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.