some of the Administration drama of this past week. I had no idea that Reince Priebus was outsted this past Friday. I had a really busy day this past week, and I just didn't know that until I listed to the Sunday morning shows while mowing the lawn. Nor did I know, therefore, that he'd been replaced by Homeland Security Secretary, retired Army General John Kelly. And I don't know what I think of that. I guess, in a way, that stands to make Kelly to Trump what Haig was to Reagan, except that Reagan's administration didn't have the appearance of utter chaos. I heard one comment, concerning the number of former military officers surrounding Trump, that it is a "war cabinet". It certainly looks like one, although I don't think we can take that too far. But the degree to which its military top heavy is a bit odd, suggesting that Trump simply likes former servicemen for their leadership style, or that the service has become too corporate for its own good. We'll see, I suppose, if these former generals are able to arrest the general chaos. If it is a war cabinet, perhaps the time is right as we had another North Korean ICBM launch and the North Koreans are now capable of hitting any state in the union except for Florida with an ICBM. The only saving grace to that is that they are not capable of placing a nuclear warhead on one. One commentator blandly commented that the North Koreans would, of course, not use a nuclear missile on the basis that simply wouldn't be rational. Well, keeping a state locked in Stalinist 1939 isn't very rational either, particular for a leader educated in Switzerland. Grabbing women from various places to be the forced spouses of captives isn't either. Running an economy that is demonstrably completely broken, when simply opening the border would solve a lot of the problem, isn't rational either. Strapping a general to an antiaircraft gun and setting it off for execution purposes, if it has any rationality to it all, is style manifestly evil. Assuming rational actions out of North Korea imposes a rather large assumption on the lives of millions. And for that reason, I'm convinced that war with North Korean is now inevitable. Indeed, if North Korea was a Middle Eastern state, Israel would have already launched a preemptive strike. We are going to. It's only a matter of time. And not much time. I guess, therefore, at least Trump is surrounded by folks who have some military experience when that comes. Not that he's listening to them. In terms of not listening, he better be listening to the Republicans in Congress defending Jeff Sessions. Whether you like Sessions or not, he's under fire for doing the right thing. Trump doesn't seem to quite grasp that being President of the United States isn't the same as being CEO of a family business. Should Sessions be fired, a GOP revolt in the Senate will follow. Oddly, all of this might be something that only fans of politics follow. Out in the general public, it seems, quite a few feel that low gas prices and pretty good employment rates right now. . .well.. . . trump all these concerns. It would seem that at some point chickens of chaos come home to create a messy roost. But until, and unless, that occurs, maybe much of this doesn't matter, or seem to, for a lot of Ameicans.
from the fighting in the First World War, but caught up in it none the less, today, July 31, a century ago was draft registration day for Hawaii. For whatever reason, Hawaii"s registration date had followed the general registration date in the continental United States by a couple of weeks.
Hawaii was still a territory, of course, but it residents were U.S. citizens and therefore liable for conscription. The Selective Service Boards had been working to prepare for conscription since June. And as it was a territory, and therefore directly subject to Congress in a way that the states were not, the wartime prohibition on alcohol that Congress brought in as a war measure had come into the entire territory on June 6 of this year.
The war was already also impacting Hawaii in numerous ways, showing that World War One truly had a global reach. Hawaii's Army militia had obtained National Guard Status in 1916. Its Naval Militia had come into existence only in April but had been seeing service since September on the cruiser the USS St. Louis. Some German vessels had been interned for months, well before the start of the war, where they'd taken refuge from Japanese patrols. In April they were seized for U.S. use. Even the war fever that lead to all sorts of outrageous rumors in the Continental US saw a Hawaiian expression, as rumors that anthrax in Hawaiian cattle herds were the result of action by German agents had already circulated.
Hawaii, of course, was different in 1917 from what it would be in 2017 in all sorts of ways. It was already regarded as an island paradise, indeed a member of my family lived their at the time and her family, including one of my ancestors, visited on occasion from Canada, and they certainly regarded it that way. But it was very difficult to get to compared to post World War Two when easy commercial air travel would come in. In many ways, therefore, for at least European Americans it was more of a paradise then than now, being much less populated and much more, well, authentic in areas like Oahu. Its native and immigrant populations were also more evident in different ways, as this poster demonstrates. The poster has more Portuguese text than English, the Portuguese being a significant migrant population to the Hawaiian islands. Their influence is still felt today, but it'd be unlikely to find a English/Portuguese official poster such as this now.
Elsie
Knocker,the Baroness de T'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm, ambulance
drivers at the window of their billet in Pervijze (Pervyse), West
Flanders, Belgium on July 30, 1917.
This Rapid City protestant church is built in the Federal Revival style of architecture more common to courthouses and post offices. Otherwise, I know nothing else about it.
U.S. Marine on Iwo Jima. He's carrying a flame thrower and a M1911 pistol. This battle was fought in February and March, 1945. Combat as it really is, not how some social experimentalist imagine it to be, as they don't imagine it to be.
As anyone who followed this blog (darned few people) back during the election would be aware of, I'm not a Donald Trump fan.
I also don't have the massive visceral reaction to everything he does that the American left has either to where whatever it is must be bad, because he's the one doing it, although the degree to which he's been effective has been debatable to be sure.
One thing his supporters claimed he would do is to reverse what they perceived as a highly left oriented direction towards everything they claimed existed in the Obama Administration. The extent to which that really existed can be debated, but a close look at the last two years of that administration does show that it engaged in a gigantic jump to the left on social issues in that time frame. And during that time frame it adopted the radically anti-nature stance of the extreme left so successfully that the views of that group have, in very short order, become the accepted norm that we cannot touch. Those views include the radically anti natural view that there's no difference at all between men and women, that a person decides their own gender, except for their own own gender "orientation", and that there's multiple "okays' in that area.
