The Commentariat -- July 8, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Afternoon Update:
Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times: "The New York Stock Exchange unexpectedly shut down trading in all of its listed stocks late Wednesday morning.... A trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that after the suspension began, traders were told that the problem was related to updated software that was rolled out before markets opened on Wednesday."
Anthony Faiola & Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "Greece asked European partners Wednesday for a new three-year bailout, pledging to make reforms but leaving blank how far it was willing to go to meet cost-cutting demands as the country flirts with bankruptcy. In a one-page letter, obtained by The Washington Post, Greece proposed to take steps on key issues such as taxes and pension payouts as early as next week. It also pledged to take unspecified 'additional actions' to 'strengthen and modernize' its economy."
Ian Shapira of the Washington Post: "The Washington Redskins lost their biggest legal and public relations battle yet in the war over their name after a federal judge in Northern Virginia on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of the NFL team's federal trademark registrations, which have been opposed for decades by many Native Americans who feel the moniker disparages their race. The cancellation doesn't go into effect until the Redskins have exhausted the appeals process in the federal court system."
Jeffrey Collins of the AP: "The South Carolina House opened debate over the future of the Confederate flag Wednesday, deliberating a proposal that could remove the banner from the Capitol grounds, possibly before the end of the week."
*****
West German representative Hermann Josef Abs signs an international agreement effectively halving West Germany's post-World War II debt. AP Photo, 1953. Niki Kitsantonis & James Kanter of the New York Times: "In a defiant speech before the European Parliament, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece said on Wednesday that his government was determined to reach a 'viable agreement' with the country's creditors. But he also insisted that any deal should include debt relief, and emphasized that the Greek crisis was essentially a European problem." ...
... (Andrew Higgins &) James Kanter of the New York Times: "Greece's newly installed finance minister arrived [in Brussels] at a crucial meeting of his eurozone peers on Tuesday without the new bailout proposal the group had expected to receive." CW: Not sure why the balance of Europe depends on a guy who's been on the job for half a day. Couldn't the other ministers come up with a less draconian plan & present that? ...
... New Lede: "European leaders, angered after Greece's new finance minister showed up for an emergency meeting in Brussels without a new proposal to resolve the nation's huge debt crisis, late Tuesday gave the Athens government until Sunday to reach an agreement to save its battered economy from a meltdown." CW: So, no, apparently these "European leaders" cannot behave like adults. They were angry???? ...
... The Times has live updates of events here. ...
... Eduardo Porter of the New York Times: "Major debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt's face value. The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down will turn out to be. Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It's not just that they benefited from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany's postwar economic miracle. Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to power."
Peter Müller & René Pfister of Der Speigel: "The Greek crisis required leadership and a plan, but Merkel was unwilling to provide either. Although she likes power, when push comes to shove, she doesn't know what to do with it. And now she faces the wreckage of her European policy." Thanks to Unwashed for the link. ...
... Scott Kaufman of Salon: "A group of prominent economists -- Thomas Piketty, Heiner Flassbeck, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Dani Rodrik, and Simon Wren-Lewis -- published a scorching open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her that if she doesn't 'provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come,' there could be 'far-reaching economic consequences across the world.'..." The letter, republished by the Nation (in English), is here. According to the Nation, "Global campaign group Avaaz organized this open letter to Angela Merkel on the back of a petition, signed by over half a million Europeans, demanding an end to the failed austerity program in Greece."
... Paul Krugman: "However things play out from here -- I find it hard to see a path other than Grexit -- the troika's program for Greece represents one of history's epic policy failures." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "From environmental and work force regulations to health care and contraception, congressional Republicans are using spending bills to try to dismantle President Obama's policies, setting up a fiscal feud this fall that could lead to a government shutdown. Even Pope Francis' planned visit to Congress in late September ... has added to the intrigue.... The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are churning out annual spending bills, dropping the bipartisanship that has long characterized the committees. The bills adhere to strict overall spending limits imposed in 2011 that Mr. Obama has already said he will not accept."
Emily Badger of the Washington Post: "... on Wednesday, the Obama administration will announce long-awaited rules designed to repair the [Fair Housing Act]'s unfulfilled promise and promote the kind of racially integrated neighborhoods that have long eluded deeply segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore. The new rules, a top demand of civil-rights groups, will require cities and towns all over the country to scrutinize their housing patterns for racial bias and to publicly report, every three to five years, the results. Communities will also have to set goals, which will be tracked over time, for how they will further reduce segregation."
