Some new thoughts about thanksgiving, and immigrants

 Pilgrims, Indigenous people, and progress.

The people who lived here before the Europeans began arriving were not necessarily happy hunter-gatherers content to live in peace and harmony with their neighbors. There were wars. Borders were fluid things, only established by such things as landmarks and the courses of rivers. A hunting party might easily stray into another tribe's land and possibly be attacked. this did happen, and it did oftentimes lead to battles. Europeans who came here were not necessarily welcomed. The Roanoke colony was wiped out to the last. Women and children may have been taken and adopted into families. Then comes the Plymouth colony. They're better situated than the Roanoke. and maybe they're just luckier. Maybe god shined a light on them. Whatever. The Wampanoeg took pity on them, and helped them. They showed them how to live off the land in the new world. Perhaps they shouldn't have. If they had been like some Americans are today, they might have just killed them all and taken their fire-locks, swords and armor. But they didn't. Although not Christians, they felt the impulse to charity and helped those colonists. (I have distant family tree relations who were among those colonists, btw. ) They helped them, and next fall when the colonists were still there they gave food and shelter to a Wampanoeg hunting party who had dropped by to check on them. I sincerely doubt it was any kind of grand feast as is depicted in some history books, but they gathered together and shared food and drink. We should be thankful we were allowed to stay here. We should be thankful and remember our own behavior will be judged by history. We need to remember our own impulse to charity, and welcome newcomers. They can come here legally. It should be relatively easy to do so. It should also be relatively hard to stay here illegally. But the penalty should be administrative, as it has been in times previous to this. We're wasting time, money resources and reputation by throwing people in cages inside what used to be big-box stores.We need a long, hard look at ourselves. So be thankful. But also remember your impulse to help others. There is more than enough room for all here. More Jobs are created every day, and immigrants will be needed to fill them. There just aren't enough of us right now. Be Generous. Be American. and remember that moment 400 years ago wherein a group of hunters of the Wampanoeg people were hosted in friendship by a handful of grateful Europeans. 

My Thanks.

Why the delay in Impeaching and Removing Trump ? I'll try to explain.

 Donald Trump has, in these last weeks, committed at least two Impeachable offenses, yet he is still in office. Why is this? 

I'll try to explain.

         First, consider the Republicans in the Senate who are Afraid of Trump's "base,"A group of angry white conservatives whom Trump keeps angry by feeding them big lies disguised as slabs of red meat. Many GOP congressmen are afraid of what will happen to their re-election chances if Trump turns against them and directs that someone "primary" them. (being Primaried from the right has been a GOP leadership scare tactic since before McConnell was in the Senate) They do not want to risk losing their cushy jobs. Next, consider the possibility of a Republican caucus in the Senate who believe it's worth keeping Trump so long as they're getting the conservative judges they want. Many Republicans in the Senate are what I call "Movement Conservatives" -- they believe wholeheartedly in the hard right idea of a government which only runs the military and grants cash to corporations. No other functions should exist. Finally, we come to  GOP leadership that includes McConnell, whose state got a promise of a 100 million dollar aluminum factory in Kentucky out of Oleg Deripaska's Rusal. Make no mistakes, the Russians have studied long and hard how to wage next-generation warfare (1) and they are currently winning. Their mission was to knock the USA down, and they're succeeding. They have found a political party in the USA who will stop at nothing to remain in power, and they're using them all they can and more. As I've said elsewhere, Trump is working hard to destroy the US government from within. As I said elsewhere, the Russians first tried this in Ukraine in 2012-14. THe Ukrainians got up on their hind legs and threw out the Putinistas. I'm worried we haven't got the spine for it. The 2020 elections will be the final test. We'll either pass and oust Trump and the Republicans or we'll fail and go down the drain as a Democratic Republic.

Sound the Trump ets, Tell Joshua to bring his horn.

