Australian military aviation goes back to the Great War, but it was largely disbanded with the peace. After the war, it was recreated as part of the Australian Army, and then on this day, it was made a separate service as the Australian Air Force. King George V would approve the "Royal" title later that year.
From the On Line Etymology Dictionary.
From the On Line Etymology Dictionary.
The American Press is continually baffled why so many people believe that they're not trustworthy, and that they're basically the mouthpiece for the left wing of the Democratic Party. The dismay is truly genuine on the presses' part, as it truly doesn't see itself that way, and in truth, it isn't a captive of the Democrats as some would seemingly likely believe.
Reporters are however, generally much more likely to be "liberals" or "progressives" than the populace at large, however, and this is true from the top to the bottom. There's been examination of it and even the Washington Post ran an editorial on it some years ago, attempting to figure out why this was. I don't know that they determined the reason for it, but my theories would be that generally reporters are college educated, a bias towards the left that's well noted in other areas, they're underpaid compared to those with similar educations (which tends to cause a person to be left wing as well), and there's a left wing history to their profession, something that shows up in younger lawyers as well as law schools likewise have a similar ideological caste. There are some conservatives in news rooms, to be sure, but they're few and far between as a rule, unless you are talking about one of the media organs that's been assembled to be ideological, which exist on both the left and the right. We're not talking about that, and we'll stray from the media as well, but rather "mainstream media".
Mainstream media does not, by and large, seek to be left wing intentionally, but as its membership is generally left of center, that's how it views the world and that's how most reporters view the world. As we view the world through our eyes, when we report it, that's how we all report it, at least to some degree. News media should avoid filtering the news, and reporters generally argue that they don't, but at least some filtering occurs and some of that is simply through the use of language that's agenda driven.
Using propagandistic terms that come out of the left wing of the Democratic Party's playbook is a feature of that. And that use is intentional at some level. If the press really wants people to regard it as a neutral, it ought to eschew such terms.
Right now, however, the news is jam packed with them.
The one you will hear the most right now is "gun safety". The last edition of Meet The Press was all about firearms in the United States and did very little to shed any light on the topic whatsoever. What it did to is to have a lot of discussion on "gun safety". That's propaganda.
The press picked up on a Democratic talking point of several years back to refer to "gun control" as "gun safety". Nobody likes being controlled, but everyone likes safety. That's the gist of it. The use of the switch in terms was deliberate by those originally making it, as talking about gun control routinely proved to be a political failure. If I recall correctly, and my recollection on this is dim, the concept was that by talking about "safety" they'd play to "Soccer Moms" who are all about safety, they believed. And everyone is for safety. Many fewer people are for control.
The gun safety term is awkward and stupid, but that doesn't keep hit from being used to the total exclusion of gun control. The odd thing is that proponents of gun control once were perfectly open about wanting gun control. That's what they called it, as that's what they want. Agree with them or not, it was honest.
Gun safety is something that the NRA, in real terms, has been involved in for years and which they are in favor of. Safe ranges, safe ammunition, safe firearms handling practices. That's gun safety. Guns themselves have safeties, in most examples save for handguns, which often lack them.
Laws that say who can have guns, and when, and under what conditions, are gun control laws.
On the firearms debate, the press has for many years now referred to the National Rifle Association as the "gun lobby" quite frequently, and more recently it's claimed that the NRA does the bidding of firearms manufacturers. Both claims are baloney, and the last one is pure unadulterated baloney.
Like the NRA or not, its a member driven organization. I don't like what the NRA has done in the past decade plus to glamorize the AR15 and to popularize the idea that everyone needs to be expecting urban combat, but its not a manufacturer driven organization. It's a member driven organization. It definitely impacts the firearms culture, but not as a devious means of promoting sales. So when the press makes that claim, it's just distributing a falsehood.
Also false is the claim that the NRA is a "lobby", unless every organization on the planet is likewise a lobby. Lobbying for your position makes you some sort of an advocate, but it doesn't make you a true lobby. Lobbies are organizations that are created to do just that, lobby. Being a lobby doesn't mean you are ipso facto evil, either, it means you are a lobby.
Another favorite term for many years now is "undocumented alien". That makes the news sound like a script for Hogan's Heroes; "can I see your papers please?". Everyone knows that what "undocumented aliens" actually are is "illegal aliens".
Being an illegal alien doesn't make you any less of a human being than anyone else, but its the proper description of that person's status. They didn't' loose their paperwork at the laundry mat of have it stolen at the Piggly Wiggly, the entered the country in violation of the law.