US Army advisers and Vietnamese Special Forces, Vietnam War. All these men are men . . . for a reason.
All of that is deeply anti natural and will, long term (and short term) have massive negative consequences on the societies, which now include most of western society, and the individuals that adopt them. Included in that group are what is now referred to as the "transgendered".
Transgenderism is not a well established phenomenon and indeed the better evidence is that people afflicted with leanings in that area, which are few in number, are victims of what often turns out to be a fleeting mental illness or, in some other cases, are expressing what was was a same gender attraction in a radical fashion. Neither of these things is supposed to be said anymore, which doesn't mean they aren't true.
Indeed they are so true that in at least one "progressive" European country, if not the majority, surgeries designed to "assign", and by that we mean alter a natural, gender have been banned for children. Statistically the majority of children that express, or have forced upon them, the concept that they are transgendered will actually revert to their natural orientation in relatively short order. No matter, the radicals in the western world who hate nature and believe that a chemical and surgical utopia can be created that ratifies their own view is all for abusing, and it is abuse, children who express these leaning in the United States.
One of the really odd areas where the Obama Administrations descent into the gender fantasy morass expressed itself was in the military, and in more than one fashion. It was only as recently as the Clinton Administration when the military was forced to reverse its long held ban on homosexuals in the military. That change was not desired by the military, but rather forced upon it. However, that change was a good change as, by that point in our history, things had changed enough to where the instinctive recoiling against homosexual behavior wasn't so pronounced that it would be disruptive in the service and therefore was truly unfair. That's the point that is still missed in regards to this topic. It is true that homosexuals were banned from the military as it was regarded as a character trait of depravity, but it was also banned because it was felt that it was so disruptive to military order that it was dangerous for a combat unit. Throughout most of last couple of thousand years that in fact was true as it was only extremely recently that toleration (which is not the same of acceptance) of the trail became sufficiently widespread that this was no longer the case. That is, by the late 1980s the trait, no matter what a person thought of it, was unlikely to end up in brawls, disruption or even murder.
U.S. Marines, Peleliu, 1944. We only imagine war not to be like this anymore as we came out so on top of things in 1945, and expanded on that over the next forty years, that we know imagine that all wars are push button remote affairs. Our edge on the world, however, is rapidly declining.
A key aspect of that change, however, was the concept of normalization of the behavior that truly has no ends in where it might go. At the time there was no threat to the status of nature, that being that there is male and there is female, and the mammal norm is that they are attracted distinctly to the opposite other sexually but not to the same. It's true that the opposite occurs, in very small percentages of the population, but whatever causes that is clearly a departure from the norm and in ways that defeat a lot of the normality of life for those who experience that. In other words people had determined to tolerate same gender attraction, but that didn't equate to giving it fully equal status with the the normal orientation, let alone denying that there was a normal human natural orientation towards the opposite gender.
Following Justice Kennedy's extra judicial assault on nature in Obergefell the nation rapidly went from one that had determined to tolerate, in the Belloc sense, a deviation that didn't appear to be generally destructive to society at large to one that was, with the aid of Democratic Party, required to embrace any single sexual impulse going and declare it normal, or be accused of being bigoted. A lot of this has been at levels that would have been regarded as insane only recently. Included in these, and particularly after Bruce Jenner started off in this odd direction, is that people assigning new genders to themselves is oh so normal and must be tolerated everywhere, including in the military.
Vietnam combat. By post World War Two standards this was our largest war, although World War Two dwarfed it in scale. Social planners can imagine women and even the "transgendered" in the modern military only because we haven't fought a war like this one since 1973, and we imagine, apparently that we will never have to again.
That the Obama Administration would go in this direction is not too surprising as the service has been under an assault for decades on the role of women in combat. It's brutally clear that this is a silly idea and that the natural norm for ground combat is that its a male role, and has been since day one. Only our overwhelming material superiority has kept this change, which was last forced on the Marine Corps over its objection, from being an absolute disaster. Amazingly, we still somehow think that its natural to have an all male National Football League but not an all male ground combat military. That's because we've become dense in this area.
And the densitude recently reached the point where the service had commenced issuing, in the case of the Army, instructions to women soldiers on not to overreacted if they saw fellow soldiers in the shower with the opposite gender bits. Not to worry, the instructions held, the he/she may be just undergoing gender reassignment, not some creeper who just wanted to hang out in the shower with the girls and look at them.
Having said that, a male desire to hang out in the shower and look at the girls is actually a much more natural, indeed an immoral but fully natural, desire than to hack your privates off and take chemicals to alter your gender. This begs the question if the all the restrictions on guys hanging out and leering at girls whereevery they wish is deeply prejudicial. . . . it isn't, of course, as its normal and this is part of an assault on normalcy. It's also, in the case of the military, extraordinarily dangerous and ill advised. It's going to get people killed.
North Korean Artillery piece, captured in Iraq. The nation that produced this isn't going to be kind to women or people who have reassigned their genders and nature won't be kind to them in a combat environment either.
In combat, this isn't going to work for a plethora of reasons. Amgosnt them, our collection of potential enemies would be
inclined to find it an appalling abomination or crudely funny,
either of which would end in death for those exhibiting it. There's no question of this. When a POW is taken and put in the slammer, and the gender begins to reassign itself to the human norm, the question will be raised, and then almost certainly ended, at the barrel of a gun.
