Tom Faranda's Folly

Can you spot "All 10 signs of Fascism" at Trump's Rally?

As per MSNBC's multiple commentators take on the rally. You will need to hit the link below this picture for the full ten signs. Then just scroll through.

Can you spot all ten signs of fascism?

NR - Make America Greece Again: "No matter who wins we're fiscally doomed"

Haha. Good article from National Review online. Fits in with what I posted a couple of days ago - Hedge fund operator Paul Tudor Jones - we are going broke quickly if we don't control spending & raise taxes

The only thing we have going for us - other countries from China to Europe are in worse shape then we are. But that's poor consolation.

Make America Greece again. A little over a week from now, our country will almost certainly be on an even more unsustainable budget trajectory than it already is. Even considering the inflation-fueling spender-bender over which the Biden administration presided these past four years, the fiscal effects of America’s broken politics are likely to get progressively worse.

In 2024, there is no budget-conscious candidate. Such a person is not running for president of the United States. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris care as much about the national debt — and how its servicing is eating up a bigger and bigger portion of the pie — as AOC does. The election will allow one of them to keep wrecking the nation’s finances in his or her own preferred style.  

The answer is always spelled i-n-f-l-a-t-i-o-n.

The real remedy is economic growth but not enough people understand that.

Wednesday wordle - Oy -correct word EASEL

In case you missed it - the ultimate "Hail Mary" pass

The Bears (White) had just gone ahead for the first time in the game. Washington (Black) had the ball with two seconds left on the clock...

Hit link because the NFL does not allow their videos to be embedded (worth waiting through the commercial) -  Hail Mary TD!

 

NY Times editorial: Harris "The Only Patriotic Choice for President"

This is the Times endorsement, and was published on September 30th. Only conclusion is that in the view of the NY Times editorialists, you're unpatriotic to vote for Trump. Which means about half the country is unpatriotic... This from the "paper of record". The whole editorial is 27 mostly long paragraphs - hit the link for the whole thing. We report you decide.

"...regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president".

In 2020 this board made the strongest case it could against the re-election of Mr. Trump. Four years later, many Americans have put his excesses out of their minds. We urge them and those who may look back at that period with nostalgia or feel that their lives are not much better now than they were three years ago to recognize that his first term was a warning and that a second Trump term would be much more damaging and divisive than the first.

Kamala Harris is the only choice.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Tuesday wordle

 

 

JD Vance sits for a CNN interview

This is a an excerpt on The Rubin Report which was created by former liberal progressive Dave Rubin. The interviewer is Jake Tepper who I used to enjoy listening to when Imus had him on and he worked for ABC. I get much of my news coverage - things like this - off youtube. The only news and business programs I regularly tape and watch are two CNBC shows. Whether Trump wins of losses, I think Vance will be the republican frontrunner in 2028.

 

Hedge fund money man Bill Ackman on his public support for Trump

Bill Ackman is highly successful and a "Bill Clinton Democrat". You may remember him saying he would not hire antisemitic graduates from his alma mater, Harvard. Ths is not the whole interview he had last week on CNBC but worth watching as he makes his case for Trump.

 

Monday wordle

Washington Post to stop endorsing presidential candidates

Probably a smart move as the paper looks to expand beyond the leftist Washington elite. The Wall Street Journal also does not endorse political candidates. This article is from the NYT; excerpt below the link.

The decision was made by Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. Will Lewis, the chief executive, said the paper was “returning to our roots” of not making endorsements for the office.

A debate inside The Washington Post continued for days among its top leaders: Should it make an endorsement in the presidential race, continuing a decades-long tradition?

In the end, Jeff Bezos, the paper’s billionaire owner, decided that the answer was no.

On Friday, Will Lewis, The Post’s chief executive, told the newsroom that the paper would no longer endorse presidential candidates. His announcement came after the debate and decision by Mr. Bezos, a person with knowledge of the talks said. By that time, the paper’s opinion section had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, according to four people with knowledge of the process.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election,” Mr. Lewis wrote in a note to the staff. “Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post had endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, Mr. Lewis wrote, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, who went on to win the election. Before that, it generally did not make presidential endorsements, though it made an exception in 1952 to back Dwight Eisenhower.