Okay, so I had to do this post sooner or later. This has been bugging me like a pesky fly that won't leave off. Donald "I'm a raving loon" Trump's wall is a waste of money, time and effort. We all know this, don't we ? Don't we ? You do realize that walls are a 4th century solution that are easily breached, overcome, tunneled under, knocked down or simply gone around. Yes, I know, various nations have tried walls : Rome with Hadrian's Wall, China with the Great Wall, France with the Maginot Line, and now Trump with Trump's Folly.

O'Rourke is wrong. He may have a good heart but he's wrong.

I didn't watch the Democratic Party debate last night. It was, as all such events are, full of talking points and blather, and I have no appetite for either. But I did watch the Post-Debate coverage, including the big applause line from Beto O'Rourke (if he is going to call himself Beto, I'm going to oblige him and call him Beto. ) : "Hell yes, I'm going to take away your AR 15s!"
The problem is, Beto is proposing "Feel-Good" law that will not in fact lessen the amount of crimes in the United States. Not only that, but he is doing so based on faulty, and deceptive information.
Allow me if you will to elucidate:

On this day in 2001.

So, 18 years ago today, I was working nights for a company that was owned by a company that had just got bought by a company. I was working 6 pm to 2 am shifts. I got home about 2:30, Sat down, had a cup of decaf and logged into a chat room on AIM. We had a regular crowd there that moved to aim when the community left AOL. We were chatting about this and that, when around 5 45 my time I turned on CNN. They had interrupted their usual AM chat show to talk about what appeared to be an aircraft accident involving the World Trade Center. I told everyone in the chat immediately to turn on the news. about a half hour later I got an IM from a friend : "We're at war, aren't we?" I replied back "I hope not, but I don't see how we can avoid it. " I didn't sleep that day, and most of the next two days nobody did much of anything except stay awake and stay by the news. On the evening of that first day, my Mom, Stepfather, Brother and I all went outside. It was just getting dark, with light still in the western sky. We all looked up and saw the F-16s from Luke AFB flying overhead on armed patrols. I knew people who worked at Luke. They said to me that the pilots were all of them pissed off. I knew guys in the special forces community. Usually they talk back and forth about shit, sometimes ribbing each other about things, but on the 12th and after, they simply stopped talking. One of those who would talk told me, though I didn't need to be told, "Dude, they're going to work now. " I just said "Yeah. I know." Afghanistan was the target. Everybody knew it. All I could do was sit around and wait to hear. I didn't know it would be the better part of a decade before Bin Laden got his, largely because George Effin W Bush was all hot to go into Iraq. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and which would have summarily executed bin Laden had they gotten a hold of him. Iraq, source of oil though it may be, turned out to be a goddamn tar baby. (excuse the racist reference just this once.) We needed to get Bin Laden, not because of revenge, but justice. As a point of national Pride. As a point of "nobody messes with the USA and gets away with it." A Child born in 2001 is now old enough to serve in the army that has not known peace in that child's entire lifetime. Meanwhile, Donald Goddamn Trump is telling jokes about how he has the tallest building in Manhattan now. or had. Whatever. This is not the day for Politics, but for remembering those who died, those who gave of themselves, and those who bravely got up, got a drinks cart to use as a battering ram and said "Let's Roll."

The Ghost of Emmett Till

The Ghost of Emmett Till 

Recently, I was listening to NPR on my drive home from doing some errands. A news story came on

A news story came on about the murder of Emmett Till. For those of you who do not know, Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy who was visiting Mississippi in 1955. He was abducted, beaten, tortured and then shot. His remains were then desecrated. His body was then chained to an industrial fan blade stolen from a local cotton gin, and dumped into the Tallahatchie river. Later recovered, his mother insisted on there being an open casket funeral. She wanted people to see the horror of murder. All these years later, NPR interviewed a man who had been a prosecutor back when Till's murderers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later confessed in an interview for Look magazine. The man, even now, all these years later, still stuck to the Official White Version of the events, saying Till got what he had coming to him, for being uppity and flirting with a white girl. The recipient of the alleged unwanted advances later retracted the story, but by then it was too late. Till had been abducted, tortured and killed. The four men to grabbed a 14 year old boy off the street, carried him off and killed him, for the crime of talking to a white woman. Furthermore, the man interviewed said, plaintively, why do they keep playin The Race Card ? Why keep raking it up ? it makes a stink.
I'll tell you why, after the break.