This one is also a left wing term as the left wing of the Democratic Party is basically for an open border with no controls whatsoever. They'll never say that, as they're for "immigration reform" the same way their for "gun safety".
While we're at it, let's also address the absurd term "The Dreamers". It's propaganda too.
Depending upon how you define it, what "the Dreamers" basically are that group of illegal aliens who were brought into the US in their early youth and then grew up in the US. The US is generally portrayed as the only country they've ever known, although in reality most migrant populations in the US retain extremely close ties to the countries they came from. It would probably surprise most Americans, but immigrant populations tend to go back and forth to the countries from which they stem, if they can, much more frequently than a person would suspect. No doubt a lot of "Dreamers" have never been to the country in which they were born, but probably quite a few of them actually have.
That doesn't make their plight any less sympathetic. If you are an illegal alien who was brought to the country when you were five, you are culturally an American, even if you aren't legally one.
We'll address immigration, again, in a later post, but since the "Dreamer" moniker was attached to them, the press has portrayed every person in this category as a hard working college student studying nuclear biochemical molecular engineering and medicine. That's no more true about them than it is about any other group of young people, and frankly it's unfair to them. Probably a lot of them have pretty minor jobs, some are working in Starbucks, and others at the garage. The few I've met tended to have oilfield employment, but that's a regional deal.
Of course calling them all "Dreamers" attaches a hagiographic romance to their plight. Concern for their plight is merited, but let's be frank that their "dream", for the most part, is just to stay in the US. Their nightmare is to be deported. That's the issue, in essence, but in a simplistic essence that understates the nature of the problem, to be sure.
Another one of long propagandization is "pro choice", although seems to be waning. Being pro choice means that you are for abortion being legal. Being "pro life", which has much less of a propagandistic aspect to it, means you are opposed to abortion.
Perhaps because pro choice was met with pro life, the use of pro choice has really diminished. A debate between choice and life isn't one in which the choice side has the better label. Given that, in recent years the propaganda has shifted to "women's reproductive rights".
That term is a mouthful but it offers better obfuscation. "Reproductive rights" in this context means the right to terminate a pregnancy, so its essence, basically, is to be anti reproductive. If "women's reproductive rights" really meant that, it would have something to do with being able to have children in spite of societal or legal opposition. There really isn't any legal opposition and never has been, and in the US there couldn't legally be, unless what you meant was a return to the old legal restrictions about cohabitation, which nobody is proposing to do, irrespective of the comparative societal impacts of the old law vs. the new ones.
This debate has been going on in the US since 1973, and earlier, so by now most people know that the debate is really about abortion and don't go much further than that. That probably also influenced the introduction of a new term, but in a highly familiar debate, the impact of that is probably marginal.
Another set of terms we're now seeing being introduced deal with "voter" and "election" "security". This one isn't being picked up by the Press as the Press is generally left wing and is calling BS on it. Those who want to use those terms are rightly accused of wanting to restrict the vote, although some of them are simply buying off on the propaganda of earlier in the year that suggested, falsely, that the vote was imperiled.
In truth, allowing for widespread use of non polling place voting is thought to be a threat to Republicans and a boon for Democrats. The degree to which that is true is really questionable, as the GOP did really well this past election, but that's what its about. At a certain level Republicans are really afraid that this trend will mean the more numerous Democrats will vote, as it'll be easier. They want to make it more difficult and return to the gold old days, in their view, when they lost elections by larger margins but you had to show up at the polls. Nobody can use the term "voter restriction law" however, and gets away with it.
Anyhow, controlling language has an impact on debate. Everyone is for safety, nobody is for control.
But in addressing any topic, you really need to understand its essence, not the propoganda.
On this day in 1941 Adolf Hitler gave an address before some 200 German officers in which he declared that the upcoming war against the Soviet Union was to be a war of extermination in which Communist political and intellectual elites together with Jews in the USSR were subject to extermination through summary execution. A written version of the order would follow in May.
Other events in the war on this day:
Charles I, not a man to be easily deterred, met again with Admiral Horthy to attempt to persuade him to allow him to reclaim his position as the King of Hungary.
The British Labour Party, to its everlasting credit, gave the Communist Party the middle finger salute and rejected a demand that it accept a list of dictated positions and thereby placing it outside of the Comitern.
Some figures of the American Army gathered to be photographed with a now obsolete Curtis JN-4:
A photograph taken on this day in 1921. I believe the airplane is a Curtis Jenny.
The Republic of China, racked by internal strife, none the less entered into a contract to build the most powerful radio station in the world at that time. The contract was with the American Federal Telegraph Company.