Dan Utech of the White House: "... [Tuesday], senior Administration officials were joined [link fixed] by Congressman [Elijah] Cummings [D-Md.] and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in Baltimore to announce a new initiative to increase access to solar for all Americans, including low- and moderate- income communities, and expand opportunities join the solar workforce."
Let Them Eat Cake. Lydia Wheeler of the Hill: "First lady Michelle Obama's signature school lunch regulations are coming under fresh fire from GOP lawmakers, who view impending reauthorization legislation as their best chance yet to dial back the controversial nutrition standards. Republicans are convening a series of hearings to highlight criticism of the regulations, a pillar of the first lady's initiative to curb childhood obesity in the United States. School officials say students are turning their noses up to the meals that cap calories and limit sodium. Republicans also assail the standards as executive overreach."
Robert Chalmers of Newsweek: Thomas Buergenthal, "the most distinguished living specialist in international human rights law, [who] served as a judge at the International Court of Justice for 10 years..., and [is now] Professor of Law at George Washington University: '... some of us have long thought that [Dick] Cheney, and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes [overseas torture centres] should appear before the ICC. We [in the USA] could have tried them ourselves. I voted for Obama but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people. I think -- yes -- that it will happen.'"
Campbell Robertson of the New York Times profiles Caddo Parish acting DA Dale Cox, who has come to believe "that capital punishment is primarily and rightly about revenge and that the state needs to 'kill more people.'... From 2010 to 2014, more people were sentenced to death per capita [in Caddo Parish] than in any other county in the United States, among counties with four or more death sentences in that time period." For more on how Cox exercises his philosophy of killing more people, see this New Yorker story by Rachel Aviv, which I linked a week or so ago.
Glass Houses. Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: "Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the 'Pound Cake' speech.... The Pound Cake speech ... was cited by a U.S. district judge as a legal justification for unsealing a deposition that was deeply damaging to Cosby.... Judge Eduardo C. Robreno said the speech, and Cosby's general posture as a 'public moralist,' made the deposition a legitimate subject of public interest.... 'The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct, is a matter as to which the AP -- and by extension the public -- has a significant interest,' the judge wrote." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Sandra Peticini of the Orlando Sentinel: "A Bill Cosby statue is being removed from Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park, a Walt Disney World spokeswoman said Tuesday evening. The statue was to come down Tuesday night after the park closed. Disney did not have further comment."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. In Salon, digby pulls together some journalists' recent observations to show how reporters feed off GOP oppo research & baseless accusations to paint Hillary Clinton as the devil incarnate.
Presidential Race
Nial Stanage & Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton slammed Donald Trump for his comments on Mexican immigrants in the first national interview of her presidential campaign. 'I'm very disappointed in those comments, and I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and with the Republican Party for not responding immediately and saying, "Enough, stop," Clinton said in the interview with CNN's Brianna Keilar.... Clinton sought to link Trump, a GOP White House hopeful, to the Republican Party as a whole on immigration, saying 'They are all in the same general area on immigration.'" ...
... "Just Thinkin' about Tomorrow." Singing Backup -- Barack Obama. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: President "Obama is using his first-mover advantage not just to shore up his own legacy, but to set the terms of the coming presidential campaign favorably for the Democratic nominee.... Across the board, Republican candidates are committed to adjusting the status quo backward. They oppose the Iran negotiations, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the very notion of an international agreement to curb global warming; they oppose administrative policies, like deferred action and overtime pay rules, that improve the lives of minorities and workers; and they oppose social legislation like the Affordable Care Act. Of the leading GOP presidential candidates, [Scott] Walker holds the most extreme view that the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage should be reversed and returned to the states. But all of these candidates oppose same-sex marriage... Taken as a whole, these issue positions will make it difficult for Republicans to cast themselves as forward-looking candidates." ...
... Hundreds of Ordinary Americans Join the Chorus. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Presidential campaigns have for decades fed talking points to surrogates who appear on national television or introduce candidates on the stump. But the [Clinton campaign's] effort to script and train local supporters is unusually ambitious and illustrates the extent to which the Clinton campaign and its web of sanctioned, allied super PACs are leaving nothing to chance.... But asking local supporters to use talking points could undermine the organic nature of grass-roots political interactions." ...
... Peter Beinart of the Atlantic does a good job of explaining Hillary's Bernie problem: she's tacking left this campaign & can't afford to alienate Sanders' liberal supporters, on whom she's counting to win in the general election. It's a quandary.
Charles Pierce: "... there is no institutional Republican party worth discussion anymore." Fox "News" is running the winger show in service of vanity candidates like Donald Trump & Ben Carson. ...