On this day, 75 years ago.

75 Years ago today, men got down into landing craft, and sailed into history. 

     June 6, 1944. The Second World War is coming to a crisis point. If the Allies, led by Eisenhower (interestingly, his surname is German for  ice cutter -- someone who cuts blocks of ice for use in early refrigeration. ) succeeded in landing in France, the Germans would now be faced with a war on three fronts. The South, where the Allies were driving slowly up the spine of Italy after the Italian capitulation. The Russians were pushing inexorably Westward, with the aim of taking up as much of Europe as they could before the hated Nazi enemy were destroyed. The Britsh, French and Americans all wanted to drive to Berlin, and as General Patton would later quip, "personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch!" For France, it was a true existential crisis. Vichy France was a joke -- the prostrate Vichy were little besides errand-boys for the Nazis, and they knew it. For Britain, it meant an end to the Blitz, an end to privation, a chance to be able to live their lives without blackouts, rationing and constantly looking over their shoulder for (more imagined than real) fifth columnists. For the United States, it meant an incredible expense in Blood and Treasure but also a task to be taken up, not because of continued national existence, but because rule by dictators like Hitler and Tojo was wrong. Perhaps many of them didn't quite understand the finer points of the issue, but to them, liberty meant much, and liberty was always worth fighting for. Not so much in these times, but back then, people seemed to understand the difference. So, those men got down into the boats, or strapped on their parachutes and got in the planes, or loaded up into the gliders, and they prepared to carry the fight to the enemy. Casualties were expected to be high. Some of the planning staff estimated a minimum of 20% losses. Some wanted to wait and go with more men. But Eisenhower was sure that the more they waited, the more the enemy would be prepared to throw the troops back into the sea. The invasion was delayed, and then the weather closed in. Storms -- the early beginning of the Channel summer storms -- made them put off the invasion for a month. It was a matter of needing a confluence of tides, weather and lunar phase. They wanted darkness to cover the first hour or so of the invasion, proper tides and weather good enough that the waves wouldn't swamp the landing craft. Finally, weather predictions aligned with everything else for the three day period June 5th thru June 8th, closing in by the 9th. (a westerly gale of immense proportions would cause havoc, but not until after the initial invasion had been decided. ) Eisenhower stepped out of his quarters, stepped to the staff planning table and queried his staff . Some hesitated, but in the end, all agreed, the invasion was on. Eisenhower, it is said, kept two pieces of paper in his breast pockets. One, his speech that the invasion had gone off successfully, and the other, a speech in which he took full responsibility for the disastrous failure. In the days before the invasion began, Ike made his now-legendary "Great Crusade" speech to the troops.
 Eisenhower's Great Crusade speech. 
The men got on the ships, most of them already seasick.  A moderate gale blew in from the south, making the soldiers even sicker. The final "go" order didn't come until late on the 5th. Then, in the pre-dawn hours of the 6th, the first wave went in.

It was the largest Armada ever assembled

They were all afraid. Every man-Jack of them. But they climbed down into those boats anyway. They got down in the boats and went in.
The fighting was vicious. The men on Omaha beach had it the worst. They may not have gotten off the beach were it not for the work of destroyers who sailed in some instances within 800 yards of the Beach, at risk of grounding themselves, to engage the German positions with direct fire from their guns. No matter if it was Omaha or Juneau, the day was no walk in the park. I could go on, regaling you with tales of bravery and sacrifice, but I'm going to close this year's D-Day memorial post by saying this : War is never pretty. It's terrifying, ugly, bloody and brutal. So let's try to limit how many wars we have. Let's honor those men who bravely went in on June 6 '44. Let's honor them by staying out of wars of convenience, like Mr "W" Bush's Invasion of Iraq. Let's try using diplomacy to maneuver clear of various causa belli.  Try settling not the problems, but the issues which become problems if not addressed. With thanks to those who engaged in the Great Crusade.

