Halloween in Chindia. The faces are different but the costumes are the same. A blur of princesses, ninjas, Harry Potters, Transformers, Mandalorians, etc etc. Every once in a while there's a gaggle of vaguely menacing teenage boys wanting candy. 'Gentlemen,' we nod in appreciation. Later in the night, we had to rescue Oldest Daughter from a party in which she did not feel comfortable. Dad score: Superior.
Election day has arrived in Israel. The Times of Israel reports, 'Central Elections Committee director general Orly Ades announced that as of 10 a.m., some 1,760,076 people, or 15.9 percent of eligible voters, had voted, the highest morning percentage seen since 1981.In comparison, 14.8% of the public had voted by this time in the last election, held in March 2021.' We will note again that we don't love Ben Gvir and the Religious Zionist Party, but they do piss off all the right people and make the right enemies. Anyone hated by the left can't be all bad. We won't be upset if Bibi and the right bloc wins. Polls will close 3 PM, Eastern Standard Time. [Update: Whoops 4 PM].
Ace has a long post about Professor Emily Oster's Atlantic article calling for a Covid amnesty. We'll let Ace describe it, 'Emily Oster at the Atlantic wants an amnesty for the people who spread covid misinformation negligently -- meaning the government, the Democrats and the media.' How about no? How about there needs to be a reckoning? How about common decency is the only thing that keeps us from mocking people still wearing masks. And decorum prevents us from writing what we think should be done with these fucking people. I want revenge. Ace is always right. Read Ace. Professor Oster, you absolute INSERT VERY BAD WORD(S) OF YOUR CHOICE.
In response to the death of Lucianne Goldberg, and there's the most 90's conservative names of 90's conservative names, Mark Steyn posts and interview he, Lucianne and Andrew Ferguson did for The American Enterprise (speaking of the 90s) in 1999. Younger reader(s) here's the late 90's political zeitgest. Steyn is gobsmackingly right when he writes, 'Much of it seems very trivial now, for we did not know we were in the last three years of America's "holiday from history". But some observations contain the seeds of hideous growths that afflict us to this day.' We admit we'd forgotten what a vile human and loathsome personality Bill Clinton was/is.
By now you've all read reports about the Department of Homeland Security was working with Twitter, Facebook, etc etc to censor news the department doesn't like. Conservatives think the Iraq War was Bush's biggest mistake. No, it was the DHS by a mile. The DHS was a Democrat idea which Bush's people told him to jump on lest he be accused of being soft on terror. Of course W put a moderate squish like Tom Ridge in charge. The result is this leviathan agency, and oh, getting felt up at the airport.
Alright, alright, alright....our readthrough of the Georgian setup went fine and there's nothing more we can do to it right now. Do we need more Georgia background? Must we write more scenes? These are not easy questions to answer. Not for me, not for any man. Not even for a writer as talented as we. Right now, we don't know. We are done with the setup for now. On to the battle of the Roki Tunnel [Update: yikes!].
Another month, another sales report. Actually, we can check sales whenever we want. Sales for October are off 13.1 percent from September and 23.5 percent off their August peak. Which means the decline is slowing. Sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and World War 1990: The Weser remain stubbornly strong. But it's the backlist that's propping sales up, accounting for 40 percent of sales now. The backlist is big. World War 1990 backlist sales have been rising steadily all year. We've no idea if Twitter activity helps sales.
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