Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Peace and Love

25 comments:

  1. 75th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

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  2. One of my (not close) relatives was 14 years old and fishing from a dock within sight of Battleship Row when the attack came. It took years for him to get over the psychiatric problems.

    Alan

    P.S..: The US and Japan had lived in fear of one another's naval power for a long time. And people here often are not aware of the recently enacted US oil embargo, which threatened the operation of Japan's fleet, and was intended to do so. The way things looked from Japan's perspective would make any country likely to strike out--they had felt they were under steadily increasing existential threat from the europeans for 350 years. The whole thing was, on both sides, so incredibly human and understandable--but incredibly foolish. And people are still born foolish. Damn it all.

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    1. I will always pretty much believe that we goaded Japan into doing something unforgivable. . . . Roosevelt wanted into the war, the isolationists were keeping him out. Pearl Harbor fixed *that*. . . .

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    2. OTOH, it would have been difficult for the US to simply ignore Japan's multiple aggressions. One thing to remember is that Japan attacked the British and Dutch East Asia colonies simultaneously with Perl Harbor. Would they have done that without the oil embargo? Hard to tell.

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    3. There is also the old theory that Soviet agents infiltrated the US government and influenced the trend to hostilities between the US and Japan so the USSR would not have to fight a two-front war. Not implausible, but if there were any records they should have been destroyed long ago.

      Alan

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  3. Another no good sleep night. Listening to Richmond news in the predawn, and the p-e speaking, was struck once again, with how odd, strange, just wrong he sounds. As if there's something really *organically* *intrinsically* wrong with his brain. There IS something dreadfully wrong there.

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    1. Yes, there is. I don't think he is normal in any way.

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    2. Um, rabies. That's fun. I was bitten in the face by a rabid dog when I was two. Had the shots. Don't remember them, but Mom said I'd start screaming any time we approached that part of town.

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    3. He's too young for tertiary syphilis to be a significant possibility, and probably too old for it not to have disabled him. (Hitler died at 56, for example.) His canine teeth don't appear consistent with congenital syphilis.

      --Alan

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  4. I keep thinking of the lines from the Lord of the Rings movie, when Theoden (sp?) is speaking to Saruman"

    "We shall have peace. When you hang from a gibbet for the sport of your own crows, we shall have peace."

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    1. Great line. Great scene. Though casting Trump as Saruman doesn't work. Trump never had any wisdom to fall from.

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  5. Want to discredit Donald Trump? Show his base he's part of the elite [Click] But the wimpocrats don’t seem to have it in them…

    —Alan

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  6. Another place I blog, a fellow pointed out that 25% of Americans believe the sun orbits the earth. Both he an I had an "A-Ha" moment: the Turnip voters!!!

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    1. Why, you might be on to something there, puddle! But I take exception to your denigration of an innocent root vegetable by comparing it to the Preznit-elect.

      Alan

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    2. I quite like turnips. Now Brussels sprouts are an entirely different matter.

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  7. I see that Ben Ray Luján has been reelected DCCC chair. He is a member of the Progressive caucus, championed a public option for Obamacare, opposes the war in Afghanistan, and supports renewable energy.

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    1. Well, *there's* something good in the world at least! Thanks for the post, Bill!

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    2. Then maybe I shouldn't have unsubscribed from DCCC e-mails?

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  8. 5 Reasons Why I Doubt Donald Trump Will Complete His First Term [Click]


    Moyers & Winship: The Speech Hillary Should Give Before Trump Takes Office [Click] That would be nice, but I’m not going to be holding my breath. I anticipate that the Wimpocrats will march forth beneath the banner of the Whipped Rooster. [Tip o’ the hat to Huey Long]

    —Alan

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  9. The Founders of this nation anticipated that the Electoral College would be a check and balance against majority rule. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were aghast at the "winner-take-all" idea, that electors would be expected to vote a certain way, relative to their state vote. The intention was that electors would vote freely and wisely, taking into consideration those things which the people could not have known yet on election day.

    "Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for 'low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity', attaining high office."

    Well, here we are with the presumed President-Elect naming potential cabinet members. If the electors allow this man to be elected, out of dogged loyalty to the system created for reasons of power instead of common sense, then the carnage that follows will be on their head. If the electors allow this man to be elected, it is (past) time to recreate the checks and balances in our voting system.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)

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    1. No argument there, listener. And I think restoring the clear meaning of the right to bear arms, and restoring the original intent relative to police searches would also be very reasonable. [The original intent of the latter, derived from a celebrated British case, was that police could search without a warrant, and evidence so discovered was admissible, but without a warrant police were subject to prosecution if the search were unreasonable. By changing the clear meaning of the law, the Supreme Court has had to tie itself in knots to define just what is a search and what is not.) Thinking of the right to bear arms, my ancestors in Ontario were militia members; they mustered from time to time, were issued arms from the government armory, and were responsible for taking care of and returning them. They were paid, although whether that was routinely or just in time of mobilization (e.g., the War of 1812) I don't know. But I found pay records. It was a condition of their land grants (as we would call them).

      Alan

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  10. This morning's update on the Ghost Ship fire was that they had completed search/recovery, the total number of victims was 36--and they had identified 35 of them (which amazes me). I wonder if cell phones might have aided in identification, if in no other way than by serial numbers.

    Alan

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