     Most Sincerely,
DLC.

Decoration Day

Historically on this day 

We would gather our families together in whatever convenient groups were available, put on our good "going out" clothes, pack up baskets with picnic supplies, flowers, cleaning equipment and perhaps a hymnal, song book or a bible and we would all go together to clean, maintain and decorate the graves and memorials of our deceased relations who died in service to the country. The practice began sometime around the end of the Civil War, and continued on until sometime when the day's name was changed to Memorial day and people started visiting various war memorials instead. Gradually the visiting of war memorials faded and the day became just another day off from work. I don't say any of this with the intention of guilt-tripping anyone, or being accusatory, it's just a fact. Today, people have the day off, and they deserve it. But please, my friends, take a few minutes to sit back and remember the people who gave of themselves for the United States. We are not always right, and not always wrong. The state of being is much more complex than anyone can put into words in a short blog post. So just remember for a few minutes that friends and relatives of yours paid the ultimate price. Then relax, have a beer, grill some burgers and watch the racing or football or whatever.

Here's some music to remember the day by.
Johnny's Gone for a Soldier.


Hymn to the Fallen, John Williams

DLC

Donnie says it's okay.

Yes, Donnie says it's okay. Not only is it okay, it's Great!

Did you miss it ?  The courts are being packed with hardline "movement" conservatives.
Largely this is possible because the DNC dropped the ball. They should have been watching the local races from 1996 onward. This is the fruition of a long term hard right plan.

In Case You Missed It :

You thought that hardline conservatives were dead ? You thought "Oh yeah, with the Orange Dufus in office they're so going to lose!" Well, I hope yesterday showed you just how wrong you were. 

So, if you were watching the news or reading the papers yesterday, you saw the big salvo the hard right have been saving up to hit you with just when you thought The Orange Duce' was on the ropes. Turns out you were wrong. He was just a distraction, while the real damage was being done belowdecks, out of your sight. This has been coming for decades, and few people saw it. I've tried to issue some form of warning before in these pages, but even I didn't see the worst of it coming.

Of Anger, and the Useful Idiot.

I cannot state in simple words the level of anger I am living with at the way Trump (and more importantly his handlers) are being permitted to ruin this country. Already our reputation -- never that spectacular to begin with -- has been further sullied. Our economy, which should be running on rails built by men of vision like Obama, is teetering near the edge of a precipice, ready to fall at the first good hard shove. Why do you think Trump is throwing monkey wrenches into the works at every chance ? Because he's been coached to do so. Trump himself isn't smart enough to know a Tariff from a Mastiff. But he's capable of learning his lines, and of saying them. Why else do you think that every time he says something off the cuff, hours later it's walked back by Miller or Sanders or Mnuchin. It's because he's gone off script and has to be corrected. Trump couldn't give two shits about the USA-Mexico border. He cares about those Rosneft dollars he was promised if he's a good boy and doesn't get impeached before the end of his first term. Trump is nothing more than a Useful Idiot. A stooge, in the worst sense of the word. Oh, he used to be a middling-quality grifter, but then he met his betters in the mid-90s. (some say the mid-80s, but I digress). He's happy as pigs in mud to roll along with whatever *they* want just so long as he gets his payoff when it's over. I can only hope that there is a God out there who cares about justice. I'm running out of life-time and I really want to see the country that I love put back on the right course. Where we can go back to being the Shining City on a Hill. Where the Modern Colossus can lift her lamp in pride. Where the jolly red white and blue can be paraded again by people who have good reason to be proud of it. Oh the ignominious ending I can see. Where our nation breaks apart into balkanized states at the direction of China and Russia. Where we, once a great nation of high-minded souls become nothing more than laborers for the people with the most gold. Why aren't there hundreds of thousands in the streets even now?  I know why. because they, like me, lack the means to do so. Or perhaps they, like me, suffer from "Old White Man" diseases, like diabetes and it's backup men peripheral neuropathy, depression, kidney disease and vision loss.  or heart failure. or lungs sick from too many cigarettes. All I can do is look on in anger, like the farmer whose corn is being set upon by 100 crows he cannot run off and cannot kill. I, and my country. The land I was born into, and the nation I was so proud of in 1969 when we walked on the moon. In 1965 when we passed the voting rights act. When we held up ideals of equality under the law for all. what have we become ? I feel despair as well. Like Victor Frankenstien's servants, all I can do is watch in horror as the master's creation runs amok. I did only act as a humble, loyal servant, and now everything is in ruins because I didn't do better. I didn't know better. We're coming to ruin, the ship of state nearly on the rocks, all because some greedy custard-head sold the sails to Levi Strauss, and the Anchors to General Motors. I'm trying to not let it make me bitter.