... CW: Pierce's view raises the question, does a political party's candidate have to be a professional politician? I don't think so (Dwight Eisenhower). No, I'm not comparing Donald to Ike. Pierce laments that two-term Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) won't make the cut for the first Fox "News" debate, & maybe that is terribly sad, but some of Kasich's sincerely-held beliefs (balanced budget amendment) are just as wackadoodle as Trump's incendiary & possibly fake ones (Mexican immigrants are criminals).
Claude Brodesser-Akner of NJ.com: "Democratic state lawmakers will soon introduce legislation that would force Gov. Chris Christie to resign from office because he is running for president.... State Sens. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who are expected to co-sponsor the bill, said they are fed up with Christie's frequent absences from New Jersey this year in the run-up to last week's announcement that he's running for the White House. The bill would require Christie and any future governor to resign in order to run for president.... Christie has been out of state for more than a third of his second term and more than half of this year."
In a New York Times op-ed, Marco Rubio criticizes President Obama's normalizing relations with Cuba as a "Faustian bargain." CW: Marco doesn't outline what personal gains Obama was going for here; or he doesn't know what "Faustian bargain" means. ...
... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday pledged to bust the higher education 'cartel' in an economic speech laying out his vision for the country. Rubio promised to cut the corporate tax rate, shift the U.S. to a territorial tax system and curtail costly regulations that impair business. He vowed to enact immigration reform based on getting skilled workers into the country while protecting U.S. jobs and called for an overhaul to a higher education system controlled by 'a cartel of existing colleges and universities.'... The sum of Rubio's remarks were meant to cast him as a new voice in Washington, ready to challenge an old guard."
Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, speaking last week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said he believes a 50% tax rate leaves individuals 'half-slave, half-free.'... Paul said he believes that 'you have to give up some of your liberty to have government,' saying he was 'for some government.'" CW: So, not an anarchist. Excellent presidential qualification, Randy. ...
... ** Ed Kilgore explains why Paul's "philosophy" is so profoundly dumb: "Now obviously if you assume the very existence of a minimal government represents a grudging surrender of liberty, there's not a whole lot to 'debate' other than the point of which the 'slaves' are justified in revolting. What Paul is excluding by definition is the possibility that liberty requires government; that anarchy is not some ideal state of nature and that the untrammeled exercise of 'liberty' by some is in fact slavery for others. Thus Paul really does help us to understand the essence of 'constitutional conservatism.'...”
Dan Snierson of Entertainment Weekly: "Simpsons fans will find this turn of events nothing short of excellent: Seven weeks after tweeting that he was exiting the animated comedy, EW has learned that Harry Shearer -- the voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Smithers and a flurry of other memorable characters -- has agreed to rejoin Fox's forever-running animated comedy." CW: Good news for Simpsons fans but bad news for the USA.
... Totally unrelated to Snierson's story:
... Brendan Prunty of the New York Times: "The P.G.A. Grand Slam of Golf -- a year-end exhibition among the winners of the four men's major championships -- was scheduled for October at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles. Instead, it will be moved to a yet-to-be-determined location." ...
What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc. -- Donald Trump, July 6
Trump's repeated statements about immigrants and crime underscore a common public perception that crime is correlated with immigration, especially illegal immigration. But that is a misperception; no solid data support it, and the data that do exist negate it. Trump can defend himself all he wants, but the facts just are not there. -- Michelle Lee of the Washington Post
Beyond The Beltway
Bill Chappell of NPR: "In a required third vote, South Carolina's state senators voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from its prominent place flying on the Statehouse grounds. The final tally was 36-3. The House will now take up the issue, perhaps as early as Wednesday. In both the Senate and the House, a vote on removing the flag will require a two-thirds majority." ...
... Florida Crackers. News 13 Orlando: "Marion County[, Florida] commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to put the Confederate flag back up at the county's government complex. The flag was removed Thursday and temporarily replaced with a flag with the seal of Marion County.... Within minutes of Tuesday morning's vote, the Civil War-era flag was seen flying once again outside the government complex as one of the five national flags which have flown over Florida since European explorers first landed on its shores more than 500 years ago. The other four are Spanish, French, British and American flags.... Reaction by Marion County residents who spoke with us Tuesday was overwhelmingly against the decision to remove the flag in the first place." ...