This photo was taken in Anchorage: Steamer Alameda discharging cargo. March 29 - 1921. Anchorage, Alaska.
Our repeat of the best entry, indeed the only entry, for April 3, 2011. It is an interesting one.
Note the comment about inflation in this item.
Comparatively, we really live in the "cheap food era", although we rarely seem to grasp that. That ties into a bunch of things, include a long lasting post World War Two agricultural policy designed to produce that, but which at least accidentally, if nothing else, emphasizes scale over everything else, to the detriment of those who might wish to enter the production end of the field.
Ever Given
Oops
It's a huge container ship, stuck sideways in the Suez Canal.
There has to be a moment, when you are piloting something like this, in this situation, when you think "oh pooh".
The owner of the ship has apologized. But, while no doubt sincere, there's something odd about that.
Perhaps my neighbor down the street who routinely abandons a car in snow days will learn some lesson about this.
The stuck ship has been the subject of an endless number of memes and jokes, but it actually is impacting world commerce. 10% of the globes trade goes through it, and there are now concerns about toilet paper and coffee prices.
A debate on arms
I thought about not commenting about this at all, and when I started this most recent edition to this thread it wasn't here, as that was prior to an insane man's assault on a grocery store in Colorado. But as this is now prominent in the Zeitgeist, the history of this blog would provide for commenting in some form, so I'll do it here.
First, the rush to conclusion.
At the point at which I'm typing this out, we still don't know much about the assault other than its tragic consequences. Both sides in the gun control debate are rushing to conclusions, which means the conclusions will largely be pre made ones rather than any which are the product of analysis. What we do know is this.
The killer was insane and had a history of violence. He was short tempered and paranoid. His condition appears to be progressive, and while he was violent in high school, he wasn't constantly so.
He was born in Syria, but brought to the country as an infant, so he can't really be considered to be a Syrian migrant in the conventional sense. This is somewhat relevant, however, in that neighbors of his household report that the family lived in a style that's more familiar to immigrants of earlier eras in that it was multigenerational, something common in many places but odd to Americans. This isn't particularly relevant to anything other than that, according to one report, living next to the family was a bit of a nightmare in some ways as they sort of spilled out into the street in an unruly fashion. So, basically, he lived in a large and somewhat unruly setting. To the extent that matters, if it does, it would be because living in his family would make a person an outsider simply because of the very non American style of life in an otherwise middle class neighborhood.
He is Muslim but this can't be said to have an obvious tie to Islamic extremism.
Indeed, he simply seems to have gone progressively insane. Members of his family who have been interviewed noted this.
He was convicted of third degree assault in 2018 and sentenced to 48 hours of community service.
All this should serve to diffuse any suggestion that this has anything to do with his ethnicity, although I'm sure on some quarters of the net, it's not viewed that way.
On this, while the press reports have concluded that his purchase of firearms was legal, it's not immediately apparent that this is in fact the case. It would depend on the nature of the conviction, but frankly I'd lean towards his purchase actually having been illegal. If this is the case, the background check system failed to reveal the conviction. Having said that, I'm not firmly attached to that position. This may be such a "simple assault", i.e., fighting, that it wouldn't register. If that's the case, the background system didn't fail. We should assume here it didn't fail.
The firearm used in the event was a Ruger AR-556 pistol.
The AR-556 "pistol" is one of a series of arms produced to dodge the National Firearms Act on short barreled rifles. There's no doubt about this and while somebody no doubt will eventually log in to state otherwise, this recent trend serves no other purpose. This has allowed for the manufacture of very short barreled rifles, marketed pretextually as pistols, and also semi automatic replicas of submachineguns which would otherwise be illegal under US law. This is part of the trend we've noted here before of the AR lead militarization and pseudo militarization (tacti-cool) that has become so prominent in the US.
Indeed, the problem with weapons like the AR-556 pistol is that they make it exceedingly difficult for defenders of firearms to do just that. While fans of the AR15 in general can point to legitimate sporting use for the rifle, finding a real sporting use for a pistol variant of it is extremely difficult to do. Everyone knows that the configuration is simply a dodge around the law. A fan of pistols would be better off with a real pistol, a person who wanted a semi automatic carbine variant of the AR can find one easily. The "pistol" configuration really appeals to a limited market that is buying it mostly based on appearance. This is all less true for collectors who want something like a firing replica of something like the MP40 in semiautomatic, but even there, because the MP40 is a purely military arm, it gets difficult to really make the argument. That puts defenders of the Second Amendment in a difficult position as even the defense argument that can be made has to really yield to an offensive argument. I.e., you can't easily argue you need a AR-556 for self defense. You can argue it, but you'll always be faced with an argument about a conventional pistol being a better choice.