Questions about whether The Post would endorse a candidate this year had spread for days. Some people speculated, without any proof, that Mr. Bezos was being cowed by a prospective Trump administration because his other businesses have many federal government contracts.

In the days leading up to Friday’s announcement, senior Post leaders, including Mr. Lewis and the opinions editor, David Shipley, made their case to Mr. Bezos not to end The Post’s tradition of making a presidential endorsement, two people familiar with the matter said. After Mr. Bezos made the decision, both men sold it to The Post’s staff. (A spokeswoman from The Post disputed that version of events, saying the move not to endorse was a “Washington Post decision.”)

Mr. Lewis, in his note to the staff, said little about how The Post had arrived at its decision, adding only that it was not “a tacit endorsement of one candidate” or “a condemnation of another.” He referred to an editorial the paper published in 1960 that said it was “wiser for an independent newspaper in the nation’s capital” to avoid an endorsement.

Hedge fund operator Paul Tudor Jones - we are going broke quickly if we don't control spending & raise taxes

Here's the last five minutes of an interview last week on CNBC. Jones is a huge philanthropist and does not endorse candidates. The first part of the interview is linked below this embedded video. If you are interested in your money they are both worth watching.

 

Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones

 

Sunday wordle

I got lucky, only took a minute.

 

More on Pope Francis recently canonizing 14 as saints.

I had posted a few days ago about this "Pope Francis canonizes the "Martyrs of Damascus"  so this is three minutes of more information.  So far "he's proclaimed 926 during his papacy." Nice to post this on a Sunday.

 

Saturday wordle

Elon Musk v. sharks; Sharknado VII?

I wonder if he made this whole thing up?

The madcap premise is that Elon Musk’s experimental Starship, which launches from his SpaceX Starbase near Brownsville, Texas for test flights in space and then splashes down in the ocean, will threaten marine populations by hitting the water at the exact wrong moments and locations, causing the horrific demise of unsuspecting sharks. What are the odds?

Believe it or not, according to Mr. Musk real-life federal officials at the National Marine Fisheries Service thought this obviously infinitesimal risk was deserving of careful study and asked SpaceX to do an analysis. For some reason he agreed but says that after his team came up with an estimate of the threat posed by a descending spacecraft managing to nail a shark swimming near the surface of a vast ocean, the federal response was, “Well, what about whales?”

Mr. Musk has been amusing Pennsylvania crowds with such absurd stories of bureaucratic overreach as he campaigns for Donald Trump. While the cinematic possibilities of a man-bites-shark story are highly intriguing, Americans may be more drawn to an escapist fantasy in which government agencies operate sensibly.

Pope Francis new Encyclical on The Sacred Heart

The link will get you to the encyclical.

"“Dilexit Nos” (“He loved us”) is the title of this 28,000-word letter that speaks to the depths of Francis’ own relationship with Jesus."

This article below is from the Vatican correspondent for America Magazine. It's good and I look forward to reading the whole encycical when I can get it in book(let) form. It prints out at 32 pages; 25 if you leave out the seven pages of footnotes. So maybe I will print it. UPDATE: I printed it out.  Meanwhile very brief excerpts from the America article below.

Pope Francis’ new encyclical is a window into his own love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

“All of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart,” Pope Francis declares in his fourth encyclical, published on Oct. 24, that speaks about “the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.” In it he calls on believers to rediscover devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and, through it, to love our brothers and sisters in the church and world.

*********************

Archbishop Forte said the encyclical offers “the key” to reading Francis’ two social encyclicals. The pope confirms this when he writes in “Dilexit Nos”: “The present document can help us see that the teaching of the social encyclicals ‘Laudato si’’ and ‘Fratelli Tutti’ is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”

Francis continues:

In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.

*************************

In Chapter 2, the pope affirms that “the heart of Christ, as the symbol of the deepest and most personal source of his love for us, is the very core of the initial preaching of the Gospel.”

He recalls that “Christ showed the depth of his love for us not by lengthy explanations but by concrete actions.”

Friday wordle

Friday cocktail - for Halloween - the Jack-O-Lantern

There are many versions of the Jack-O-Lantern, with the base spirit either gin or cognac. Proportions of the base spirit with the orange liqueur, and orange juice can vary greatly. I think stirring works as well as shaking, if you want to keep it simple.