... Iowa Crackers. Josh Hafner of the Des Moines Register: "Three Confederate flags flew from a truck pulling a Marion County[, Iowa,] Republicans' parade float in Independence Day parades in Pleasantville and Pella on Saturday, leading to harsh criticism from the party's state chairman and resignation of two Marion County central committee members who owned the truck." Worth a read. ...
... Gun-Rights Leader Blames "Liberals" for Massacre. Miranda Blue of Right Wing Watch: "Immediately after a white gunman killed nine worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America started laying blame on the church's slain pastor, who was also a state senator, for supporting gun control and not allowing concealed weapons in his church. In an interview with Armed America Radio that was posted online last week, Pratt doubled down, claiming that the shooter, Dylann Roof, targeted a church 'populated by liberals' and pastored by 'Mr. Anti-Gun' because he knew his victims would be unarmed."
Bryan Lowry of the Wichita Eagle: Kansas "Gov. Sam Brownback issued an executive order Tuesday prohibiting state government from taking action against clergy members or religious organizations that deny services to couples based on religious beliefs. Among other things, the order is intended to protect religious organizations that provide adoption services for the state from having to place children with gay couples if that conflicts with their beliefs.... The order explicitly protects religious organizations that provide 'social services or charitable services,' meaning that it extends beyond the wedding ceremony." Via TPM.
Jack Healy of the New York Times: "At issue [in a case argued Tuesday before the Colorado Court of Appeals] was whether Jack Phillips, a Colorado bakery owner, had broken state antidiscrimination laws when he refused to make a cake for a gay couple's wedding reception, citing his religious beliefs. With same-sex marriage now legal everywhere nationally in the wake of the United States Supreme Court ruling in June, his case is being closely watched as a test of the boundary between personal religious objections and legal discrimination."
CBS/AP: "A federal grand jury has indicted a former Tennessee congressional candidate for allegedly soliciting others in a plan to burn down a mosque in Islamberg, a predominantly Muslim hamlet in Hancock, New York. Robert Doggart, 63, allegedly planned to burn a mosque, as well as a school and a cafeteria in the community. Investigators said he sought others to join the plan through Facebook posts and in telephone conversations.... According to court documents, Doggart is a member of several 'private militia groups.' He ran as an independent candidate for Congress in Tennessee's fourth congressional district in 2014. The Department of Justice pressed charges in Tennessee, where Doggart still lives." ...
... CW: You may remember this story about Doggart, linked here last week.
News Ledes
New York Times: Bonard Fowler, the Alabama policeman whose killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson provoked the hstoric march from Selma to Montgomery, died July 5 at age 81.
New York Times: "The New York Stock Exchange unexpectedly shut down trading in all of its listed stocks late Wednesday morning.... A trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that after the suspension began, traders were told that the problem was related to updated software that was rolled out before markets opened on Wednesday." ...
... Update: "Trading resumed late Wednesday afternoon, almost four hours after the shutdown began, less than an hour before the 4 p.m. closing bell." ...
... Politico: "The Wall Street Journal's homepage experienced an outage on Wednesday amid similar troubles at the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines. The newspaper's homepage displayed a 504 outage, though other sections of the newspaper's website, such as its Markets page, continued to function. The outage came at a curious time, just hours after United Airlines grounded all their flights across the country due to computer problems, and mere minutes after trading was halted on the New York Stock Exchange. NBC News' Pete Williams reported that officials do not think the glitches at United and the NYSE are connected, and it's possible that with the NYSE news, The Wall Street Journal's homepage is crashing under intense traffic."
New York Times: "As diplomats [at the Iran nuclear talks] declared they were entering yet another overtime period on Tuesday -- the second since negotiators blew past the supposedly final June 30 deadline for concluding the accord -- they sidestepped any talk of a firm date for reaching one of the hardest but potentially most consequential accords in recent diplomatic history."
Palestinian Live Matter. Guardian: "A teenage Palestinian killed by a senior Israeli army officer last week was shot in the back and side while apparently fleeing, according to medical evidence and multiple Palestinian witness reports. Mohammed Kasbeh, 17, was among a group of stone-throwers near a major Ramallah checkpoint when they broke the windscreen of a passing brigade commander's car with a rock. He died after being shot several times in his upper body by the officer."
Japan Times: "Former Toyota Motor Corp. executive Julie Hamp will not be charged with illegally importing a controlled painkiller, investigative sources said Tuesday. Prosecutors decided not to indict the 55-year-old American after concluding that her action was not ill-intended and considering the fact that she has already resigned from her job."
