Videos here.

UPDATE: Report: Terror Attack.

(Updated and bumped.)

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Where are the celebrities posting for Israel? The stories of kidnapped Israelis are at least as appalling as the Boko Haram case in 2014:

One of the older hostages is Yaffa Adar, an eighty-five-year-old grandmother who cannot make it to the bathroom on her own. She was stolen from her bed by Hamas and driven on a golf cart by a group of Hamas terrorists. Footage of the abduction shows the sheer elation of these young men in their great military success at abducting a sickly, elderly grandmother. Her granddaughter spoke to me this week about the horror of thinking about her grandmother under Gaza without the basic medicines she needs to survive.

The families of the hostages of Israel have come together around a building in Tel Aviv which has been donated to them so that they have a place to meet and cry and wait. In Israel, the “Bring Them Home Now” movement is everywhere. The photos of the kidnap victims even loom over the deliberations of Israel’s Knesset.

Here is my question. Where is the international campaign? Where are the actresses? Where are the prominent influencers who aren’t Jewish? There have been posters put up outside Israel, but from London to New York these are more famous for being ripped down than for being displayed. So I repeat, where is the campaign? And why has it not caught on?

Hey wait — here’s some celebrities a celebrity responding to Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel: Actress Julianna Margulies Calls Out Her Non-Jewish Friends for Their ‘Silence on Antisemitism.’

Margulies claimed that her friends remained silent* because they simply didn’t know any better. “You mean no harm, you simply don’t have the full picture,” she wrote.

She also described the surge in antisemitism as a “teaching moment.”

The actress ignored the fact that anti-Zionism has become an article of faith for the left, especially for young progressives who view Hamas terrorists sympathetically as an oppressed group and Israelis as their oppressors.

Social media has exacerbated the issue, with China-controlled TikTok serving as the platform of choice for Zoomers to express their dangerous antisemitic views, which have recently come to include an admiration for Osama bin Laden.

* Of course, some celebrities didn’t remain silent; they actively went pro-terrorist instead: Muslim Reformer Blasts Susan Sarandon For Saying Frightened Jews Are ‘Getting A Taste’ Of What Muslims Feel.

UPDATE: Report: Susan Sarandon dumped by Hollywood agency UTA over anti-Jewish rant.

(Updated and bumped.)

HATE CRIME COMMISSION OFFICIAL COMMISSIONS HATE CRIME: Maryland Hate-Crime Commission Official Compares Israel to Nazi Germany.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: If Williams Sonoma Cooked A Frozen Turkey So Can You. “Only do this in the oven. A frozen anything in gallons of hot oil is a very bad idea.”

MARK JUDGE: China’s Cultural Revolution: The horror Western elites want to forget.

In my view, Western elites want to forget the Cultural Revolution because the horror that happened in China 50 years ago is too similar to what liberalism is now attempting in the West.

The Cultural Revolution, which took place roughly from 1966 to 1976, was one of the bloodiest and most insane periods in the history of communism. It was an attempt to try and purge Communist China of all Western ideas, from Christianity to capitalism. An estimated 2 million were killed, and 30 million were hounded and punished.

The Left, of course, refuses to accept the similarity between China’s rejection of Western civilization and its own hatred of its ideals. Branigan herself, despite writing a book on the Cultural Revolution, claims that “to draw a line from left-wing students in the West to [Communist] Red Guards, as some have done — is not only silly but offensive.”

It’s actually spot-on accurate. After the failure of Mao’s economic Great Leap Forward, a program of collectivization that resulted in tens of millions of deaths, Mao saw the Cultural Revolution as a way to turn things around: “Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road … so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”

Read the whole thing.

I’M PRETTY SURE THE WACHOWSKIS DIDN’T INTEND FOR THE MATRIX TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE:

This video envisioning EctoLife, the world’s first concept of artificial womb facility.

[📹 Hashem Al-Ghaili]pic.twitter.com/qJcltcMpsk

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 19, 2023

THE TOWERING TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden’s birthday conflagration.

On Monday evening, President Joe Biden’s X account posted a photo of the president sitting before a birthday cake with what appeared to be a million candles on it. Well, not a million candles, but 81, in honor of Biden’s 81st birthday. Having so many flaming candles gave the impression of one large fire atop the cake, with flames licking toward the ceiling. As birthday cakes go, it was an inferno, a firestorm, a conflagration. The fire appeared big enough to set off smoke detectors and send Secret Service agents scrambling to ensure the president’s safety. It was, in all, an amazing picture.