Here are two recipes; in the first video it is the first of five Halloween cocktails shown in the video (the rest are too complicated!) and I think would work nicely as a punch - could easily substitute for a mimosa.

The second has cognac as the base and much less OJ.

 

Thursday wordle

Game Face on; Brigid hiking the FJ & G rail trail

Yup. Game face. We are having a great time in Johnstown, NY for couple of days.

NY Times: "Harris's Faith, Inside and Outside the Black Church"

I posted this yesterday Good article: "The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris"  and coincidentally this article was in yesterday's NY Times. No mention of her fanatical support and promotion for abortion  Harris Rejects Religious Exemptions for Abortion. That's Harris's faith?

The Rev. Dr. Amos Brown was taking his usual Sunday afternoon nap in late July when a longtime congregant, Vice President Kamala Harris, called. “Pastor, I need for you to pray for Doug, for me and for this nation,” Dr. Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, recalled her saying. “I’ve decided to run for president.” President Biden had announced only a few hours before that he was abandoning his re-election campaign, and he endorsed Ms. Harris almost immediately. The prayer Dr. Brown, 83, offered was drawn from a Bible verse that Ms. Harris quotes often herself: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Ms. Harris has visited several churches in the final weeks of the election campaign. On Sunday, her 60th birthday, she made appearances at two in Georgia, coinciding with the campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to turn out Black churchgoers.

Most Americans do not see either Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump as particularly religious. In a poll in September by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs, 43 percent of respondents said they thought Ms. Harris was “religious,” and 35 percent said that of Trump.

This perception may not be a problem for a significant share of Ms. Harris’s base. As religious adherence declines broadly among Americans, the drop-off has been much steeper among Democrats. In 1999, about 60 percent of both Democrats and Republicans described themselves as “religious,” according to polling by Gallup. By 2023, the figure among Republicans had barely moved, but only 37 percent of Democrats described themselves that way.

Ms. Harris has said she grew up attending both a church, the Twenty-Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland, and a Hindu temple, which she has not named. In her adulthood, she has maintained ties to the Black church and its tradition of political organizing. But though she peppers her speeches and interviews with references to scripture, she rarely speaks about her faith in the personal terms that are familiar to evangelicals, nor does she go to church as often as does President Biden

Wednesday wordle

Close call.

Good article: "The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris"

From National Review online. Should be free to read - no paywall. If I had to place a bet on who is going to win in - I'm afraid it's "Madame President".

The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris

On the menu today: I have no beef with Charlie Cooke’s brilliant trilogy, “A-hole, Lunatic, Idiot.” But I do think the caricature of Kamala Harris as a bumbling dunce makes it easy to underestimate her, particularly in the closing weeks of an exceptionally close and high-stakes presidential campaign. Harris’s past is littered with older and more experienced men who saw her as easy pickings and came up short on Election Day. Read on to learn how Harris’s political career got started, her connection to Clint Eastwood, how she persuaded the wealthiest and most powerful elites of San Francisco to back her when she was a little-known underdog, the BMW she received as a gift, who ended her relationship with Willie Brown, and the speculation that Halle Berry would play her in a movie someday.

******************************

— if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately yearned to get where she is? How many smart, tough, shrewd, often underhanded and cold-blooded pols have tried to claw their way up the greasy pole and fallen short?

And somehow this supposed dunce managed to do it?

Tuesday wordle

"Pope Francis canonizes the "Martyrs of Damascus"

This past Sunday and interesting stories. The Martyrs of Damascus were killed in 1860. Three of them were siblings in the Maronite Catholic Church  The Three Massabki Brothers. They were all killed for refusing to convert to Islam.

 

Monday wordle

Bernie Sanders Sunday interview on FOX

On Maria Bartiromo's Sunday morning show. In his 12 minute interview he's given a respectful hearing and gave pretty typical Bernie answers. If you go to exactly the five minute mark, he explains that inflation was due to "corporate greed and record breaking profits on the part of food industry, other corporations charging off the wall prices". So if you don't want to watch all 12 minutes just go to the five minute mark - his comments are less than a minute on that subject. I've put the answer to that particular charge about the food industry below the video. I don't agree with Sanders on much of anything, but he sure is quick for 83 years old.

 

I used perplexity AI to show the difference in net profit margin between food retailers and technology retailers.

When comparing the net profit margins of food retailers and technology retailers, there is a significant difference between the two industries. Let's examine the data for each sector:

Food Retailers

The grocery industry, which includes food retailers, has historically operated on very thin profit margins:

• The average net profit margin for grocery stores has typically been around 1% to 3%
• In 2023, profit margins in the grocery industry hit 1.6%, the lowest level since 2019 when it was 1%
• Only 13% of surveyed food retailers predicted that their net profits would increase in 2024

These low margins are due to various factors, including intense competition, high operating costs, and price sensitivity among consumers.

Technology Retailers

The technology sector, in contrast, tends to have much higher profit margins:

• In the third quarter of 2024, the technology sector's net margin was 19.01%
• On a trailing twelve months basis, the net margin in the technology sector was 12.5% as of the third quarter of 2024

Sunday wordle

"Jomboy" analyzes Soto's entire home run at bat.

Jomboy Media has 2 million subscribers, as he stitches together stuff like this. I had posted this Yankee drama! They win the pennant in extra innings!!, saying I hoped I could get the whole seven pitch at bat posted.

 

WSJ: "Harris vs. Trump: the Inflation Record"

On the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Extensive excerpts from the editorial. And see the last sentence.

Kamala Harris couldn’t explain during her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier this week why she’d be better on the economy and inflation than Donald Trump. The Vice President instead invoked the expert wisdom of progressive economists. That wisdom is worth a closer look.

Clinging to her talking points, Ms. Harris told Mr. Baier that “my plans for the economy will strengthen the economy, as have been reviewed by 16 Nobel laureates, Goldman Sachs, Moody’s and recently the Wall Street Journal, which have all studied our plans” and indicated Mr. Trump “would ignite inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year.”

To clarify, the Journal didn’t endorse her economic plan. She’s referring to a Journal news story this week that reported that 68% of 50 economists who were surveyed said prices would rise faster under Mr. Trump, versus 12% under Ms. Harris. By six-to-one, they said Mr. Trump would put more upward pressure on federal budget deficits.

The survey says more about the politics of those economists than the candidates’ plans. The better way to compare plans is to look at the actual fiscal and inflation record.

 Inflation averaged 2.1% annually between 2017 and 2019, compared to 5.1% under Mr. Biden. (Inflation declined to 1.2% in 2020 amid the Covid lockdowns.) Deficits totalled $2.4 trillion during Mr. Trump’s first three years compared to $5.8 trillion during Mr. Biden’s.

Some of the $3 trillion in Covid spending during 2020 no doubt contributed to inflation, especially the $900 billion that December when the economy had nearly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. That bill was a bipartisan mistake. Then in March 2021, Democrats stoked consumption even more with their $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, even as states were lifting lockdowns and vaccines rolled out.

***************************

The same economists who blessed all of that spending now say Mr. Trump is the bigger inflation threat because of his mooted tariffs, restrictionist immigration policies and tax cuts, while they discount the costs of Ms. Harris’s spending agenda.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs would be anti-growth, but by themselves they won’t cause inflation, which is an increase in the general price level. Tariffs increase relative prices in specific goods or industries. Mr. Trump’s first-term tariff blitz hurt economic growth but it didn’t lead to broad inflation.

Ms. Harris’s economists fret that Mr. Trump’s restrictionist immigration policies will create labor shortages that will drive up wages and prices. But even with Mr. Trump’s tougher border policies in his first term, the U.S. added 1.7 million immigrants, most of whom entered legally. His deportations didn’t make a dent in the labor force.

************************

Ms. Harris has adopted the Biden spending agenda and more. Mr. Trump is no fiscal conservative, but on deficits and inflation his first-term record is far superior to the four years of Biden-Harris. Voters can decide if they want to trust that record, or the claims of economists who’ve been spectacularly wrong.

Saturday wordle

Yankee drama! They win the pennant in extra innings!!

Yay! onto the World Series. If the Mets can beat the Dodgers twice in LA (a tall order) it will be a Subway Series. Otherwise Left Coast v. East Coast and the marketing guys would love that - the two biggest television markets. The Yanks won the pennant 4 games to one, but every game was close.