AFP: "US President Barack Obama welcomed the leader of Vietnam's Communist Party on Tuesday to the White House for historic but 'candid' talks marking two decades of rapprochement between the former enemies. Nguyen Phu Trong is the first general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party to visit the United States and the White House, and was given the rare honor of an Oval Office meeting -- usually reserved for heads of state and government."
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Reader Comments (21)
Regarding the Confederate flag, it seems that what the south was really fighting for was the right to profit without working. Slavery, while a great business model, is employed by people who are TOO LAZY to do their own work. Is it the loss of income w/out having to work for it that is lamented by the confederates? "My granpappy was able to get rich without ever breaking a sweat. I'm so proud of him.."
I'm sorry I know this is an incomplete thought, but I haven't seen this angle of it anywhere else. Oh, and also the loss of as much sex as you wanted, I'm sure.
That's so gross..
Alan,
Oh c'mon. I'll bet whipping someone half to death could cause one to at least break a sweat.
Oh wait. They had flunkies to do the whipping, right?
Never mind.
But the raping, I'm sure, they handled themselves. That called for...er...executive action. Or something.
The real trick was getting poor southerners to go to war and die for this sort of thing. I suppose that's where the canard about "The War of Northern Aggression" began, and the equally transparent lie that the north started the war when they invaded the south, a myth still pushed by politicians in South Carolina, home of the people who actually DID start the war.
If you're gonna lie, might as well make it a whopper. And if it's good enough, it'll end up in history textbooks in Texas public schools where they tell students that slavery and whippings and rapes were, ya know, just a side thing.
@Akhilleus: This 2011 Daily Kos diary provides some of the answers. According to the historians cited, many Southerners, perhaps a majority in most states, opposed secession, and tens of thousands of poor men were not inclined to join the army &/or deserted when the opportunity arose. (Oh, and plantation owners were excused from the 1862 conscription law. Very convenient. The oligarchs who started the war didn't have to actually fight it.)
No doubt many descendants of 19th-century Southerners are fooling themselves when they wave the Confederate flag in honor of ancestors who in fact opposed the war & tried to avoid military service. That just shows you what propaganda will do.
BTW, many Northerners didn't want to go to war, either, & wealthy Northerners could & did buy their way out.
Marie
And while we're way down along the Swanee Ribber, I wanted to comment on D.C.'s timely serving of happy, happy, joy, joy last night in reminding us of De Olde South.
I used to sing that song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" which I learned from a book of American folksongs, but I guess the editors of my book decided to tone it down a bit. The version I recall from sitting at the piano so long ago, was a bit different. Instead of
"Dere's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in de field of yeller corn,"
the version I learned went
"There's where I labored all day in the cotton,
There's where I worked in the fields of yellow corn"
Nonetheless, the verse about a happy meeting with Massa and the Missus sent me and my brother into paroxysms of laughter. We made up our own words that had the singer meeting the slave owner in the great beyond and kicking the shit out of him every day for all eternity.
I think we may have been influenced by a Flip Wilson joke making the rounds about that time, this was 1968 or so. It had to do with George Wallace dying, approaching the pearly gates expecting a great reception and discovering that god was black. And not happy.
The song however, really is a beautiful one, as is Swanee River. Too bad such gorgeous melodies were tied to such unappealing images. George Gershwin made hay (and quite a big of dough) by parodying the idea of a mythical southern Shangri-La in his own song "Swanee":
"I'd give the world to be among the folks in
D-I-X-I-E-ven now my mammy's waiting for me
Praying for me, down by the Swanee
The folks up north will see me no more
When I get to that Swanee shore"
(Can't imagine that, in 1919, Gershwin, a New Yorker and son of Russian Jewish immigrants, would have gotten a big welcome from the folks in D-I-X-I-E.)
But then Al Jolson got hold of his song and made a huge hit out of it by singing it in blackface! (cue sad trumpet).
This shit goes deep, don't it?
A 2011 book DEBT (I didn't find it an easy read) by David Graeber, which might have been cited here on RC before, has a lot to say about the current Greek fiscal crisis. I first read at it a few years back--I'm still picking it up from time to time--and remember noting that Thomas Frank, in a Harper's "Easy Chair" aside, praised it highly, suggesting its revolutionary import.
In it, Graeber takes a long (5000 years) historical and anthropological look at debt's meaning and management. In different societies, debt has had different meanings and has consequently been dealt with variously over time.
If I have Graeber right, the current contretemps between Greece and the other Euro countries should be seen as only one (you owe us so you must pay or we'll break your kneecaps) of many possible ways the Greek situation could be treated. In Graeber's survey debt forgiveness as a mean of re-establishing social equilibrium plays a prominent part.