As added factor that's been discussed is that Boulder recently attempted to ban "assault" weapons, but the ban was struck down as unconstitutional.
So what does that immediately tell us?
1. The killer is almost certainly insane.
2. He lived with his family, so not institutionalization occurred that would have alerted anyone.
3. The firearm was purchased legally.
4. The firearm is a type that's principal appeal is simply its strange looks. While the description will not doubt be "military style", in fact it is not, unless the briefly manufactured armored vehicle port guns are considered, which did pretty closely resemble this sort of weapon.
So what can we draw from that?
Perhaps not much.
Democrats are crying for the passage of gun control bills that will make it through the House, but they won't make it through the Senate. The bill with the broadest support, expanding background check to include all firearms, would not have impacted this whatsoever. This purchased passed the background check and would have passed the proposed expanded one.
More radical measures, such as banning "assault weapons" would have precluded the sale of the AR556 in question. That can be noted. Having said that, there's no reason to believe that a man in this mental condition wouldn't have simply switched to something else. Indeed, no matter how expansive you make such a "ban", it would fail to ban everything that somebody like this would employ. So that would do nothing.
Having said that, in the case of these "pistols" that are now in this category, here actually is something that those who are wondering what can be done by way of Executive Order fits that bill. This is only a "pistol" by regulatory interpretation, and its a strained one at that. The ATF could be directed to reclassify these as long guns as they have features which are overwhelming only appropriate for long guns. That would subject them all to the NFA overnight, which would make the simple retail of them nearly impossible and subject future transfers of them to the NFA. Indeed, it 'd make the current owning of them subject to NFA requirements.
That would address the arm, but it also wouldn't address the killing.
And frankly, in this particular case, only a massively expanded mental healthy system in the US which reincorporated compulsory institutionalization, and indeed expanded it beyond any scope it ever had, would have prevented this. That isn't going to happen either and it certainly isn't going to happen in an era in which there's a Democratic Congress.
Which means, once again, probably the only real solution, and its imperfect in the case of the insane, is societal. Not all evil can be prevented.
Indeed, what this might tell us is something simply about ignoring evil and the violent, but we've always tended to do that. We constantly read of criminals who commit some horrific act who have a past history of violence, or of people who have no major criminal past but a distinct demonstrated attraction to it. It's clear the mental health treatment available in the US is lacking, but at the same time even if it were much more extensive, we'd likely not catch something like this. We'd have to have a much more stable, and probably agrarian, society in order to address much of that, and even then, we wouldn't catch it all.
And that would, I suppose, involve a society that prayed for not being lead into temptation, and to be delivered from evil, but I don't see that coming on any time soon.
Poor Joe Manchin
The reason that his is, is because as a conservative Democrat, he's suddenly a power broker simply by occupying a position on the political map that used to be one that was crowded, the middle ground. Democrats can't really get things through the Senate unless he supports it.
This came up in the context of gun control, as Manchin doesn't support any of the two bills that have passed the House. This called left wing brat, Rachel Maddow, whose style is mostly 100% pure snark to lambast him and accuse him of falling down in front of the "nearly dissolved" NRA.
The NRA is in bankruptcy, but it's far from nearly dissolved. What will happen to it remains to be seen, but the widespread assumption that its now powerless is pretty presumptive. It's goals are still shared by large number of voters and as a practical matter its influence in the past has been so extensive that it may outlast its current decrepit leadership that needs to go.
Be that as it may, Manchin is actually a supporter of some gun control and recently sponsored his own background check bill. He has a "D" rating from the NRA.
Maddow, the loudmouthed smart aleck kid in the junior high class we all remember from those days, probably didn't know that.
This is part of the problem with debates such as this, for the reason noted in our first entry. Arguing that gun control that could realistically be imposed in the US would have prevented this is a lot like arguing that Hitler wouldn't have committed mass atrocities if only more people had bought his art. The logic train is derailed on it.
And then there's the states
At the same time that the Democratic Congress and Administration is seeking to impose gun control, state legislatures all over are attempting to do the opposite, including going so far as to pass obviously unconstitutional statutes.
Wyoming is taking a run at one which, even though its been taken to the weed whacker to the extent that its original drafter, the alt right Wyoming Senator Anthony Bouchard, no longer supports it, pretty clearly violates the Supremacy Clause. Lots of these statutes do. The only one I've seen that may not is one that has been suggested in, I think, South Carolina which simply proposes to make all the residents of the state members of the militia.