Of course, for female prisoners,
it would mean rape without question. The Koran sanctions sexual slavery
of female captives and we’ve seen that with ISIL. When we won any war in which such unfortunates had been held captive, assuming
we did, we’d have decades of sexual PTSD victims and quite a few unwanted
children as a result of the same.
In later years our current era is almost certainly going to be looked back on one during which the west truly began to decline or at least entered an episode of decline. The vast wealth of modern society created sufficient leisure in which people were able to fully entertain their demons, and then demand that everyone else tolerate and accept them. The results will not be good.
At any rate, the Trump Administration ordered the reversal of the Transgender acceptance in the military policy.
Good for them.
This is, frankly, good for everyone, including the people who express that leaning. The military exists to kill people and break things, not to be a social experimentation camp. All sorts of things disqualify a person for military service, including physical ailments that are easily addressed in civilian society. That's for a reason, and this policy change makes sense.
Frankly, I wish they'd also reverse the Obama decision requiring women be allowed in combat units. We'll see. Maybe there's some hope for that.
Missile launchers of the People's Liberation Army (the Chinese Red Army). The Chinese army has gone from a crude army based on mass attack to a technologically advanced modern one over the past twenty years, much like the Japanese military did the same in the late 19th Century. Unfortunately for us, the Chinese also have a late 19th Century view of the world and a few policy pundits have flatly declared that a major war between the Untied States and China is likely. If that occurs, it won't be like the Gulf Wars. . . or even like the Vietnam War. It would be huge, bloody and more closely resemble a giant sized Korean War.
So what's with the title?
Well, our Congressional representation from this state has been quick to come out with an oatmeal like statement that backs away from this, neither supporting it or rejecting it. As the Casper Star Tribune reported:
"Political or social agendas shouldn’t drive such decisions, no matter
which party is crafting them,” Enzi spokesman Max D’Onofrio wrote.
“Senator Enzi believes all individuals should be treated with respect
and ultimately these kinds of decisions should be left to the military
leaders, as they are the ones in the best position to decide which
policies will best benefit our armed service members and the military as
a whole.”
That's pure baloney for a couple of reasons.
In the first place, if the military had been left to make its own decisions in this are women wouldn't have been put into combat units, which as noted still hasn't been addressed. That was forced on them by Presidential fiat.
Beyond that, a whole host of social agendas have been forced on the service in recent years. Aiding that is that officers and senior NCOs who opposed these changes have departed the service in large numbers in recent years, a fact that was well noted at the time it was occurring. Officers and senior NCOs who just couldn't see themselves ordering Suzy to die in combat left. That sent the message to the remainders on what they would have to accept, and it also meant that a lot of the officer left after the last couple of years of the Obama Administration are more like corporate CEOs than military leaders.
In order to get the service back to what its supposed to focus on, which is nothing more than killing people and breaking things at the end of the day, the social experimentation has to end. Social experimentation of a really radical anti natural level has always ended in disaster for militaries that engaged in it, the Imperial Russian and the early Soviet armies both provide examples, and this will pan out no differently for us.
It's also chicken for Enzi, Barasso and Cheney to take that position. At least Barasso and Cheney were loud on the Trump bandwagon and Barasso was comfortable with drafting the GOP platform this past go around and even with including an anti public lands position that was deeply opposed by the residents of the state. I find it difficult to believe that they just didn't fear being beaten up by the loud left social radicals in this area who have completely taken over the floor of the debate. Enzi in fact was pretty roundly criticized recently when he made a statement about a hypothetical cross dresser, and he should have been as his comments were stupid, and they likely don't want to repeat that experience even on a completely different topic.
So, while I remain not a Trump fan, he was right on this one.
While I know that its making a huge claim to say so, this may be the best movie about World War Two that has ever been made. It's a stunning achievement.
The movie, as likely anyone here will know, concerns the 1940 evacuation of large elements of the British Expeditionary Force as France was falling to the German Army. The actual event took place from May 26, 1940 through June 4, 1940 and involved an hoped for evacuation of 30,000 British soldiers. In the end, in no small part due to a massive German tactical error combined with a heroic French resistance to German advances, the British managed to evacuate nearly 400,000 men from an every diminishing beachhead, of which nearly 140,000 were French, British and Belgian. The evacuation stands as one of the most stunning military achievements of the Second World War, turning what was a disaster into a weird species of victory. While the effort would not stem the German advance, the fourteen day period did show the Germans for the first time to be inept in victory and pluckiness of the British in accomplishing an evacuation through the combined use of every kind of ship imaginable signaled the spirit with which the British would carry forth with in the rest of the war.
The film therefore has a daunting task, that of taking a fourteen day battle and combining in into a three or so hour film. Not that this hasn't been done a lot of times before. It has, just not so well.
All World War Two battles were combined arms battles of some sort. That is they all combined at least ground and air elements, and some, like this combined air, land and sea. The conventional approach to this, if a large battle is taken up as the topic of a film, has been to take on the project chronologically, such as the famous and very fine film The Longest Day did. Indeed, this is nearly always done.
This film, however, takes on a different approach to this and really manages to pull it off, giving us a glimpse of the air, land and sea battle in way that is best compared to reading a book. At the very start of the film we are introduced to a young British and a young French soldier who are trying to make their way off the beach. We're introduced to this at first in the form of the British soldier making his way through the town of Dunkirk itself, then out onto the beach, and then onto the "mole". For those who might know know what a mole means in this context, it means a jetty. This starts off the story and then the director develops, in a very unusual approach, two separate timelines, one involving one of the "small boats" that lifted soldiers from the area, and another involving a single RAF flight of Spitfires, all of which culminate near the end of the movie. It's brilliantly done.