Graeber's larger point is that power imbalances, complex relationships which we represent in simple fiscal terms, are not the consequence of some kind of ill-defined and unexamined Natural Law but a very human choice about how we treat one another.
That is, (I won't blame Graeber for this) those who create the imbalances--payday lenders and toxic first-and second-party mortgage instruments come to mind--are at least partially responsible for them, and when the unbalanced structure they have deliberated created to further their own interest inevitably topples it is they who should be held accountable for the damage.
And in the case of Greece, as others have pointed out, there is that old thing about blood and turnips...
Ak: and die they did. Drew Gilpin Faust in her book "This Republic o Suffering" quoted a southerner who said after the war "it was hard to find a whole man". Although the Union had their share of losses, proportionally the South lost more.. For all the talk of Lee's genius, he had no compunction about expending those poor Southerners. Then there was Hood, who would have fit in with Wold War I..
Oh, and Kate, I wouldn't worry about Our Miss Brooks finding himself a trophy wife (maybe two or three--now that marriage is legal for everyone, polygamy is just around the corner. He could even marry a goat or a floor lamp. At least that's what they're saying on Fox...).
Just look at war criminal and atrocity abettor Henry the K. He was supposed to be a major chick magnet. Must have been all that Teutonic testosterone. And what about Irrationally Exuberant Destroyer of Economies, Alan Greenspan? I suppose looking like a troll is no deterrent to finding companionable companionship. Control of financial markets must be a pretty good aphrodisiac; I wouldn't know myself, although finding a folded up twenty in the pocket of a winter coat gives me a nice warm feeling all day.
Don't know what Brooks' come on will be, but I wouldn't worry. If love eludes him, maybe he'll try the Bill Cosby Plan for Meeting Women. You know how shy those phony egg heads can be.
Barbarossa,
Yeah, a lot is made of Grant's propensity for throwing thousands of men into battle knowing that he had more guys and could wear down his southern foes in a war of attrition. The numbers of wounded and dead in, especially, the big conflicts, Spotsylvania, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, were appalling. I think I read once that either Grant or Lee (they were both there) wrote that, at Cold Harbor, you could walk across the battlefield in any direction and never have your feet touch the ground because of all the bodies. In other modern wars, a casualty rate of 10% would be considered a bloodbath. During the Civil War rates of 25-30% were not unheard of. Entire towns lost every male resident under the age of 40 and over 18.
People don't die in those numbers just for states' rights.
And oh yeah, thanks for reminding me of the Faust book. I've been meaning to pick it up for a while now. Guess now's as good a time as any.
Marie,
Thanks for that Civil War diary. It's a treasure trove. Pretty detailed. I've only scanned it but I'll go back when I have time and go through it all.
Actual, as opposed to invented history, is pretty messy and often not at all what we might expect. Most of us now have a gauzy, Tom Brokaw-ish view of WWII, the so-called Greatest Generation. But few realize that most people, especially Republicans who now thump their chests whenever talk of war is in the offing, wanted nothing to do with that conflict. FDR had to do a lot of stuff on the down-low when trying to help Churchill lest the isolationists in both parties find out what he was up to. Joe Kennedy said Britain was a goner and even American Hero, the Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh, came home from a personal tour of the Luftwaffe given him by Goehring himself and proclaimed Germany the presumptive winner in any upcoming war.
History is messy. We like it neat. Confederates, obviously like it even neater.
If The Decider had lived during the Civil War, he wouldn't have needed a secure place in some National Guard unit that would never see a front line. And he wouldn't have had to desert. He and his brothers would have bought their way out of the fighting and he would have spent the war years frolicking in saloons and private clubs.
Afterwards, of course, he'd have gotten a ghost writer to place him at the front of major battles.
"Muzzle-loading weapons sound awful primitive. They didn't seem primitive to them. They were a new kind of infantry rifle that is deadly at 200 yards. That was a tremendous step forward. And the tactics were based on the old musket, which was accurate at about 60 feet. And they lined up shoulder to shoulder and moved against a position, and got blown down because they were using the old-style tactics with very modern weapons. That's why the casualties. There were 1,095,000 casualties in the Civil War. If today you had that same ratio, you'd have something like 10 million casualties..."
- Shelby Foote
As a school boy in Ole Virginny, I was taught that R.E. Lee was the greatest military genius who ever lived. I remember thinking even then: how the hell long should it take a genius to figure out what was happening?
