Brief But Inappropriate
The following feature is a repost, of a previously published feature about Teju Cole. Chamblee 54 had a post yesterday based on something that Mr. Cole said first. The repost is one year old. The pictures are ninety years old, and are neither damaged nor improved by the passage of time.
Mr. Cole does not tweet as many fait divers as he once did. His latest comment was @tejucole Biden Apologizes For “Brief But Inappropriate” Wink At Self in Mirror 3:34 PM – 6 Apr 13. This is not to say there is no new product. A splendid piece appeared at the New Yorker. It is about our well read POTUS, who holds serious books with his bloody hands.
PG was collecting the best, and the worst, from facebook and twitter. The mass of sentences will be published in a day or so, with Selah at the end. One of the best places to visit on twitter is Teju Cole. A specialty of the house are “small fates”… the essence of a news story in 140 characters.
Not far from the Surulere workshop where spray-painter Alawiye worked,
a policeman fired into the air. Gravity did the rest.
With a leap in front of the northbound local,
Philip Joseph, of Heary Street, canceled his wedding plans.
Harvey had an eventful trip on the Olympic. Swindled on the first day,
he quarreled on the second, and drank himself to death on the third.
Envious of the White Star Line’s Titanic, which is on its maiden voyage,
Cunard announced plans for Aquitania, which shall be even larger.
Merely because his surgeon, Dr Fischer, left two sponges in his abdomen,
Jacob Weiss, of East 87th Street, is making a legal fuss.
Death had been ignoring 82-year-old Mrs Levy,
so she jumped from the fifth floor of the Ansonia Hotel and got his attention.
It turns out that there is a French custom, fait divers. That outlet turned out to be a form of writing for which there is no exact English term: fait divers. This is a French expression, in common use for centuries, for a certain kind of newspaper piece: a compressed report of an unusual happening. What fait divers means literally is “incidents,” or “various things.” The nearest English equivalent is “news briefs” or, more recently, “news of the weird.” The fait divers has a long and important history in French literature. Sensationalistic though it is, it has influenced the writing of Flaubert, Gide, Camus, Le Clézio and Barthes. In Francophone literature, it crossed the line from low to high culture.
Raoul G., of Ivry, an untactful husband, came home unexpectedly,
and stuck his blade in his wife, who was frolicking in the arms of a friend.
A dishwasher from Nancy, Vital Frérotte, who had just come back from Lourdes,
cured forever of tuberculosis, died Sunday by mistake.
In today’s twitter feed, there was this: A link on not linking: http://inkdroid.org/journal/2012/04/11/on-not-linking/. In the story, there was a link to an interview on NPR. We learn that Mr. Cole finds many of his small fates in 100 year old newspapers.
In the NPR talk, Mr. Cole says that the old newspaper stories always had the address. This adds a touch a connection, for you can go to that same location today. In a touch of irony, Mr. Cole refuses to add links to his tweets about these stories. A link is the digital version of the address.
In the linked story in today’s twitterfeed, the author asks Mr. Cole to include a link to specific stories. The reply: “I can’t include links directly in my tweets for three reasons. The first is aesthetic: I like the way the tweets look as clean sentences. One wouldn’t wish to hyperlink a poem. The second is artistic: I want people to stay here, not go off somewhere else and crosscheck the story. Why go through all the trouble of compression if they’re just going to go off and read more about it? What’s omitted from a story is, to me, an important part of a writer’s storytelling strategy. And the third is practical: though I seldom use up all 140 characters, rarely do I have enough room left for a url string. “
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Just Us
PG posted a sign on facebook. The text read “It is is not about justice. It is having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.” The sign is based on a quote by Teju Cole. He was talking about something called the White Savior Industrial Complex. If you have a few minutes, you might benefit from reading that post. Some will want to drape a towel over the nearest mirror.
There was a response to the sign. What? ~ It is about a lot of things. I have one version where I substitute salvation for justice. I think it is about most situations where people get a bit too proud of their opinions. ~ Often it really is about justice though.