The movie is incredibly tense and is one of the rare action film that never lets up for a single moment. This is all the more remarkable as its also an intense human drama.
Reviews here, as folks who occasionally stop by, always deal with historical accuracy and material detail, and this film scores high in regards to those as well. The story of the evacuation at Dunkirk is portrayed accurately, including the loss of life and the desperate and random nature of it. Some have complained that the film does not portray the French role well, but this is an unfair criticism. It's made plain that the French are holding the line, largely unseen, while the evacuation is taking place. By the same token, except for a single scene, German ground forces are never seen, their presence only deeply felt.
Some have also complained that the movie is short on character development, but it really is not. The characters are well developed in the space in which their roles are portrayed. Moreover, the fast pace and the following of three (or more, really, as there's a Naval officer and a senior British officer who are also followed) gives us a glimpse not only into every aspect of the battle but also the random and confused nature of war. Characters are at least as well developed as they are in the film The Longest Day, which is regarded as a classic.
In terms of material details the movie is excellent as well, although oddly there's been some complaints in regards to the military ships that are portrayed in the film. This shows the impact of Saving Private Ryan on war films as materiel details are now judged so closely that even minor departures are judged by some as unacceptable. A destroyer depicted in the film is a real World War Two destroyer, the Maille-Brez, which is a French ship. Some have been unhappy that a French ship was used in this role, but there are not a lot of working World War Two destroyers around. The small boats depicted in the film are actual boats that were used at Dunkirk, piloted by their current owners. The Spitfires are real Spitfires and the ME109s real ME109s, albeit the ones that were from the Spanish air force, repainted in German colors, that often show up in films when ME109s are needed. Uniforms and weapons are all correct, including the use of SMLEs rather than the Rifle No. 4 which looks similar but which was coming into service at that time.
No, not the horrible D. W. Griffith one from 1915, but the one that came out in 2016. Indeed, its sort of the antithesis to that earlier film.
This film toured nationally, of course, and I thought about seeing it while it was here but didn't end up doing so. It didn't seem to get a lot of press and I wasn't sure what exactly it was about. I happened to catch it recently on television.
This is a cinematic treatment of the story of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. I'll confess that I'm not terribly familiar with that event, which is often inaccurately cited to be the most successful example of a slave rebellion in North America (there was actually at least one more successful in every sense during the Colonial Era). As I'm not hugely familiar with the Turner story, I'm left a bit out to sea in regards to the accuracy of this depiction, but it seems to have done a good job of it from what I can learn.
Turner, as the movie depicts, was a highly religious slave in Virginia. He had a natural speaking ability and started to operate as a Christian minister within his slave community. He was sufficiently good at this that he began to be used in that capacity in the area and preached to other slave communities with the license and encouragement of the slave owning class. At some point the exposure to the fate of his fellow slaves began to weigh on him heavily and he began, by his own accounts, to have visions that urged him, he claimed, to lead his fellows in rebellion against their master. Over time, he organized such a rebellion.
The rebellion was noteworthy in a variety of ways, and not only for its success. Convinced of the evil nature of the slave owning class, the brief uprising did not spare women and children and taking place mostly over a single night it concentrated, by design, on the use of blunt and edged weapons that would kill but not make much noise. It was, therefore, sort of uniquely grisly.
It was, of course, also a failure and rapidly put down. The number of rebel slaves and whites from the slave owning class who were killed in the uprising, keeping in mind post uprising executions, were freakishly similar,both being about 55-56 in number. Reprisal murders by local whites however took an additional 120 black lives. As is often noted, long term the rebellion became and enduring memory in the South and it may have caused the oppressive nature of slavery, already pretty horrific, to become worse, although the extent to which that can really be determined seems questionable to me. Other factors may have played a role in that other than the rebellion, but no doubt it was an ongoing white memory that formed part of the basis for the slave owning class' view of the world.
All in all, this film seems to do a very good job. It appears correct in material details. The very strong religious character of Nat Turner himself is correctly portrayed. The rebellion scenes appear to exaggerate somewhat, but then they'd likely have to in order to make an effective movie portrayal. All in all, it's well worth seening.
Indeed, I ran across this comment in regards to it:
Did anyone else that read this article get
freaked out? Not with the drug problem, but how someone can get so lost
in their work?
So posts some special snowflake who is a law student.Surprised that somebody can get that lost in their work? Lost in their work is the lawyers norm.
For most practicing lawyers, no matter what they do, not a day goes by where they don't think about their work. And for many of them the assumption by people that they knew that they're some sort of alternative species that does nothing but think about the law anyhow, something like Homo Sapiens Lex, is so strong that somebody will bring it up no matter what. I've been asked legal questions by people I know in locations as diverse as sporting shows and church. I've been called at every hour of the day and every day of the week.
Which is why, in part, there's "drug abuse in [the] profession", particularly if we consider alcohol to be a drug, which of course it is.
Alcohol, drug abuse, and addictive and destructive behaviors of all sorts of types, are rampant in the law. I don't know if they've always been. I suspect that they have not been to the current extent, but I also suspect that it's always been some sort of problem. The "drunk lawyer" is a stereotype actually, and shows up in portrayals of lawyers fairly routinely. The assisting lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder, is an aged alcoholic whom it is implied was brilliant but who fell into the bottle due to his work. The protagonist in The Verdict is a dedicated alcoholic. Interestingly, and perhaps saying something about the nature of their profession, alcoholic doctors is also a common theme in legal dramas.
I've never met an alcoholic doctor. Physicians are pretty clean living in my observation, but I have seen alcohol and drugs take their toll in the legal world. I frankly think that it's because a lot of lawyers are overcome by the stress of their work and take to alcohol and drugs. It's pretty well known within the profession itself, which is why I'm surprised a bit by the comments from those who knew the fellow about that they were surprised by what happened to him and hadn't seen the signs. If there were no signs, and indeed perhaps they were not, he must have kept them extremely well hidden.