Marie, Akhilleus and all on words and music of Stephen Foster,
Doesn't get better than Rene Fleming singing "Hard Times Come Again No More"
Sorry, forgot the link:
https://youtu.be/QVQ3_jDhucs
AK. If the Decider couldn't find an appropriate ghost writer, I'm sure there was a Brian Williams clone who could have added the Decider in his story as a frontline battle buddy.
Thinking about celebrating southern history, I have to allow that gumbo is a mighty fine concoction.
@Diane: It depends upon what the meaning of "Southern" is. If you're talking about Jim Webb-type, Confederate-flag-waving Southern, then you ain't talking gumbo. "The dish combines ingredients and culinary practices of several cultures, including French, Spanish, German, West African, and Choctaw. Gumbo may have been based on traditional West African or native dishes, or may be a derivation of the French dish bouillabaisse." From barbecue to the blues, a lot of what we like about the South does not derive from its white chivalric "heritage."
Marie
Ideology Kills
Confederate ideology is rife with internal contradictions and startling inconsistencies. But does that matter? Noooooo.....
In fact, if a few people, well okay, a few million, have to die or live lives beset by health problems that will eventually lead to early death, so be it.
But what if the bad health promoted by the GOP, say, fr'instance, by eviscerating rules for healthy foods for school children, lead to a drop in the efficiency and even enrollment in the US military?
'Cause that's what's happening, even as we discuss the most recent idiocy from the idiots on the right.
Under the usual and tired guise of "states' rights" (where have we heard that before? Hmmm.....), Republicans are opting for fried chicken and sugar water drinks of enormous proportions rather than healthy foods because that's what people want in certain states, or so they say. Oh...is that right? So the idea now is that if a kid doesn't want good food, we give them crap, is that it? Since when do adults, especially adults whose job it is to make sure kids grow up healthy and have proper nourishment, let kids do whatever the hell they want? Do they allow kids to watch porn? Jump out in front of cars? Carry loaded weapons? Get involved with white supremacists and go out and murder people?
Oh, wait. In some places kids get to do all of those things.
But I digress...
Anyway, all of this is being done for two reasons. First, it's a way to smack that uppity nee-groe lady in the White House. Jim Sensenbrenner--himself, not an ounce over 400 lbs--has been telling anyone who will listen about Michelle Obama's fat ass. Isn't that all the reason you need to let kids eat themselves into diabetes, heart failure and early death? Also, it's a win for IDEOLOGY! Dammit.
But wait....a group called Mission Readiness, comprised of a battery of retired military officers is not at all happy about the sort of eat-whatever-the-fuck-you-want plan being proposed by the wingnuts:
"Retired Generals From Kentucky Urge Support For Healthy School Nutrition For Our Future National Security...73 percent of young adults in Kentucky are unable to serve in today’s military, the eighth-highest ineligibility rate in the nation. Nearly one-third of all Americans ages 17 to 24 are too overweight for military service."
The study also shows that in some Kentucky counties, nearly 30% of adults are also obese. Eating bag after bag of Cheetos while hypnotized by Fox for 8 hours a day will do that.
And aren't Republicans the ones who are always on about how permissive everything has gotten? But it's okay as long as it guarantees a stick to poke in an Obama eye.
And it's not like we don't know the damage too much salt and sugar wreak on the human body. But what are a few million deaths as long as the Confederates get an ideological win out of it? Fuck the consequences.
Consequences are for other people, not for the Party of Responsibility. Dammit.
D.C.,
Oh god, that's beautiful. Foster wrote sublime melodies. And the words...
"While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh! Hard times come again no more"
those words can be heard today from many corners of the country; frail forms are fainting at the door while such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and other GOP "leaders" shove them out of the way or have them arrested on their way to dinners with wealthy donors, ordering $350 bottles of wine while calling for cuts to any further help for those suffering through hard times. Hard times their policies guarantee will keep coming.
Re yesterday's discussion of global N-S prejudices, and today's of crime due to illegal Mexican immigrants - I lived in Kuala Lumpur in the 1980's, and virtually all unsolved burglaries and assaults then were blamed on "illegal Indonesians." Indonesia is just south of Malaysia.
Ken,
Your description of debt as an indicator of how we treat one another, along with the ways financial institutions have of encouraging dangerous debt reminds me of the situation that played such a large part of the Bush Economic Miracle a few years back.
As you suggest, a certain amount (a good deal?) of the blame for the mortgage disaster that sunk so many Americans (but not the lending institutions who were nearly all bailed out) should be attached to the lenders. Republicans and Confederate pundits however have never once, to my knowledge, ever suggested that anyone but the borrowers deserved blame.