As the uncertain umpire said, fair enough. Without a specific example, it is tough to *judge*. Some activists are sincere, just as others are self aggrandizing jerks. It can be tough to tell the difference. This is a problem for sincere people. They are often confused for angry idiots with too much free time.
The background of the sign is a wall, near a MARTA elevated track. The wall is between a railroad line, and the support for the elevated track. The idea is to protect the MARTA line if a freight train turns over on the track. The wall is several feet thick, has steel bars, and is full of gravel. It has never been tested. The wall is not in place to validate privilege.
Historic pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. They were originally used in a post, PC vs NOL. The post was about replacing political correctness with non oppressive language. Fortunately, not much more has been heard about this concept. The post included a list of thoughts that are germane to today’s discussion.
1 – Whoever hands out the labels controls the discussion. Obamacare sounds much worse than the affordable care act. Pro life is better than anti abortion. Don’t worry about the children killed in the wars that pro life people support The spell check suggestion for Obamacare is Macabre .
2 – Semantic discussions are so tiresome. Too much food for thought leads to moral indigestion. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Stream of consciousness is more fun to write than it is to read. The delete key is not just for breakfast.
3 – Languages are the creation of man. They are always going to have shortcomings. Words and phrases mean different things to different people.
4 – When self styled conservatives make fun non oppressive language, in the way they ridicule political correctness, the concept has arrived.
5 – People are proud of their ignorance and prejudices. When someone uses a term that offends/angers you, it says more about the sayer than it does the object.
6 – When you punish the use of a term, you make it’s use more appealing.
7 – There is more to respecting a person than refraining from the use of forbidden words.
8 – Often, the oppressors think they are the victims.
9 – If you are a sloppy typer, non oppressive can come out ono oppressive. John is rocking and rolling in his grave. Yoko is counting money.
10 – It is not what you say, it is how you say it.
11 – If you are confused, it only means you are paying attention.
12 – The dominant religion of our culture has, as a cornerstone belief, the notion that “the bible is the word of G-d”. When you use this belief as a foundation for your culture, it should not be surprising when the basement leaks.
13 – The dominant religion of our culture talks about forgiveness a lot. Followers like to be forgiven more than they like to forgive.
14 – When you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.
Oil Business As Usual
Last week, people changed their facebook status symbol in support of gay marriage. During those five business days, the United States imported 44 million barrels of oil. Some of this oil was purchased from dictators who support terrorism. Lots of carbon dioxide was dumped into the atmosphere. Very little progress was made on finding alternative sources of energy. In other words, business as usual.
This feature is a repost from a year ago. The good news is that Willard M. Romney is now the answer to a trivia question. The not so good news is that B. Hussein Obama is the POTUS. The corporations that invested in him want a return on that capital. It will be energy business as usual until 2017. Whether the carbon pollution tipping points will fall over is difficult to determine.
As you may have noticed, the price of gasoline is going up. The intermediates are full of opinions. Today we will focus on two reports. Informed Comment has a bit today, Why Romney is Lying about the Causes of high Prices at the Pump. A few weeks ago, Tom Dispatch published Tomgram: Michael Klare, Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay. As with all stories, you can learn a few things by reading the original, and following the links. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress .
It looks like either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is going to be the next President. Yuck. One of the issues is the price of gasoline. Lips will be moving, and the etch a sketch turned over. The smiling Mormon said recently “In thrall to the environmentalist lobby and its dogmas, the President and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs,”
It is copy and paste time. Other people say things better than your slack blogger. “Oil prices are a matter of supply and demand, and Romney only wants to talk about supply. The US imports 8.7 million barrels of petroleum per day (the world produces roughly 87 million barrels a day). If you wanted to put down its price, you could begin by slashing imports by not wasting so much gasoline. If we moved more things by train instead of by trucks; if we gave more tax breaks for buying hybrids and electric vehicles; if we did more to encourage wind and solar energy and integrated it with electric vehicles; if we lowered the speed limits; if we held Detroit’s feet to the fire and required much higher gasoline efficiency much sooner, if we set policies that encouraged people to live in cities near their work– if we did all that we’d put down the price of petroleum. We only have 4% of the world’s population and we use about a fifth of the world’s petroleum, and that is one of the problems….We can’t affect the supply part of the equation. The United States just doesn’t have many petroleum reserves by world standards, and drilling in nature reserves and off pristine beaches is not going to produce enough fuel to lower world prices. We’ve already increased our production of petroleum and liquid fuels by about a million barrels a day since Obama has been president, and Obama isn’t doing anything to stand in the way of that kind of thing.