I don't usually post stuff on videos but this is worthwhile

Okay, so I almost never post videos here.

But this is important. Recently Jennifer Lawrence posted this video. Yeah, I know, we all think of her as some vacuous blonde who makes the odd movie now and then. Well, stop that, it's silly!
We should know by now that it's not the name that counts, it's the quality of the ideas that matter. I'm not a man who fawns over movie and TV stars. If I saw Ms. Lawrence in a store I would nod and say Howdy, like I do with everyone, but I wouldn't go beyond that. However, on this issue I feel it necessary to post her video. The video pretty much explains what it is and what the issue is, but if you look back in time on this blog you will see it's one I have posted about before. With that, over to Ms Lawrence and Mr Silver.

This issue is important. We need to fix our elections system. There are already videos by various "Conservative" groups attacking this. I say conservative in quotes because in many ways this campaign is in fact a conservative issue. They wish to conserve the American voting system the way the founding fathers intended. That these vidiots do not realize this speaks to the shallowness of their nature. Look, I'm not a big "J-Law" fan. If asked at this moment I'm not sure I could even name one of her movies. This issue rises above my personal motion picture preferences. This issue is about limiting the influence big money has on our political affairs and shifting political access and thus political power downward, back to the people those individuals in DC are supposed to represent.

A special political message.

Excuse the rant, but : 

We've all been nominating this and that for the "Real" national emergency. I'm gonna barge in now and remind everyone what the *Real* For-Reals Actual forget that other stuff for now bolded double-underlined National Emergency is. The one we cannot ignore much longer if we want to have a Democracy any longer. The crisis is much bigger than the doddering old coward and crook occupying the White House without the permission of 2/3 of the country. The Emergency is this : We have allowed ourselves to put our Democracy up for sale to the highest bidder due to the Citizens United decision, and we have sold it out cheap, for a few measly Russian billions paid to a fistful of mendacious, larcenous, rapacious, power hungry damned fools who want to destroy the American Government because they didn't like the outcome of the Civil War. A few stupid, petty men who have neither the heart to help their fellow men nor the soul to hold to the American ideals. A fistful of men too interested in their own petty bullshit political fights to retain any fealty to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. These men (and they are indeed nearly all men, with few women and no persons of color ) want control over all people so that they can deliver the greatest amounts of misery to the poor while shoving money into the pockets of the wealthiest, but even that is of only secondary importance. The greatest emergency by far is the need to take back our FORM of government, wherein money is not speech, wherein secrecy is not permitted, and all must act in the open. No more secret PACs! No More unlimited campaign donations. The purpose of secret money groups is not free speech, but secret bribery. We must demand an immediate move to amend the constitution to ban such uses of money. If not that, then a renewal of McCain-Feingold, constructed so as to withstand supreme court scrutiny. WE HAVE TO GET THE BIG MONEY MEN OUT OF OUR POLITICS ! No one should be able to BUY an election!

Rant Over.