Which brings me back to snowflake. If you are surprised by this now, you have a real eye opener coming your way when you start working.
The ABA is opposing two federal bills that would require states to
allow individuals to carry concealed weapons within their borders if
they have permits to carry concealed weapons in another state.
The bills pending in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives
mandate national reciprocity for concealed carry permits issued under
state law. ABA President Linda A. Klein calls the legislation “a
dangerous proposal” that would tie states’ hands in setting
concealed-carry standards.
All states allow some form of concealed carry, but standards vary,
Klein said. The reciprocity requirement “offends deeply rooted
principles of federalism where public safety is traditionally the
concern of state and local government,” Klein says in the letters (PDFs)
here and here.
If the proposal were to become law, “a state’s ability to consider
safety factors—such as age, evidence of dangerousness, live firearm
training, or criminal records—would give way to other states’ less
stringent requirements,” Klein said. “Unlike some efforts of Congress to
create minimum safety standards, this bill could lead to no safety
standards as more states enact laws to allow persons to carry concealed
firearms without a permit.”
The bills are H.R. 38, “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,” and
S.446, “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.” Klein
sent the letters to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the
House Subcommitee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and
Investigations.
It's hard not read something like this and feel that the American Bar Association is just some sort of liberal organization in which being a lawyer is just a prerequisite. That the ABA has a position on a firearms related topic at all is hard to fathom. Predictably, when they have one, its on the left side of the political isle.
Now, I'm not really commenting on this bill at all, and I'll note that there are people on the right side of that isle who are opposed to this bill as they view it as trampling on the rights of state's. And no matter which way you feel about it, there's something to that view, just as there's something to the view in favor of the bill. But the ABA?
Come on ABA, if you really cared about "a state’s ability to consider
safety factors" you'd come out condemning that farce called the Uniform Bar Exam which Wyoming, and a host of other state, have adopted.
Wyoming has lost 25,000 workers over the past few years and quite frankly some of them are lawyers. Up here in the state we see out of state lawyers, licensed under the UBE, all the time. The UBE is based on the absurd fiction that the law in one state is just like that of another, and we're seeing that up here, with lawyers from big cities in neighboring states who can't see their way around to Wyoming's law in some instances. That's not good for the state and its not good for the residents of the state either. The ABA, with its expressed concern for Federalism and the rights of states, ought to now condemn the UBE.
I won't hold my breath.
On the topic of concealment, by the way, I've become increasingly surprised by how many lawyers carry concealed pistols, and indeed I've become surprised by how many people in general do. I'd have thought it fairly rare, but it isn't. It's actually quite common, at least around here. Firearms in general are so common in Wyoming that a common jesting bumper sticker states "Welcome To Wyoming--Consider Everyone Armed", but it isn't really that much of a joke. Lots of people carry all the time, including a lot of lawyers, I've learned. The stereotypes about packing heat are, quite frankly, way off the mark. Professionals carry pretty commonly, I've come to learn. And quite a few women do. Quite a few younger people regard this as highly routine. Indeed, most of the people I've come to learn carry concealed weapons are such a surprise to me that it actually gives me comfort about the arguments in favor of it, as they're such responsible people.
None of which gets to the actual law proposed above, which again you can argue either way.
Which takes me to another thing that surprised me. Lawyers are generally more left leaning that other people but reading the reactions to this ABA stand by members of the ABA gives me some hope that lawyers themselves are less lock step than the ABA might suppose.
I've been unhappy with the ABA for some time, which seems to some degree to be attempting to occupy space that would otherwise be taken up by the ACLU, which itself seems to have forgotten its original purpose to me. And its obsession with "Big Law" is over the top, in my view. At any rate, ABA members, including ones who don't have any interest in firearms, have been published in reaction to this with some pretty negative comments. A lot of ABA members feel that the ABA is way out of touch with its purpose. And I'll note that the UBE connection stated above, while I thought was likely unique to me, isn't. I saw at least one other comment to the same effect.
A common statement by lawyers, both current and former members of the ABA, is that they've had enough of the ABA and that they have, or are, dropping out. That includes me. When the ABA goes back to a hard concentration on actual law rather than wasting its time with matters that are social and political policy, I'll reconsider.
That's how many net workers departed the state, more accurately. Interestingly, 88,000 people moved in, but not enough to make up for the loss such that overall, the state lost 25,000 people.
For long term residents, that's not that much of a surprise. For new ones, it likely is. It shows both the impact of the boom/bust nature of our economy, and also shows how much of the state's population is transient, even in down times.
The big question is, of course, has it stopped. Right now, the evidence isn't so good that it has. Oil prices continue to fluctuate pretty widely and remain very low. Coal has rebounded some, as earlier reported on here, but isn't what it once was and is unlikely to ever become so.
Sometimes a modern architectural feature can really mess up the photographing of an older one, and this church provides such an example.
This is The First Presbyterian Church in Rapid City, South Dakota. The classic Gothic style church is in the downtown region of Rapid City, and unfortunately the area is dominated by some sort of odd communications tower, which makes photographing the entire building difficult.
No matter how it is spun, counter spun, etc., the departure of Sean Spicer from the Trump Administration is probably a good thing for the Trump Administration, a good thing for Spicer, and a sign that there's truly trouble in the Trump Presidency.
Spicer always sounded horrible as the spokesman, and looked it too. He always sounded blusterty, but not convincing. He'd become the burnt of jokes. But somehow, he never looked comfortable in his own skin really.