Could there be any more effective statement that the president is very, very old? The photo was such a powerful expression of Biden’s age that outsiders immediately wondered how in the world the White House came to release it. After all, polls show majorities of voters, Democrats and Republicans, believe the president is too old to serve a second term, even as Biden gears up his reelection bid. Nevertheless, the White House posted the picture. Who knows? Maybe David Axelrod or the Republican National Committee got temporary control of the Biden X account. In any event, the phrase “campaign malpractice” does not even begin to describe what the White House did.

Joe’s death grip on the table isn’t helping his case:

BREAKING NEWS FROM 1348: PLAGUE HITS LONDON; WOMEN, MINORITIES HARDEST HIT! BBC: Black women most likely to die in medieval London plague. But there’s a slight problem with the story, revealed in the second to last paragraph:

Dr Rebecca Redfern, from the Museum of London, said: “We have no primary written sources from people of colour and those of black African descent during the Great Pestilence of the 14th Century, so archaeological research is essential to understanding more about their lives and experiences.

On the other hand:

So if the black population of London was not statistically significant in the 14th century, then of course it affected them “at a higher rate.” If you have 50 black women in London and 45 of them died of the plague, that is definitely a higher percentage than how many white men or women died of the plague when their numbers were insanely higher.

But the other problem with their conclusion is that it’s a scientific conclusion you can’t test or challenge. There isn’t going to be a massive outbreak of Bubonic Plague in London in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-three, and the last pandemic we had (the COVID-19 one) wasn’t a racist one either, despite what the social scientists would like to say. Co-morbidities, socioeconomic status, and access to healthcare were bigger factors (when you look at the actual data), but it’s easier to blame “modern structural racism” than those factors.

Again, though, one point needs to be made clear: Plagues, bacteria, and fleas are incapable of being racist. That didn’t stop these researchers — from Michigan and Colorado, by the way — from claiming that they are.

In 2023, isn’t everything?

THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC CALLED AND SAID THAT MACY’S MIGHT WANT TO DIAL IT BACK A BIT: ‘Non-binary and Transgender Extravaganza’ Featured in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

ROGER KIMBALL: MAGA, Argentina Style.

So, Javier Milei was elected president of that troubled South American country on Sunday.

That couldn’t happen.

Everyone who was anyone knew that the expletive-spewing, chainsaw-wielding“anarcho-capitalist” couldn’t possibly win the presidency.

The 53-year-old economist (he had been chief economist for Argentina’s airport system) and talking head was too wild, too extreme, too unruly to be taken seriously.

He was also too radical in his proposals.

But then the impossible turned into the inevitable.

And note that Mr. Milei didn’t just win.

He won in something close to a landslide, with nearly 56 percent of the vote to 44 percent for his opponent, Economy Minister Sergio Massa.

And of course, back in the USA, the MSM-DNC is pouncing and seizing in response:

New seizure just dropped pic.twitter.com/h7C73PtigY

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 20, 2023

NOW WHO’S BEING NAIVE, CHRIS? Amanpour Scraps With Israel’s Regev: No One’s Questioned Hamas’s Fatality Figures!

Does journalist Christiane Amanpour truly believe the terror group Hamas is a reliable source of combat information? On the Tuesday edition of Amanpour & Co. (which runs on CNN International and later on tax-funded PBS), Amanpour talked with familiar face Mark Regev, senior adviser to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and defended the fatality tally put out by Hamas as truthful and accurate. She even ludicrously claimed Hamas’s numbers have never been questioned before.

The verbal scuffle began when Regev pointed out what should be obvious to journalists, that Hamas is holding children and infants hostage and is “not going to suddenly become humanitarians. They will only release hostages if they’re under amazing pressure.”

Amanpour inched toward condemning Israel for violating international law, citing a previous video clip mash-up she had run of world leaders suggesting Israel was in danger of violating international law.

Regev reiterated “Israel is conducting itself in the framework of international law,” and argued that Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza could actually reduce civilian casualties by allowing Israeli airstrikes to be more surgical. Then he turned to Hamas’s lack of credibility on combat figures, which Amanpour furiously defended as irrefutably true: