Happy Thanksgiving

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I first posted this in 2011. I think it bears repeating today.

Today I thought I’d share some thoughts on the matter offered by other folks who are a bit more articulate than I. In the meantime, be thankful for who we are and where we are: whatever straits in which we find ourselves, we’re orders of magnitude better off than most everyone else in the world.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
-George Washington, 3 October 1789

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. … No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
-Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863

We are profoundly grateful for the blessings bestowed upon us: the preservation of our freedom, so dearly bought and so highly prized; our opportunities for human welfare and happiness, so limitless in their scope; our material prosperity, so far surpassing that of earlier years; and our private spiritual blessings, so deeply cherished by all. For these we offer fervent thanks to God.
-Harry S Truman, 22 November 1950

Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day. Rooted deeply in our Judeo-Christian heritage, the practice of offering thanksgiving underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation and our firm reliance upon Him from Whom all blessings flow.
-Ronald W Reagan, 27 November 1986

This Thanksgiving, as we enjoy the company of family and friends, let us gratefully turn our hearts to God, the loving Source of all Life and Liberty. Let us seek His forgiveness for our shortcomings and transgressions and renew our determination to remain a people worthy of His continued favor and protection. Acknowledging our dependence on the Almighty, obeying His Commandments, and reaching out to help those who do not share fully in this Nation’s bounty is the most heartfelt and meaningful answer we can give to the timeless appeal of the Psalmist: ‘O give thanks to the Lord for He is good: for his steadfast love endures forever.’
-George H W Bush, 14 November 1990

And then enjoy yourselves; have plain, raw fun. That’s not just allowed, it’s a Good in its own right.

The ICC and a Dream Defense Team

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Alan Dershowitz, a defense lawyer of some skill and renown, as well as a Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus, is assembling a dream team of defense lawyers to defend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant against the scurrilous charges of the International Court of Justice and associated ICC international arrest warrants.

The question is what would be the point. That Dershowitz’ team will make a strong—essentially irrefutable—legal case against the ICC is neither here nor there. The ICC has already arrived at its guilty verdict, as demonstrated by its continued use of a well-known Israel hater as the court’s lead prosecutor in this sham case.

This is why the case must be mounted anyway:

It will also be tried in the court of public opinion, both in the US and throughout the world.

However.

Even with resounding acquittal in that public court, the ICC’s guilty verdict will stand as the “official” outcome. This will necessitate physical protections for Netanyahu and Gallant against those arrest warrants, which will remain extant. The only way to get those undone is to disband the ICC, which has irretrievably poisoned itself, with those charges and arrest warrants, as a court of justice.

Why Would We Want To?

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Toyota Motor North America’s COO, Jack Hollis, has a plan for how Trump Can Get EVs Back on Track. The question is why would Trump, or any of us average Americans, want to? Hollis’ subheadline is promising:

Ditch the mandates and subsidies. Let consumer choice drive the market.

Then he goes off the rails.

Our approach provides consumers with many choices: hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell electric, and battery-electric vehicles. We believe this is the best way to achieve meaningful emissions reductions while meeting customer needs.

What about the emissions from mining, transporting, smelting, transporting, transforming into relevant parts, transporting, assembling into the final vehicle that occur in the production of lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper—and all that oil that’s used for plastic materials production?

What about the other forms of pollution—from mining to spent battery disposal: all those tailings, the handling of those intrinsically toxic metals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, even copper), the pollution of landfills by all that lithium, cobalt, nickel in those spent batteries?

What about the false claim that atmospheric CO2—plant food—is a pollutant in the first place? That’s never addressed except via the pseudo-science of an erstwhile head of the EPA; this is an underlying assumption that is made only tacitly and conclusorily?

All of these are blithely elided by the pushers of EVs and the punishers of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles.

I haven’t even gotten to the need to expand our electric grid to support the demands a sound EV market would impose. We need to expand, upgrade, and harden our electric grid, along with our electricity production capabilities, for a whole host of reasons beyond just supporting battery-charging.

That brings me back to my opening question: why would we want to put EVs on any sort of track, much less on Hollis’ original one? Ditch the mandates and subsidies, and let consumer choice drive the market, indeed. Add into the free market decision that heretofore omitted information regarding the intrinsically destructive nature of EV production and disposal.

The Left loves to talk about externalities and the need for pricing them into the final product—except when that’s inconvenient to their demands on the rest of us.

DNC Vice Chair is Unhappy

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Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Ken Martin is upset that his Progressive-Democratic Party lost the just concluded (mostly—California is still trying to figure out the votes Party needs in two districts, and an Iowa district is in the same delaying boat) national elections. Martin in an interview with Jake Tapper:

For the first time, the majority of Americans believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party represents the interests of the wealthy and the elite.

Tellingly, though, he added this, as summarized by Just the News at the above link:

He told Tapper that the current Democratic Party needs to prioritize “every race in every zip code.”

This is how deeply embedded racism is in Party. Perhaps they should prioritize every voter in every ZIP code instead. The rest of America—us average Americans, us working class and poor Americans—have moved on from this elitist Party’s tacitly racist identity politics of segregation.

Tariffs as Foreign Policy Tools

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President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury, Scott Bessent, understands the nature of properly done tariffs. In a recent speech, he noted, as cited by The Wall Street Journal,

…Bessent argued for increasing tariffs on national-security grounds and for inducing other countries to lower trade barriers with the US. He criticized trade policy with China for enriching Wall Street, weakening domestic industrial might, and failing to lead to Chinese economic overhauls.
Bessent called for tariffs to resemble the Treasury Department’s sanctions program as a tool to promote US interests abroad. He was open to removing tariffs from countries that undertake structural overhauls and voiced support for a fair-trade block for allies with common security interests and reciprocal approaches to tariffs.
“President Trump is right that actual free trade is desirable,” Bessent said in prepared remarks at the time. “It might seem counterintuitive from a free market perspective, but he is also right that in order to actually create a freer and more extensive trading system over the long term, we need a more activist approach internationally.”

Yewbetcha, to coin a phrase. Bessent, and Trump, are among the few who understand that international trade is not only about economics—in fact it has little to do with economics—and is mostly about foreign policy.

Even protectionist tariffs—when not done solely for mercantilist reasons—have their foreign policy uses: that removing tariffs from countries that undertake structural overhauls and voiced support for a fair-trade block for allies bit, for instance.

Bessent has serious weaknesses, though, and I did not support his open, public campaigning for the position. That politicking, his penchant for speaking out of turn, is the sort of behavior that was so counterproductive in Trump’s first term. Hopefully, he’ll curb his tongue once installed (if he’s confirmed).

Still, I look forward to his reopening Trump’s proposal to the G-7, made during his first term, of a no-tariff-at-all free-trade agreement.

“No tariffs, no barriers. That’s the way it should be. And no subsidies. I even said, ‘no tariffs’,” the US president said, describing his meetings with fellow Group of Seven leaders as positive “on the need to have fair and reciprocal trade[.]”

That offer was wholly ignored at the time, except by the executives of the German car industry.

We’ll see.