Spicer holds a commission as a Commander in the Navy Reserve, a quite senior Navy rank, and it would appear to me that he amounts to more than his press role with the Trump Administration might suggest. As a naval person, it's hard not to make the sinking ship analogy, but things do appear to be a genuine mess in the Administration right now and the early round of early changes signals that Trump has never really managed to get his feet on the ground. If we had a parliamentary system, about now we'd be seeing a vote of no confidence. It'll be interesting to see what we see from an obviously disgruntled Spicer going forward.
And it'll be interesting to see if his spat with Dippin Dots ceases.
On one of the weekend shows this past weekend a poll was noted in which a sizable percentage of Republican voters were noted as "being afraid" of Democrats. I did a google search and didn't find any such poll, so it might be a fairly limited one.
Anyhow, in that segment the Democratic reaction was interesting and telling. Democrats, apparently, didn't poll as being afraid of Republicans, although a google search will turn up piles of things that Democratic voters are worried about in regards to (presently) Republican President Donald Trump. It's telling, as in their answer they tend to acknowledge that the party now holds some really radical views that people are afraid of and then they rush off to economic issues.
The Democratic Party is the worlds oldest political party and its evolved enormously over the decades. Andrew Jackson would not recognize the current Democratic Party. That's probably a good thing too. But a lot of Great Depression voters wouldn't recognize it either. Shoot, the party that existed when I could first vote is hardly the same party it is today.
But, in spite of that, the Democrats define themselves in terms of the Great Depression. Put under any stress at all, the party goes right to the idea that it is the party of hard working blue collar Americans, wearing chambray shirts and newsboy caps, working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh in 1933.
The mythical Democratic Voter.
But it doesn't.
Somehow over the past fifty years the Democrats have gone from a party that discovered Civil Rights (after the GOP had the lead in it) to one that has deeply unnatural views about human beings and which angles towards radical concepts regarding human nature. Most people, being natural people, don't hold those views and that's why the Democrats have been taking a pounding.
It's interesting how this tends to show up in regards to repeated Democrat recent defeats, when explored on the weekend shows. Average conversations tend to go like this:
Bob Moderator: Okay! Where here today on This Day With The Press to interview Senator Susie Greenwich Village and Representative Bill Manhattan. How you are you folks today?
Village: Just great Bob!
Manhattan: Fantastic Bob, and let me give a shout out to the Brooklyn Dodgers!
Moderator: The Dodgers are in Los Angeles now Bill.
Manhattan: Oh, well, I believe in a fully inclusive nation and while I represent the great people of my district in New York State, I still love the people of New Mexico.
Moderator: Los Angeles is in California.
Manhattan: I love them too. Particularly their native daughter Linda Ronstadt.
Moderator: She's from New Mexico.
Manhattan: Oh.
Moderator: Well, Congress folks this past week the Democratic Party took another pounding in a special election in the 875th District of Georgia. You folks were expected to win but lost by a margin of 172.34% Our post poll, poll revealed that people down in Thudpucker County aren't too happy with Donald Trump, but that the Democratic Party's recent bill to declare that there's just one gender and declare a national day celebrating that, and their bill to make cheerleader squads and infantry battalions gender neutral, and in fact equivalent to each other, offended folks. What do you intend to do about that?
Village: Well, Bob, what we have to do is to emphasize our inclusiveness. We're the party for employing everyone, that steel mill worker in Pittsburgh, that worker in the Curtiss biplane factory in New Jersey, that single mother employed as a Liberty Ship builder in Newport News. We're for them folks.
Manhattan: That's right Bob.
Moderator: What about these social issues voters?
Village: Oh, we think they should have jobs too. Yes, we're for jobs. Our plan it to have jobs by having jobs. And good jobs. . . like in steel mills and cigar factories. .
Yeah. That's going nowhere.
And frankly, a lot of rank and file voters have good reason to fear the Democrats.
Somehow, the Democrats have gone from a party with a strong ethnic base in the North to one that is very strongly centered on a WASP base and which is deeply radical in regards to opposing a lot which is plainly apparent in human nature.
We know that there are men and women, and that men and women, when they get together, produce children. But the Democratic Party doesn't know that and in fact, in some instances, is deeply and fundamentally opposed to that idea. The Democrats have radically altered the meaning of marriage, or rather they've adopted the radically altered definition of it. They're well on their way to so embracing the concept that any sexually driven concept is okay that they've gone from a party that would have simply opposed common discrimination against people with same sex attraction, a view that the majority of Americans have held for a long time, to one that requires people to embrace any such drive. The point at which this rationally stops is no longer apparent by any means. They have fully embraced the idea that while its natural for the NFL to be all male, combat, the most physical and dangerous of any human activity, and one which has been all male since day one, must now be gender neutral. This has gone so far that the Army is now issuing standards for female soldiers encountering "transgendered" men in showers, something that would have caused a criminal sanction in any earlier time.
And the party continues to embrace a view of life that's deeply hostile to life itself, basically adopting a view that killing at either end of it is okay.
No wonder, therefore, voters who are rooted in any Faith at all, or who simply are grounded in an actual understanding of nature, fear the Democrats.
And that explains a lot of why we are where we are. Commentators and politicians keep saying we need to embrace our shared values and come together. But that presumes that we share values. It isn't at all clear that we do. Indeed, its become pretty apparent that the Democratic Party has become hostile to traditional values in a major way and no longer will allow a voice for them. And wouldn't if it were in power.
So, no matter how bad the alternatives are, that means a lot of formerly Democratic voters are going to go elsewhere, and quite a few of them will regard themselves as having no choice but to do so.