The highlights of last night's game from the 8th inning on. Soto will make buckets of $$$ in free agency... The seven pitch confrontation between he and the Cleveland pitcher - with Soto nodding and staring at him - whew. Unfortunately the whole at bat is not in these highlights.

 

Trump at the Al Smith Dinner - annual fundraiser for Catholic Charities

The one that Kamala Harris - breaking with tradition - decided not to attend. Trump is pretty humorous - later revealed - by Trump -that some of the FOX News writers wrote some of his lines.

 

Friday wordle

Thursday wordle

Close.

Trump breaks out his dance moves !?

I'd seen the headlines and figured "who cares" and then got this embedded video from an ardent anti-Trump reader. Below the link I posted another video of his dancing. He ended this rally early because two people in the audience got sick.

A town hall event for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania took a turn after the former president ended the event by playing his music playlist and dancing in front of the crowd.

 

Tarred and feathered; a Jesuit story

Got this off CatholicVote -  the founding President of Boston College -

In 1848, when the Swiss Jesuit Father Johannes Bapst arrived in the United States and received his first assignment—pastoring the Penobscot in Maine—he had two concerns. First, he spoke neither English nor Penobscot. Second, 10 of his predecessors, including the most recent had been killed in the course of their duties. As it turned out, though, Bapst quickly mastered both languages and passed three peaceful years with the Penobscot. Those were his last peaceful years in Maine.

They were only permitted to use Protestant Bibles. When Bapst couldn’t change their minds, he built a Catholic school. Then, the Know-Nothings intervened.

In June 1854, the anti-Catholic group hatched a plot to kidnap Bapst. They only failed because the priest was in Bangor. A few months later, the same party blew up the Catholic school in Ellsworth and tried (but failed) to blow up the Catholic church as well. Finally, on October 14, 1854, a large mob successfully kidnapped Bapst and attempted to burn him alive. When damp weather prevented the fire from catching, they instead beat the priest, then tarred and feathered him, leaving him for dead.

He wasn’t dead, though, and local Catholics soon found him and nursed him back to health. After that, Bapst could have left. But he didn’t. He remained in Maine five years more, building churches and schools in defiance of Protestant objections.

After Maine, Bapst went to Boston, where in 1863 he became the founding president of Boston College. He served there until 1869, when the Jesuits named him superior of New York and Canadian Missions. Ten years later, the 64-year-old priest suddenly developed dementia. He spent the last eight years of his life mentally reliving the night of his kidnapping.

Peace came with death in 1887.

Wednesday wordle

Made a mess of this but still got it.

Border Czar Kamala Harris says she would put her immigration record "Up against Anyone"

All this woman needs to do to win is sound sensible. This is just dumb. She's not dumb - who is advising her?

She touted her past experience as a prosecutor and said, “I would put my record up against anyone in terms of the work I’ve always done and will always do to ensure we have a secure border.”

Soon after taking office, Biden tasked Harris with addressing illegal immigration as a primary piece of her vice-presidential portfolio. Harris, however, refused to reform, or even discuss, the lax enforcement policies ushered in by Biden’s day-one executive orders, insisting instead that she was focused on addressing the “root causes” of immigration — namely by doling out economic aid to Central and South American nations.

Several times this week alone Harris has criticized Trump for lobbying Republican lawmakers against passing the border deal. However, Republicans who opposed the bill had argued that Biden could instead restore order at the border by reviving the Trump-era policies he dismantled through executive order. 

Tuesday wordle - another miss!

The word is CORER which I never heard of - as in "core an apple" tool.

Feast Day today; St. Teresa of Avila one of the great Catholic mystics

In 1970 Pope Paul VI proclaimed her the first woman Doctor of the Church. Like many Catholic Saints, she received opposition from her own community and other Church members during her lifetime. She was a radical. I think the most recommended of her books is  The Interior Castle  which I read about ten years ago.

This is from a posting I put up on this date in 2013 -

St. Teresa of Avila. Long ago, Brigid and I were in Avila. A beautiful small walled city.

She is called doctrix mystica, doctor of mystical theology; in a report to Pope Paul VI the Roman Rota declared: "Teresa has been given to the Church by God as a teacher of the spiritual life. The mysteries of the inner mystical life which the holy Fathers propounded unsystematically and without orderly sequence, she has presented with unparalleled clarity."