And, there are currently some international issues affecting supply: 1. the boycotts on Iran (which Romney supports, in fact he wants more! The more you boycott Iran’s oil, the more you put up the price of petroleum; hint: you’ve reduced supply). Talk of war also raises gasoline prices because the futures markets get nervous. 2. Declining production from old fields. China’s domestic production is down 200,000 barrels a day this spring because an old field is being worked out. China’s good economy is also roaring along, so that Chinese demand was up about 18% in February. 3. Political instability and quarrels. The Kurds in northern Iraq say they will stop pumping oil until the central Iraqi government gives them the share of profits it had promised. Syria used to produce 400,000 barrels a day and is now not doing much because of the upheaval there. South Sudan has shut down production as part of its quarrel with Sudan, through which it pipes its oil, over how much Khartoum skims off.” (Does this pipeline run through Darfur?)
The truth is that the earth is running out of oil. There is oil left to be extracted, but it is going to be much tougher to get. The days of Jed Clampett discovering oil with his shotgun are over, if they ever existed in the first place. Many of the remaining oil deposits are in deep water. “Brazil’s offshore fields, considered by some experts the most promising new oil discovery of this century, will prove especially pricey, because they lie beneath one and a half miles of water and two and a half miles of sand, rock, and salt. The world’s most advanced, costly drilling equipment — some of it still being developed — will be needed. Petrobras, the state-controlled energy firm, has already committed $53 billion to the project for 2011-2015, and most analysts believe that will be only a modest down payment on a staggering final price tag.”
The Arctic has lots of oil. Getting it out is going to be tough. “The Arctic physical environment presents special challenges not experienced elsewhere in the world. Several oil and natural gas fields have been discovered on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula but have not been developed because of the daunting physical challenges. As noted in a Cambridge Energy Research Associates report on this matter: “Intermittent permafrost becomes continuous, winds rise to a steady 40 m per second, wind-driven water up to 10 m deep covers the low-lying land several months of the year, and solid ground gives way to friable sand that offers little support to drill pads or to pipelines and other infrastructure. In winter, instead of soil there is a frozen mixture of one part sand to four parts of ice, shot through with salt. At greater depths one encounters cryopegs—liquid saltwater lenses that slide under pressure, further weakening the load-bearing capacity of the soil…. The most difficult part is getting gas and liquids to market as well as getting equipment and materiel in.”
Other sources of oil are the tar sands of Canada, and the “heavy oil” of Venezuela. The tar sands will probably be exploited, with or without a pipeline through the Nebraska aquifer. The oil produced is full of contaminants, and will be environmentally and economically costly.
“Until now, Canada’s tar sands have been obtained through a process akin to strip mining, utilizing monster shovels to pry a mixture of sand and bitumen out of the ground. But most of the near-surface bitumen in the tar-sands-rich province of Alberta has now been exhausted, which means all future extraction will require a far more complex and costly process. Steam will have to be injected into deeper concentrations to melt the bitumen and allow its recovery by massive pumps. This requires a colossal investment of infrastructure and energy, as well as the construction of treatment facilities for all the resulting toxic wastes. According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, the full development of Alberta’s oil sands would require a minimum investment of $218 billion over the next 25 years, not including the cost of building pipelines to the United States (such as the proposed Keystone XL) for processing in U.S. refineries.