Teal Deer

Teal Deer version : Stop talking about this and that for a moment and realize those are secondary at best. If we allow ourselves to further descend into an Oligarchy none of that stuff will ever get done.

Mr Majority Leader . . .

I rise on this occasion to inquire of the Gentleman from Kentucky, the distinguished Majority Leader Mr McConnell; what level of corrupt or criminal activity does the President of the United States have to achieve in order for the Majority Leader to consider Impeachment ? Exactly what level of high crime or misdemeanor does the President of the United States have to reach before the Majority Leader sees fit to take action ? In the Constitution of the United States, the houses of Congress are charged with overseeing the President's actions and with taking appropriate corrective action when the President should require it. Thus far, the Senate has done exactly nothing to chide, censure or correct the President's behavior, no matter how egregious it may be. Not even one resolution condemning any act by the President has been even considered. Not when he refused to divest himself of business interests that do business with or make a profit from United States Government agencies, staff or facilities. Not when he has clearly shown that he will reward political donors with financial gains in terms of ordering the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep a coal fired power plant open solely so they can buy coal from one of Mr Trump's campaign donors. The Senate has so far refused to even mildly critique the President for social comments that are insulting and denigrating to minorities, such as "There were good people on both sides" of the murderous incident in Charlottesville Virginia. So, Mr Majority Leader, I ask again : What level of perfidy is enough to cause the Senate to take even the most mild of action to correct or punish the President for his egregious behavior ? Does the President of the United States actually have to murder someone in public to trigger the Senate's displeasure ?

Yom HaShoah

The gate said "Arbiet Macht Frei" in an arc over  it. 

     It was a lie. It should have said "Alles Macht Todt." Because the real purpose of the place beyond that gate was not to make people work. It was to make people die. Not in small, accidental numbers. Not in slow starvation (but that was done.) But it was to make people die in vast, industrial scale numbers. Not a hundred or so a day, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Originally located at Dachau, the signs would also come to be known at the Auschwitz complex of camps. The camps were a big fat German lie. The Germans told everyone, including themselves, that the people in the camps were just being held there to work. They were being held there to die. In the end, some six million Jews were consigned to places where they would either be immediately executed or slowly worked to death. Why ? simply because they were Jews. Juden. Untermenschen -- Sub-Human. Yes, that's right. They were considered to be less than human because of their religion and lifestyle. Let that sink in. 
 Roughly 8 decades ago, people were herded into cattle cars at gunpoint -- packed in until there was only standing room. They were then transported to the camps. There, they would be sent in two directions. The minority were sent one way, the majority were sent to their deaths. They were told to strip off all their clothes, put all their personal belongings in a bag, and then step into the "shower room." There was no shower. Pellets of Zyklon B were dumped into the room by men on top of the gas chamber. People  -- ordinary decent people -- were gassed to death in horrific numbers. Then the "Sonderkommando" -- work parties of prisoners -- would drag the bodies out of the gas chambers, load them on carts and then wheel the carts to the crematoria. When the crematoria were overloaded, they would take the bodies and burn them the hard way. Dante never conceived of a hell like this.

(note: Extermination camps killed more than Jews, but the Jews were the only ones targeted for death because of their religion. )
So I'm going to say it again, for all those who can't.

Never Again. Never forget what happened. Never allow it to happen again.
Don't let any modern-day Nazi, whether they call themselves "Nationalists" or "White Nationalists" or "White Separatists" fool you. Don't let them deny what happened.

Some Thoughts about MLK Day.

I was six years old when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed on April 4 1968. 

I don't really remember his speeches from the days he gave them, but I viewed and listened to them again in Jr High School, and again in High School, and again in College. It's important that we keep repeating his words -- that we keep his message going. But try not to paraphrase. Try to use the original words.
So I include here a transcript of one of Dr. King's most popular speeches.
It's called the "I Have A Dream" speech.
Go ahead, read it. The speech espouses ideas I consider vital to American Society.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "I have A Dream"

Go ahead. Read it. Copy the link and share it with your friends.
Dr. King's dream is still alive.