St. Teresa died in 1582.

Nice view of the walls of Avila.

 

Monday wordle

Brigid and Tom. Then and now

This post is triggered by a request to supply a note and possibly pictures for a book being prepared to celebrate a certain person's birthday. Can't reveal who, since it might leak out...

Among other things I sent the two pictures below - a selfie from a couple of days ago and our wedding picture, June 23rd, 1979 in Jamaica.

The person got back with a comment and it's below the pictures along with my response -

and 1979 -

"Neither of you have changed a bit!"

 

HAHAHAHAHA. I'll have whatever your drinking!

 

BONUS - Last night's sunset - see the "Sleeping Indian" on the left? First was taken at 6:24, the second 15 minutes later. Quite a difference.

 

Sunday wordle

Under one minute.

3 polls & surveys: more Americans ID now as Republicans than Democrats

Maybe so but in 2019 the Pew organization did a poll on who was definitely going to vote Democrat and who was definitely going to vote Republican - no matter the candidates or issues. 40% of probable voters said they would vote Democrat no matter what, with only 29% saying no matter what they would vote Republican.

 

NBC, Gallup and Pew polling all show the GOP advantage to varying degrees. An NBC pollster first noticed the shift in May and called it an “underrecognized game changer for 2024.” NBC polls currently have Republicans leading by 2 points, with 42% of those polled identifying as Republicans and 40% identifying as Democrats. In 2020, Democrats led by six points.

This trend is also noticeable in swing states. For example, Pennsylvania has been losing registered Democrats for the past four years. Since 2020, Democrats have lost 300,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania, while Republicans gained 50,000 registrations. In 2020, Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes.

As some Republicans start to feel these numbers mean momentum is rolling in their favor, Dr. Todd Belt, a professor and director of political management at George Washington University, urges skepticism.

“I think it’s really easy to overstate these numbers because one of the things we know is that the campaigns are going after a lot of independents and a lot are trying to get out their own voters … and so this is the field on which the game is played; this isn’t the game itself,” said Belt.

Saturday wordle

Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese A-Bomb survivors group

Great. Glad they were recognized. Meanwhile we will spend 1.57 trillion over the next ten years to "modernize and upgrade" our weapons. To paraphrase Archbishop Fulton Sheen, abortion and nuclear bombs are two sides of the same coin.

Nihon Hidankyo, grassroots group, is recognized for its efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the group of survivors, who are known as Hibakusha, is receiving the prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

The group emerged in the aftermath of the 1945 U.S. nuclear attacks in Japan and proved pivotal in establishing an international taboo on the use of nuclear weapons.

“These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons,” the committee said.

“The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”

The award comes as nuclear powers around the world modernize and upgrade their arsenals, and new nations appear to be working to acquire the weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons if the West provides further military support to Ukraine.

Moscow has also rejected U.S. proposals to reopen arms-control talks, adding to the worst downturn in relations between the two countries since the end of the Cold War and stirring concern over a new arms race. The New Start treaty, which limits long-range U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, is due to expire in February 2026 and other arms-control agreements have collapsed.

While only the U.S. had a nuclear bomb in 1945, eight nations now have nuclear weapons many times more powerful, while Israel is considered an undeclared nuclear power. Even a limited nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia or India and Pakistan could result in millions of deaths.

Friday wordle

Friday cocktail: The Old Fashioned - with bourbon

One of the oldest and most popular - and easy to make. It can be made with rye whiskey or even rum but bourbon seems to be the most popular. This recipe - substituting demerara syrup for the sugar cube, is fabulous.

 

Here's the recipe - at Farandaville we tend to not bother with the orange or any garnish,or just do the cherry.

THE RECIPE

2 oz. (60 ml) Colonel E.H. Taylor Small Batch Bourbon (But we use Jim Beam! and it's fine)

0.25 oz. (7.5 ml) rich Demerara syrup*

4 dashes Angostura bitters

1 small piece of orange

Orange and cocktail cherry for garnish

We use RAFT Demerara syrup - available on Amazon and it's great. But if you want to be a super-purist  here's how to make your own -

*RICH DEMERARA SYRUP RECIPE In a small sauce pan, combine 2 parts Demerara sugar and 1 part water. Stir over heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.

Thursday wordle