The development of Venezuela’s heavy oil will require investment on a comparable scale. The Orinoco belt, an especially dense concentration of heavy oil adjoining the Orinoco River, is believed to contain recoverable reserves of 513 billion barrels of oil — perhaps the largest source of untapped petroleum on the planet. But converting this molasses-like form of bitumen into a useable liquid fuel far exceeds the technical capacity or financial resources of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. Accordingly, it is now seeking foreign partners willing to invest the $10-$20 billion needed just to build the necessary facilities.”
These issues do not consider the impact of carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels. Nor does this report factor in the cost of wars to protect the flow of petroleum. It is estimated that the cost of gasoline does not cover much of the true cost of extracting and using oil. This is the future.
The Do-Do Not Study
The polling industry seems to have excess capacity during non election years. An outfit called Public Policy Polling kept the troops busy with a study about conspiracies. Various news reports report the more sensational results to the public. This is a slow news day, and this study should get a lot of attention. PPP will be kept in the public eye, and politicians planning campaigns will be reminded of the existence of PPP.
Here is what the pdf says about methadology. “PPP surveyed 1,247 registered American voters from March 27 to 30. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/-2.8%. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.
There are twenty opinion questions. There may, or may not, be a reason they were presented in this order. With one exception, these questions begin with “Do”, and end with “or not?”. There are three possible answers… Do, Do Not, Not Sure. While not specified in the study, it is presumed that this was facilitated by pushing one, two, or three on the telephone. It is not indicated whether this was conducted on cell phones, or on land lines. It was not indicated if the voice conducting the survey was male, female, or an automated voice devoid of gender, and accent.
Q1 Do you believe global warming is a hoax, or not?
Q2 Do you believe Osama bin Laden is still alive, or not?
Q3 Do you believe a UFO crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and the US government covered it up, or not?
Q4 Do you believe that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order, or not?
Q5 Do you believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th, 2001, attacks on America, or not?
Q6 Do you believe there is a link between childhood vaccines and autism, or not?
Q7 Do you believe the moon landing was faked, or not?
Q8 Do you believe President Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, or not?
Q9 Do you believe the Bush administration intentionally misled the public about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to promote the Iraq War, or not?
Q10 Do you believe aliens exist, or not?
Q11 Do you believe the CIA was instrumental in distributing crack cocaine into America’s inner cities in the 1980s, or not?
Q12 Do you believe the government adds fluoride to our water supply, not for dental health reasons, but for other, more sinister reasons, or not?
Q13 Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?
Q14 Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy, or was there some larger conspiracy at work?
Q15 Do you believe in Bigfoot or Sasquatch, or not?
Q16 Do you believe media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals, or not?
Q17 Do you believe that the exhaust seen in the sky behind airplanes is actually chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons, or not?
Q18 Do you believe that the pharmaceutical industry is in league with the medical industry to “invent” new diseases in order to make money, or not?
Q19 Do you believe Paul McCartney actually died in a car crash in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a lookalike so The Beatles could continue, or not?
Q20 Do you believe the United States government knowingly allowed the attacks on September 11th, 2001, to happen, or not?
The exception to the Do-Do Not pattern is question 14. Alternative answers were available for this one question. Q14 Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy, or was there some larger conspiracy at work? Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone ~ There was some larger conspiracy at work ~ Not sure. Only 26% of the 18-29 age group feels there was a conspiracy. The other age groups all answered over 50%, when asked if there was a conspiracy.
The study had six demographic questions at the end. It is not known if there were sample quotas for these groups, or what screening questions were used. Respondents were not asked about family income, or level of education.
Q21 In the last presidential election, did you vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Q22 Would you describe yourself as very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, or very conservative?
Q23 If you are a woman, press 1. If a man, press 2.
Q24 If you are a Democrat, press 1. If a Republican, press 2. If you are an independent or identify with another party, press 3.
Q25 If you are Hispanic, press 1. If white, press 2. If African-American, press 3. If other, press 4.
Q26 If you are 18 to 29 years old, press 1. If 30 to 45, press 2. If 46 to 65, press 3. If you are older than 65, press 4.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Big Chicken Rolls Her Eyes
The Georgia Republican Party is embarrassed today. Their chairwoman, Sue Everhart, was quoted today on gay marriage. Among other things, she said “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.”