We often treat economic problems as immutable laws handed down from on high over which we have no control. Wingers love to play that trumpet whenever there's a possibility that voters might cotton to the fact that it's their policies that cause so much economic stress. Seems the Euro Money Gods are trying to do the same to Greece.
More importantly, we haven't heard, at least I haven't, a single Confederate commentator acknowledge that a huge part of Europe's problem is that they have adopted the sort of policy prescriptions that wingers in this country have been trying to ram down our throats for years, namely spending reductions and severe austerity, treating national economies like the family budget.
My mistake here is thinking that any of them might ever consider real world examples of the failure of their ideas.
Ain't gonna happen.
Akhilleus,
The right was happy to include Fannie Mae to those who were responsible for the mortgage meltdown. I'm pretty sure Fannie Mae was headed by an AA Democrat at the time. And of course, Barney Frank.
Right Wing World Protects Their Own. Hide Your Daughters.
Maricopa County in the state of Joe Arpaio is clearly an alternate universe. Alternate but surely not equal. It seems to be a place where, if you're a gun-toting, government hating, Confederate douchebag who has no problem threatening to shoot people you don't like, it don't matter what you do--even sexually molesting small children--the system will always be on your side.
Douchebag extraordinaire, Charles Simcox, co-founder of an anti-immigration, guv'mint hatin', murder-threatening group called the Minuteman Militia, is on trial for molesting two little girls when they were five and six. A former kindergarten teacher (oh, great), he moved to Arizona so he could found a group whose members, according to the SPLC, rail against--and threaten to murder--everyone they hate with statements like these: "It should be legal to kill illegals," and "You get up there with a rifle and start shooting four or five of them a week, the other four or five thousand behind them are going to think twice about crossing that line" and, of course, "This is the USA, don't fuck with us!" Hmmm....they sound nice.
So now this guy is in court. He gets his day like anyone else, of course, something these people rail against if the person being charged is not white and their kind of 'merican. But a day in court has, or used to have in more civilized places, limits on what a defendant can do in the courtroom. In this case, Simcox, who is defending himself, has demanded that the court present the little girls he (allegedly) molested so he can personally go after them on the stand. Those girls are now seven and eight. Plenty old enough, apparently, by wingnut standards to withstand hours of cross examination by the person who (allegedly) assaulted them.
One of their mothers has written to the judge begging that he not allow this, since typically it is NOT allowed. She recounted the psychological problems her little girl has undergone. The nice judge told her to fuck off because she has no idea that being interrogated by the man who sexually abused her (allegedly) will in any way affect her. Yeah, and you have no idea that my taking a ball peen hammer to your skull will cause any damage. Not to mention the fact that this judge is not an expert either and HE has no way of knowing that such a confrontation--a little girl going up against a thuggish, manipulative, adult hater--won't cause her any problems. But, what the hell, we'll try it anyway.
This is the same judge, by the way, who in 2009, refused a mother's request to allow her to leave the state with her little baby because she had been abused regularly by the boy's father who had already tried to commit suicide, several time, in front of the baby. The judge told her to fuck off too. He said the baby would be harmed if he couldn't see his daddy. Ten days later, the father shot and killed the baby's mother and his grandmother before shooting himself. I guess that baby's relationship with his dad is secure. But this guy is still a judge--still a fucking judge!--in Right Wing World.
Lawyers for the girl's mother have suggested that a cross examination could be just as effectively be carried out by someone representing Simcox. Simcox said no because he doesn't want to miss the chance to intimidate his (alleged) victims on the stand. The judge agreed.
This is a fucking outrage. But this is life in Right Wing World. This is the kind of country that Trump and Cruz and Huckabee (a known lover of sexual molesters) and other wingers would have us live in.
I don't even know how to end this comment............votes matter. No matter how hard they try to keep us from voting, they matter. And they know it.
For more Charles Simcoxes, vote Republican. Vicious, arbitrary, authoritarian, patriarchal, murderous. Right Wing World.
Akhilleus and Haley:
And that's why I lump the Kochs in with the Confederates, as in Koch-Confederates, as an admittedly awkward alternative to the non-descriptive "Republican." The Confederates are the racist, socially conservative limb, the ones with the votes, the Kochs and their profit-at-any-human-cost fellow travelers the root. Decaying the party might be, but their force-fed dollars keep it alive.
BTW, Haley, didn't understand the "of course" before Barney Frank.