Given that, it's not surprising that there's been some discussion on both Agrarianism and Distributism here, although Distributism has been more clearly explained. Be that as it may, this version of this blog has been less clearly Distributist than prior versions of it.
Part of the reason for that has to do with publishing cowardice. While people like to claim that they're "free thinkers" and urge everyone to "think for themselves" few people actually do. It's simply a human trait. For that reason, most people tend to fall into groups of broad thought and when an idea is outside of the broad mainstream they tend to avoid it, or perhaps criticize it.
Now, this certainly isn't uniformly the case by any means and there are many eras when things can change, even suddenly, but even it times of change its interesting how often people who were opposed to a change, and even a change of opinion, will suddenly alter their opinion. For an example based on a famous person, President Obama went with the mainstream when most Americans opposed homosexual marriage. When the Supreme Court by a one person majority changed the law in that area by judicial fiat, he was suddenly in the other camp, and virtually overnight, or at least virtually overnight in terms of public statements.
Now, that's not the best example, but I note that as it provides a reason why folks who hold Distributist economic views likely don't tend to express them much except in certain circles. It's odd, as Distributism isn't really that radical actually. I'd argue that its a form of capitalism, and frankly it pretty clearly is. It's just somewhat different from what we're used to seeing.
Agrarianism frankly is a related set of ideas, although in expressed form, it's older. Like Distributism its highly misunderstood. It's also in that area where a person who holds Agrarian views tends to keep them to themselves as a rule as its easy for them to be really misunderstood, nearly completely so.
Well, we're going to take a closer look at both here. Both actually have, accidentally, strong American roots that are underappreciated.. Both have radical fanatic adherents, like any set of philosophical set of ideas, which if fully applied would tend to make them unworkable. But both are worth looking at.
As can be seen, the papers published the name of the men selected right on the front page.
In some counties, however, the draft proved unnecessary as the counties had already filled their quotas, which were apparently on a county by county basis, through volunteers.
1948 President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. My father is one of those to register under the 1948 law.
And
when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same.
Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions -- the trades of
iron, the lawyer, and the soldier.
At one time the concept of boys and girls "going to camp" was so common that it was kind of a running joke.
Kids still go to camp, of course, but its increasingly rare and more and more specialized. The old concept of kids attending Camp Winnemucca, or whatever, that was the brunt of so many jokes, songs, bad movies, and even annual Peanuts threads is increasingly uncommon. Not that they don't exist, of course, they do. I know of a lot of kids and teenagers going to camps this year, but most of them are athletic camps. One is going to the big Boy Scout Jamboree. Some went to out of state language camps.
Drill and Ceremony. It hasn't changed much.
One of the types of camps that boys attended back in the day, and of course still do, are those associated with Scouting. The Boy Scouts was practically brand new at the time of World War One, having had its U.S. expression started in 1910. It's interesting to see those old photos of Boy Scouts at this time a they very much reflect the military scouting origin of the organization formed by Lord Baden Powell, whose Boer War experience had lead him to worry that British youth were getting soft. Formed during the "Muscular Christianity" era, Scouting rose very rapidly and had very widespread membership, emphasizing woods craft and manly virtues.
But these boys aren't in the Boy Scouts. No, they're receiving military training at a summer military training camp for boys at Peekskill, New
York. The camp was organized by the New York State Military Training
Commission, an organization established by the New York legislature in 1916 in order to "more thoroughly
and comprehensively" boys "the duties and obligations of
citizenship." Part of its mission was to establish state military camps of instruction for annual summer field training
for the boys.
This is something that wasn't unique.
Nope, not much at all.
The Great War sparked a huge national movement towards preparedness, and not just in the Boy Scout motto "Always Be Prepared" vein. Republican elements urged the US to enter the war early on and when the US did not, those who backed entry into the war sponsored military training camps for young men. Men in their 20s and 30s, that is. These camps were staffed by Regular Officers of the U.S. Army and sought to train men to serve as Army officers should the need arise, which it was suspected that it might. The most famous of these was at Plattsburg, New York, but it wasn't the only one by any means. And they weren't limited to men. Prior to the country's entry into the war there were also camps for women, teaching them field craft and some military skills, such as the use of semaphore flags, skills that would prove to be more militaristic than they'd actually need for service in the Great War given the roles they were given.
Playing the dread, and stupid, mumbly peg knife game. Note the hat cords on their M1911 Campaign hats. I wish this was in color so we could get the branch designation.
And by 1916, the Preparedness Movement, having seen the war in Europe spread to Asia and having seen a semi war break out along the border with Mexico, spread to teenage boys.
The Reserve Officer Training Corps was established in 1916 under the National Defense Act of 1916. With two expressions, ROTC and JrROTC it covered young men in their high school and college ages. ROTC, the college aged version, sought to train college men to serve as officers should the need arise. JrROTC, in contrast, sought to teach high school aged boys basic military skills that would give them a jump in serving as enlisted men in the Army, should that need arise.
July. Its hot.
The story of JrROTC has remained a confused one, and somewhat under addressed, for years. One thing about it is that the 1916 start of it in some ways picked up what was already going on. In some schools, including the one I graduated from in 1981, an organization like JrROTC was already in place. You can find, for example, photographs of Natrona County High School boys drilling in uniform in 1915, a year prior to the creation of JrROTC, and the school now boast the oldest surviving JrROTC unit in the United States. I note that here as I don't think the kids in these photographs are in JrROTC (some might have been, or would soon be), but rather a military organization run by the State of New York that was really darned close to it. Indeed New York's Military Commission was given broad authority to organize the military instruction of youth during its brief existence (it ceased to exist in 1921). It basically ran what was JrROTC in New York, which was so extensive that its authority extended to young men who were employed outside of schools, ie., who had dropped out. In Wyoming JrROTC took off so fast that in 1916 there were state drill competitions between different JrROTC unis across the state. It was a big deal.