This article is a case of the medium being the message. The article was about people who support marriage equality. The comments from Mrs. Everhart were in the last part of the article. There is a journalistic tradition of balance. If the sky were to turn green tomorrow, the press will find someone to say that it is really purple. The comments from Mrs. Everhart were an effort to bring “balance” to a story that is generally supportive of same sex marriage.
The article appeared in the Marietta Daily Journal. This company produces the Neighbor newspapers that appear free in driveways throughout the metro area. MDJ was edited for years by Otis Brumby, who is about as liberal as Genghis Khan. For a capitalist shoppers newspaper, based in Cobb County, to print an article supportive of gay marriage, is amazing.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Other Things Are Happening
As you may have heard, lawyers are presenting arguments to SCOTUS about same sex marriage. This has gotten a lot of attention. People are talking. Facebook status photographs are being changed to graphic symbols. Preachers are reading the bible.
Not everyone is amused by this lawyer generated hoopla. A blog post came out, 6 Things That Happened While Y’all Were Preoccupied With Gay Marriage. The six things in this post are a corporate written law signed by BHO, two proposed laws in state legislatures, a rapper saying something tacky, people being arrested, and more people becoming homeless. All of these things are serious issues. Ignoring the rapper would seem a painless solution to one problem.
All of these issues are focused on the United States. It is bad enough to obsess about tax regulations that seem to benefit the wealthy. This commentary by BGD does not consider the ninety plus percent of the population that lives outside the lower forty eight. Here are a few of the things happening in the rest of the world. No facebook graphics are available for many of these issues.
1- The United States is conducting a war of choice in Afghanistan. Men, women, and children are being killed. The production of heroin is being protected. Billions of borrowed dollars are being spent in a worthless endeavor. Revenge for 911 has long ago been taken.
2- The United States is sending unmanned aircraft to conduct air slaughter of defenseless populations. These men, women, and children are residents of countries the United States is not at war with. In the case of Pakistan, we are allies. With allies like that, who needs enemies.
3- Oil products are being used without any consideration of the future. Carbon Dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere at a much faster pace than the trees of the planet can process. Oil is being extracted from increasingly more environmentally sensitive areas.
4- The government of Syria is slaughtering it’s own people. Israel takes in zero refugees.
5- Billions of narco dollars flow into criminal hands in Latin America. This money is causing problems.
6- Millions of Jesus Worshipers are about to celebrate Easter. They don’t seem to care about the neighbors, who are sick and tired of hearing about that religion.
The list could go on, ond on, and on. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This was written like H. P. Lovecraft.
Conversation At Starbucks
This may come as a surprise, but some of the stuff at Chamblee54 is copied from other sources. Some folks come up with things that just cannot be improved. That is why G-d invented copy paste. This story below originated at a site called World Class Stupid. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
I’ve been reading a lot about how supportive parents are to their unconventional kids these days, but I never really believed it. All the stories seemed just a little too good to be true: The dad who overhears his son talking about coming out and writes him a note that says he’ll love him no matter what. The two construction workers on the subway who proudly talk about their gay sons. The mom who walks in on her son having sex with his boyfriend and responds with a lock for his bedroom door and a note saying, “I always knew you were gay and I’m fine with it! Sorry to disturb your blowjob!”
Needless to say, I was totally surprised when I witnessed a scene that makes all of them look like Pat Boone eating cheese. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Get the Kleenex ready as we fade in on the local Starbucks.
I was drinking a frappuccino and listening to music when two guys in white robes and pointy hoods walked in. Despite the fact they were covered from head to toe in starched white cloth, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they were really racist, sexist Southerners — the kind of guys who snapped towels at each other in the locker room and called guys “faggot” when they listened to Erasure over and over (even the new record!).
