Random News and Notes 4 October

On this date:

• 1777 – At Germantown, Pa., British General Sir William Howe repels George Washington’s last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.
• 1795 – General Napoleon Bonaparte leads the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of Paris, beginning his rise to power.
• 1861 – The Union ship USS South Carolina captures two Confederate blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.
• 1861 – President Abraham Lincoln observes a balloon demonstration near Washington, D.C. Both Confederate and Union armies experimented with using balloons to gather military intelligence in the early stages of the war, but the balloons proved to be dangerous and impractical for most situations.
• 1874 – Kiowa leader Satanta, known as “the Orator of the Plains,” surrenders in Darlington, Texas. He is later sent to the state penitentiary, where he commits suicide October 11, 1878.

• 1895 – 21-year-old Englishman Horace Rawlins wins the first U.S. Open golf tournament, edging Willie Dunn and others with a 36-hole total of 173 at the Newport (Rhode Island) Golf Club.
• 1905 – Orville Wright pilots the first flight longer than 30 minutes. The flight lasted 33 minutes, 17 seconds and covered 21 miles.
• 1914 – The first German Zeppelin raids London.
• 1917 – Battle of Broodseinde near Ypres, Flanders, a part of the larger Battle of Passchendaele, between British 2nd and 5th armies and the defenders of German 4th Army; most successful Allied attack of the Passchendaele offensive.
• 1918 – German Chancellor Max von Baden, appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II just three days earlier, sends a telegraph message to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., requesting an armistice between Germany and the Allied powers.
• 1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting the heads of 4 US presidents on Mount Rushmore.

• 1940 – Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass.
• 1943 – US captures the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.
• 1955 – The Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series at last, beating the New York Yankees 2-0. They’d lost the championship seven times already, and they’d lost five times just to the Yanks—in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. But in 1955, thanks to nine brilliant innings in the seventh game from 23-year-old lefty pitcher Johnny Podres, they finally managed to beat the Bombers for the first (and last) time.
• 1957 – Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, is launched, beginning the “space race.” The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. In 1958, it reentered the earth’s atmosphere and burned up.

• 1965 – Pope Paul VI arrives in New York, the first Pope ever to visit the US and the Western hemisphere.
• 1968 – Cambodia admits that the Viet Cong use their country for sanctuary.
• 1970 – Janis Joplin dies of an accidental heroin overdose and was discovered in her Los Angeles hotel room after failing to show for a scheduled recording session. She was 27 years old.
• 1976 – In Gregg v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court lifts the ban on the death sentence in murder cases. This restores the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
• 1988 – Televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public.
• 2011 – Michael Morton, who spent 25 years in prison for his wife’s murder, is released after DNA evidence implicates another man in the crime. The prosecutor in the case later was accused of withholding evidence indicating that Morton was innocent.

We start the news with an update on a story from yesterday. The Coast Guard confirmed they found the debris field from the air ambulance that dropped off radar just south of Nantucket. The jet reported electrical problems, declared an emergency, and lost contact following a rapid descent. The search for those on board continues.

The Canadian-registered Gulfstream G100 air ambulance operated by Latitude Air Ambulance, carrying six people (four Canadian crew members—two pilots and two medical staff—and two Bermudian nationals, a patient and a relative), vanished early on Saturday.

There was a mass shooting at a homecoming event in Vienna, Georgia. 2 people were killed and at least 25 injured when gunfire erupted at an event in the small town.

No word on who did the shooting. Wonder why. . .

A Chicago child was stabbed to death in an apparently random attack yesterday. Edi Mari Hernandez Chacon, 7, was stabbed multiple times in the back and neck around noon Saturday by a complete stranger. Witnesses quickly pursued the 48-year-old suspect, who has a violent criminal history and an outstanding warrant, knocking her unconscious for police to arrest her.

The child was rushed to Comer Children’s Hospital but did not survive. Had I witnessed that, the woman wouldn’t have survived either. While news media knows the skell’s name, they are not releasing it because she hasn’t been charged yet or some shite. WHat has been released is the fact that she has a lengthy rap sheet including previous assaults and stabbings.

There are unconfirmed reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi applied for asylum in the US at the end of the UN meetings last week. Obviously, this rumor – and that is all it can be at this point – is unconfirmed and unconfirmable. What is confirmed is that Aragachi was thrown out of the US a couple of days ago.

The version going around was that his own security detail found out and his sister and family were picked up overnight. That is why he stayed. He was trying to bargain his way out of a case before Rubio told the delegation to get on a plane.

I cannot confirm the asylum request. The week on the record is strange enough. Pezeshkian spoke and left. Araghchi stayed, supposedly for indirect talks through Qatar that went nowhere. Axios reported the State Department put a U.S. protective detail on him after reviewing threats. Then Rubio ordered the team out. They flew to Doha at 1:20 in the morning. Tehran denied they had been told to leave.

Then he landed, and his sister was dead. Pezeshkian, the roads minister, the atomic energy chief, Qatar, Pakistan, all sending condolences. A funeral photo. No cause.

A foreign minister who needs American bodyguards in New York, because he does not trust the men who flew in with him, is not negotiating from strength. He comes home and the person who was supposed to be the leverage is in the ground. The Islamic Republic does not have to announce how these things happen. It just has to make sure the diplomat is the one standing at the grave.

No matter what happened, Araghchi’s travel to New York and his extra stay and getting thrown out were all very strange. The regime might be closer to falling than we think.

I agree, the whole thing is odd. I also agree that the regime is closer to falling than most people are willing to admit. That is not a good thing. The last thing the world needs is another failed state in that region. And right now I do not see anyone ready to step into the inevitable void that will be created when the Islamic Republic falls.

More than half of the B-1B Lancers currently based at RAF Fairford have departed. The US Air Force withdrew eight of its 12 B-1B bombers from the Gloucestershire base in coordinated flights tracked by open-source observers, heading back to the United States with tanker support. This drawdown follows an alleged Iranian-sponsored terror plot near the base, where five men were arrested on explosives suspicions and a sixth UK-Iranian was detained in London.

It is unclear why the aircraft are being repositioned, but I suspect it has to do with the current Labour Government in the UK and their complete lack of urgency concerning national sovereignty and national security.