NFL-Free Thanksgiving Day -- November 23, 2017

It's very possible that by 2030, the US will celebrate one continuous festival starting Halloween Eve and running through early January. This would not be unprecedented. The Carnival of Venice, during much of the time that Giacomo Casanova lived (1725 - 1798), ran for six months. The city successfully incorporated festival, sexual peccadilloes, and commerce for six months.

The internet does a poor job covering this period. If interested, two books I would highly recommend, both on my night stand:

• Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic, James H. Johnson, c. 2011
• History of My Life: Giacomo Casanova, Everyman's Library edition, c. 2007

I have my mask ready.

Speaking of books: I'm still reading the biography of Siegfried Sassoon. Sparse, "scaffolding" notes are being placed here. I only get to the library every other day or so to read the book. I haven't checked it out -- already too many books at the house.

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NFL Slump Getting Worse -- NY Post

Link here.  

As noted before, the NFL will sort this out. Most likely they will do what kindergarten teachers use to do with unruly boys: stand them in the corner. For the NFL, the players will remain in the locker room until after the national anthem is over.  I think it's hilarious. Seriously.

This is the problem the NFL now has: even if a team like the Vikings has no one kneeling, no one will know. Fair weather fans like me will assume that all NFL players kneel when, in fact, it's a very, very small minority that kneel. As usual, one bad apple in the barrel has ruined it for everyone ....

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What Goes Around, Comes Around 

This is really quite fascinating. From the introduction of History of My Life: Giacomo Casanova, Everyman's Library edition, c. 2007:

Through the the 16th to the 19th century, Italy: family cults -- dominated their fellow-citizens and turned nominal republics into autocracies, if not dictatorships --

• Medici in Florence
• the della Scala in Verona
• the Gonzaga in Mantua
• the Este in Ferrara
• the Sforza and the Visconti in Milan

The Venetians turned away from this. The Most Serene Republic might not have been totally democratic but it was certainly more so (with the arguable exception of Switzerland) than any other country in Europe.

• the basic principle of the their constitution: no one family or individual could ever wax too great
• the Doge was a figurehead; only able to act when surrounded by his six Savii or wise men; probably yielded less effective power than the Queen of England today
• the real government of the country was in the hands of black-robed and faceless committees, their composition constantly changing

Wow, does that not sound like the "Deep State" in the United States? Has the president become more and more just a figurehead as Congress and federal judges? Is it the FCC, the FTC, the EPA, and a gazillion other "alphabet" committees and agencies the ones that really run the US government. Just the other day it was said that the second most powerful person in the world, right behind the President of the United States, was the US Federal Reserve chairperson, currently, Janet Yellen.

See also: Italy Magazine. 

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Fake News

This should have been the headline: Loessberg said the county looked at creating a new water utility for Sandbranch the 1990s but no one in the town wanted to run it.

So, instead, blame "America."

The British headline:  'America's dirty little secret': the Texas town that has been without running water for decade.

Source of water contamination? Too many hogs.