I always ignore people in costume since they usually ask me for candy, but this time I couldn’t help myself. The tape in my Walkman jammed just as Sheryl Crowe was going to tell me what kind of a road a day is like, and I heard Guy #1 say this: “My wife wants me to stop killing squirrels, but I don’t feel right just turning them loose after I’ve cut off their skins.” It piqued my curiosity so I put a blank tape in my Walkman and hit RECORD. Ordinarily I don’t have time to waste on meaningless strangers but I figured my Yelp review could wait.
Guy #2: That don’t sound much like Wilma. She ain’t one to spoil a good hobby.
Guy #1: She wants me to spend more time with our son Ralph, who’s fifteen and plays football.
Guy #2: How is Ralph anyway? Haven’t seen him in awhile.
Guy #1: Oh, he’s good. This year he’s quarterback.
Guy #2: He’ll definitely have the girls hanging around him now.
Guy #1: Yeah if he had any time for them.
Guy #2: Focused on football?
Guy #1: Focused on terpsichory.
Guy #2: You’re shittin’ me!
Guy #1: I kid you not. Last week he told me and Betty that he wanted to join the Bolshoi Ballet.
Guy #2: Holy Jesus on the cross. I don’t see how anybody can tolerate that parade of patriarchal cliché.
Guy #1: Amirite? Amirite? I tell ya, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Guy #2: Well, it don’t surprise me none. He always seemed soft, even ignoring the tutu.
Guy #1: How’s Marvin Jr.?
Guy #2: Last week I caught him en pointe with his boyfriend doing a tour jeté. His sister told me he wants to sign with Martha Graham.
Guy #1: Hoo-wee! Well, we all saw that coming.
Guy #2: You’re the eighth person to tell me that. How’d everybody see it but me?
Guy #1: It was just a feelin’, Elbert. In their class photo he’s the only one pretending to be a tree.
Guy #2: I guess you’re right. But hell, Charlie — Martha Graham? Critics say her Bacchanale achieves a subtle, sublime lyricism but to me it looks like Jackie Chan fighting off locusts.
Guy #1: It definitely eschews the traditional vocabulary of dance.
Guy #2: Shit, Charlie. We both have kids who adore the dance. What do we do now?
Guy #1: We act like normal fathers. We say their tights don’t make their asses look fat and if anybody says their pirouettes are wobbly we jam potatoes into the exhaust pipes of their trucks.
Guy #1: Well, I guess Ralph and Marvin Jr. won’t be getting together like we thought.
Guy #2: I guess not. If they wanna be professional dancers, they’re gonna need significant others who can pay the rent. [LONG PAUSE]
Guy #2: Hey Charlie, you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?
Guy #1: I think I am, Elbert. Not here, though — at my place. I just bought a new Scriabin polonaise and all this cotton dampens the poetry of my arms.
By that point I was holding back a little tear, but then they resumed talking about squirrels. I ran home and transcribed the whole thing and posted it here. I hope it brightens your day like it brightened mine. Maybe some day I’ll post an actual copy of the tape but when I scan it it just looks like a beige stripe.
The White House Dog
Michele Bachmann gave a speech at CPAC recently. Among other things, she talked about the care given to Bo Obama, @FDOTUS. Mrs. Bachmann, who is sometimes compared to a female dog, is taking a severe political risk in criticizing the Presidential dog.
In 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was trying to win a war, and running for a fourth term as POTUS. His most trusted advisor was a Scottish Terrier named Fala. The Republicans made a mistake.
“On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt gave his famous “Fala speech” while campaigning in the 1944 presidential election. … . Late in the speech, Roosevelt addressed Republican charges that he had accidentally left Fala behind on the Aleutian Islands while on tour there and had sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayers:”
“These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog!”
Mr. Roosevelt won the election, and the war, but lost his life. Fala was in Warm Springs with him, and reportedly knew, before the doctors, that Mr. Roosevelt was not going to make it. Fala went to stay with Eleanor, and lived until 1952.
That was the year the Republicans finally won a Presidential election. This victory was put in doubt by reports of financial chicanery by Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon. There was a tv speech given to address these concerns.
“One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl-Tricia, the 6-year old-named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.”