Semaphore signals remained a necessary military skill at the time.
In our kinder and gentler age, JrROTC has undergone quite a century long evolution and so have events like this. When I was in high school JrROTC did have a summer encampment at the National Guard's Camp Guernsey. Now, I was never in JrROTC and when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s "Rotcey" didn't have a lot of general student body respect. The program had gone from being a mandatory one for boys, dating back to at least 1915, to an elective one in around 1976, and even those who had some concept of serving in the military were a bit leery about it. It was classified as a physical education class, perhaps justifiably, but that meant it was filled with an odd combination of boys who knew that they were entering the service with certainty and those seeking to avoid PE. Anyhow, the only time I ran across them in their summer camp was when I was a National Guardsmen working at the Armory who went to Guernsey about this time of year, after we'd already done our Annual Training. We tended not to be impressed if, for no other reason, the uniform liberties they were given meant that they were sporting a lot of late Vietnam War type uniforms and berets and the like, prior to any of that being uniform gear in the Army itself.
Anyhow, over its century of existance JrROTC has undergone quite a transformation. I guess all organizations for boys have. In 1917, such as during the same period when these July 16, 1917 photographs were taken, it was real military training with real gear. The boys doing bayonet drills up above aren't using weapons at all, but still, they're learning to kill in a pretty up close and personal way. In the 1930s and 1940s I know that the local school drilled with M1917 Enfields and the rifle team, which was excellent, competed across state lines using M1903 Springfields. In the 1970s it became an elective here but I can still recall their having a few M14 rifles for demonstration purposes and a collection of M1 Garands for the drill team. Girls came in at some point (I'm not sure when) and now I'm told that the rifle team uses air rifles. When I was in high school the rifle team used .22 target rifles, which are at least a real rifle. Not that air rifles don't have their virtues, they do.
Anyhow, this group of boys was spending part of their summer at a military camp at Peekskill, New
York. While I know that a person isn't supposed to think such things, I suspect it was fun. A lot more fun that serving in the Great War itself, which definitely wasn't fun.
Well, none other than General George Owen Squier, whose portrait was published by the Bain News Service, on this day in 1917.
He was the recently appointed head of the Signal Corps, a promotion after having been in charge of U.S. Army aviation, then part of the Signal Corps. He served in the Army until 1923, and in the year prior to his leaving the Army created a commercial service to pipe music by wire to subscribers. A service that he renamed in 1934, the year of his death at age 69, to . . . Muzak
I quit doing daily newspaper updates some time ago, but given the interesting news here, and as I've done on occasion, I'm posting a "100 Years Ago Today" type entry here regarding July 13, 1917.
As noted yesterday, in one of the largest criminal acts of its type, industrial vigilantism of a type that we no longer see (thankfully) broke out in Bisbee Arizona. Mining interest operated to illegally arrest and "deport" IWW members from Bisbee to New Mexico, entraining the victims and shipping them off to hapless southern New Mexico.
The IWW, to be sure, was one of the most radical unions going, in an era in which unions were pretty radical. This was an era in which, for a combination of reasons, radical Socialism, of the type stirring up all sorts of foment in collapsing Russia, was on the rise everywhere and indeed had its presence in American unions. The IWW, with its concept of "one big union", was one of the most radical of the bunch.
From the June 30, 1917 issue of Solidarity, the Industrial Workers of the World magazine. One Big Union.
Frankly, in my view, the IWW was really darned goofy, and the concept of "one big union" totally unworkable. Its no surprise that the IWW, which still exists, never succeeded it reaching its goals. But the teens and the twenties were its era in the sun, and in Bisbee Arizona it had its moment.
Bibee in 1916.
The reason was simple enough. Conditions at the Phelps Dodge mine there were bad and the union that had the membership there, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) wasn't doing much. Some 800 or so workers turned to the IWW.
And the mining interest reacted, gathering up the IWW members and shipping them out of Bisbee.
Where they ended up in poor Columbus.
A humanitarian disaster was in the works, the US had to intervene and did. Ultimately, while the Federal government determined the act was criminal, what with its scale, and what with all that was going on, nobody was prosecuted for this shocking act.
Amongst the shocks the nations was receiving, we'd note, it became clearer and clearer every day that the draft was going to be big. Really big. Early registration had somewhat mixed results but was mostly successful. The Guard was going into official Federal service, conscripted actually due to an odd view of the US Attorney General that Federalized Guardsmen could not serve overseas, in August. The big draw of average male citizens was hitting the news. Even with the big numbers being claimed in the Press at the time, the actual numbers would be much larger.
There's be a lot more than two. July 12, 1917 cover of Leslie's
Regarding fighting, the second of a series of mysterious events, which had not yet hit the international news but which would start to, occurred on this day. Three Portuguese peasant children claimed to receive a visit from a mysterious otherworldly lady who then, they claimed, gave them a momentary but vivid glimpse of Hell. Following that, she gave them a message, which included, but was not limited to, requests for penitential prayers and a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but if penance was not performed, Russia would fall into grave error, spread those errors around the world, nations would be destroyed, and a second war greater than the first would occur in the reign of a Pope who was named but who was not at that time the sitting Pope. While nobody, including Catholics, are obligated to believe in a private revelation, this series of events, which would end, as the visitor claimed, in October 1917 with a final spectacular event, is hard to discount given that the contents of the messages proved to be true. And so went the second, July 13, 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.