Mr. Nixon won that election, and moved into the White House, as POTUS, in 1969. After Mr. Nixon died in 1994, PG saw a huge flag at half mast. It was a hamburger stand called Checkers.
Meanwhile, Bo Obama takes his four legged duty very seriously. @FDOTUS. No, I didn’t know that was Abe Lincoln’s bible and yes, I’m sorry I chewed it. Can we moved on?
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Respect And Fear
It has been seven days since the last edition of the series tagged “repost this sign”. This is when someone puts up a visually pleasing (sometimes) graphic, with the invitation to repost the graphic if you agree with the message. The edited graphics are attached to this post, and the reader is encouraged to copy them onto a facebook wall. There might be copyright issues involved, but this is facebook, and we are making people better persons, so it’s all right.
There are four messages this week. Here are the links to the originals: one, two, three, four. They have been converted to grayscale, which helps them to fit in with the other pictures posted. These pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The first two are tough to disagree with. We all want to see people have well fed, happy lives. The second one is about finding a baby animal on the ground, and putting it back in the nest. The conventional wisdom says this is bad, the poster says it is not, and PG does not know.
The last two posters sort of contradict each other, with the truth somewhere in the middle. Many people confuse respect for fear. Right makes right, and you need the approval of an authority. Perhaps people who are raised with this mindset are more likely to develop mental illness. Or, children with problems have bully, authoritarian parents who make their problem worse. Maybe this is why the wide eyed girl in poster four clutches her coffee with such enthusiasm.
Poster four was put up last week, which is the middle of March. According to the inerrant wikipedia, Mental Health Awareness Week is the first full week in October. Maybe the people posting this need to be taught respect for the perfectly obvious facts.
When producing text for a column of pictures, it is normal to have space to fill. Last week, a series of quotes were copied into the spot, and the cup quickly runneth over. A bit of commodity wisdom from Friedrich Nietzsche was deleted.
Today, there is going to be random nonsense written, until the space runs out. It is ok to skip this, and go ahead to the pictures. These images are from the War Between The States. War is a time when the lines between respect, authority, and mental illness are blurred to the point of no return. A war is usually popular for the first thirty days, at which the memories of previous wars become unblocked. It was ten years ago that we started to kill people in Iraq. This is a textbook example of the inmates taking over the asylum. The oil revenues have not paid for this war.
Shock And Awe Day 2013
Ten years ago, Iraq teetered on the edge of regime change. It was obvious what was going to happen, at least at first. Amerika was going to storm in, kill a bunch of people, and take over.
In post 911 Amerika, the military industrial complex saw an opportunity for plunder, unrivaled since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories of WMD would infect the body politic with fear of a mesopotamian madman. Saddam Hussein wanted Iran to think he has wonder weapons, and did not think Amerika was serious about regime change. We all make mistakes.
In the ten years since the time of shock and awe, trillions of dollars have gone down the drain, dragging the mighty Amerikan economy along into the sewers of bankruptcy. One of the oldest civilizations of mankind was reduced to hiding, from neighbors, behind concrete barricades. They fought the conquerors with bombs triggered by garage door openers. Thousands of women and children have been murdered. The WMD were never found.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Neil Sheehan
In 1988, C-SPAN presented a five part interview with Neil Sheehan. He was promoting a book, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Mr. Sheehan was a reporter in Vietnam during the early years of the war. Here are some highlights.
LAMB:(Brian Lamb, host of Booknotes) Neil Sheehan, author of “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.” What role did the press play in the war? Mr. SHEEHAN: At the beginning, I suspect the press helped us to go to war in Vietnam. The the press was in gen the the the the news media of this country, in my opinion, tend to be quite conventional. They reflect conventional ideas. They are not the cabal of liberal plotters that the right wing would have us believe, at least, that thus that thesis doesn’t stand up to reality in my experience.
Mr. SHEEHAN: Let me back up for one moment. There’s a considerable misimpression about the role of the press in Vietnam all along and particularly in this early period. The reporters who went to Vietnam early on, like myself, were not anti war dissenters. We were very much in favor of American intervention in Vietnam. We had the same set of illusions everyone else did. What we wanted to what we felt was our well, was our duty excuse me we felt our duty was to report the truth, so that the president would know what was happening in Vietnam the president and the rest of the leadership and win the war. And the advisers in the field, like John Vann, told us, `Look, this isn’t working. The policy isn’t working. We’re losing. And here’s why.’ And we were writing these stories and and they were being denounced.
Mr. SHEEHAN:… the South Vietnamese army wouldn’t fight, that the Diem regime (Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam before November 2, 1963) was deliberately holding deliberately holding it back from fighting, that they wouldn’t take on the Communist guerrillas. Because Diem wanted to preserve his army as a force in being to to preserve his regime. The Americans thought of the army, the South Vietnamese army, as a force with which to fight the Communists. Diem saw it as a force to keep him in power. And so he had a he had a secret order out to his commanders not to take casualties. And the advisers couldn’t get them to tangle with the with the guerrillas, and they would tell us this.
Mr. SHEEHAN: .. it was stupid to be shelling and bombing civilian hamlets, that we were just killing women and kids and we were turning the population against us. He (John Paul Vann) showed us the extent to which the ARVN, the Regular South Vietnamese Army, was avoiding contact with the enemy and would not fight the Viet Cong, would not take them on. He showed us the extent to which we were arming the guerillas through these outposts. Again, John would gather the data, precisely how many American arms were going to precisely how many outposts and we ended up – as I said in the book, we ended up arming the Viet Cong in South Vietnam with American weapons because the American generals were pouring weapons into the South Vietnamese Militia and the Viet Cong were collecting them from these outposts. And so, you were giving a communist guerilla who had a bolt action French rifle a fast firing semiautomatic M1 Garand, which was a World War II weapon, but which was a very good weapon in the mid – in the early 60s. This was prior to the fully automatic weapons, the M16, et cetera. The Garand was a fine weapon and we were arming our enemy. … the United States of America, are arming our enemy and giving them far better weapons than with than they already have and we’re going to change the whole the whole kind of wa we’re going to change the war we’re fighting. We’re we’re creating a a monster here.’
LAMB: Given your experience, and this book and other books, could a Vietnam ever happen again to the United States? Mr. SHEEHAN: No. Well, not in the foreseeable future. I think Vietnam has changed this country, for the foreseeable future, at least. I an event like Vietnam is unique in the history of a country. Vietnam was our first bad war …. And it was the first it was the first war in which Americans could get could and did get killed for nothing. Now the Europeans had learned that you could go to war and get killed for nothing, that you could go to war and and your in which you could get involved in a war in which your le leadership was was was driven by illusions rather than reality. We had never learned that as a nation. … And so I think the impact of that on us has been so profound, because the war was so divisive that it remains with us today and you ca the president of the United States cannot so blithely send Americans off to war as he does not have the power to do it that Kennedy and Johnson had, because the public doesn’t give him the credibility that it gave them those presidents.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Tax Law
There was a bloggingheads discussion with Bob Wright and Ann Althouse. If you are worried about the visuals, it was a split screen, and they kept their clothes on. At the 12:30 mark, Ms. Althouse discussed a DOMA case that is going before the SCOTUS.
The plaintiff in question is probably Edie Windsor. “On Monday, lawyers filed a petition on behalf of Edith “Edie” Windsor, an 83-year-old lesbian from New York, asking the Supreme Court to review her case, … Windsor sued the government in 2010, after the death of her partner of more than 40 years forced Windsor to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate tax on her partner’s estate. Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in 2007, in Canada, and while New York recognized the marriage, the federal government did not. When Spyer got sick, she chose to leave her entire estate to Windsor. Had Windsor been married to a man, she would not have had to pay any estate tax, according to court documents; therefore, her suit argues, DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The rest of the discussion was lively. PG listened to the entire thing. Mr. Wright explained why there was a closed coffin when JFK was buried. Somehow, this secular twosome got onto religion. Ms. Althouse said that people believe what they want to believe. The peroxide did not seem to affect her delivery. There were no commercials.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
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