Indeed, that's the cleverest approach I've seen so far. I haven't read the bill, but there's some logic to a bill that makes everyone a member of the militia and all their arms part of their militia service. It's grounded in the U.S. Constitution, rather than giving it the middle finger salute like so many of these other bills do.
Irrespective of that, the really interesting thing is that the national legislature is going one way while state ones are going another. That tells us this really is a coastal issue, with some lefty islands dominated by urban areas. That makes any action on this that those on the left, and even the center left, imagine, pretty much impossible.
But it's not only that. We're not only politically polarized. We're now geographically polarized. And heavily.
The Intelligent quarter riots.
Dr. Oz faces backlash ahead of 'Jeopardy' gig, called a 'disgrace' to Alex Trebek's legacy
So read a headline in the net entertainment news, which I read even though I normally don't, having followed the link from Twitter.
I'm among those who find having Dr. Oz on Jeopardy irritating. He claims to have been a friend of the late Alex Trebek, which he may have been, but he's also a quack.
Will Jenny McCarthy be next?
As a total aside, maybe we can hope for Kate Upton. I'm serious on that. She's photogenic, as was Trebek, and by all accounts is highly intelligence, and doesn't sell snake oil. She's also sort of disappeared off of the cheesecake circuit now that she's a married woman and a mother.
Anyway you look at it the fact that Jeopardy fans are upset by Oz is a good thing and shows that even in some quarters of the vast wasteland, there are reservoirs of intelligence.
Breaking news
The BBC reported on March 25 that Mary Tyler Moore had died. It was due to a technical glitch.
Which is correct, she died in 2017.
Money and universities
Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out, had connections to several universities. One professor has now lost his position due to this, as he basically facilitated the Epstein connection.
Well, whatever Epstein's connection with universities may have been, it was probably just money. That doesn't tell us much other than that universities need money, and that universities are particularly prone to retroactive self righteousness. They have the money, he's dead, they ought to just leave it at that, absent some suggestion of actual impropriety by members of their staff or that he somehow influenced their work.
If anything, what this ought to tell us is something about money and universities. Within the past couple of years we've had the "scandals" about bribed admissions, more or less, into well regarded schools by entertainment figures for their children. This is no surprise to anyone really familiar with universities. And then there's been the flap on the East Coast about the early founders of universities having made lots of money on slavery, which is indeed bad, but they're all dead now.
Absent all universities being government funded, which has its own problems, this sort of thing will occur. University funding is a big topic in the US right now, but nobody is really close to figuring it out and the left wing "make it all free" solution wouldn't address this and would devalue university educations further. Mostly what this is an example of is societal hypocrisy. We know that universities take money from donors, this isn't new. The money is already spent, leave it at that.
Ford Motor Company began building B-24s components at Air Force Plant 31 in Michigan. The plant is better known as the Willow Run plant. Ultimately it would construct entire aircraft, something that was not foreign to Ford which had manufactured civilian aircraft prior to the war. The facility was actually leased, rather than owned, by Ford, which had an option to purchase it. It would decline that option post war.
The plant was taken over by Kaiser after the war, a Ford competitor, which manufactured automobiles there until the Korean War, at which time it also manufactured C-119 cargo aircraft. Kaiser was formed in July 1945, so it was a post war startup, and was originally the Kaiser-Frazer Company. It technically lasted only until 1953, but it didn't disappear at that time but merged with Willys Overland, whose forte at that time were its 4x4 vehicles, lead by the Jeep. It sold Willys to American Motors in 1970, but retained a minority interest in that company. American Motors continues in operation today, contrary to the common assumption, as AM General, the manufacturer of the military and civilian variants of the Hummer.
It was a bad day for the Italians in the Battle of Matapan as a heavy cruiser and two destroyers were sunk by the Royal Navy. More on that here:
On the same day, the Italians suffered further losses in Eritrea.
King Peter assumed the Yugoslavian throne to cheering crowds.
Things went from bad to worse for Charles I, the last Austro Hungarian Emperor, when newly created Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia warned Hungary that if the regained the Hungarian throne, they'd declare war on Hungary.
All of those countries, combined with Austria, had been part of the Austro Hungarian Empire and they feared that Charles I's restoration as King of Hungary would be followed by a claim to restore the Austro Hungarian Empire.
Winston and Clementine Churchill were the subjects of a reception at the Government House in Jerusalem.
The U.S. launched the USS Corry, a Clemson class destroyer that would serve only nine years. The ship had been ordered in World War One, like all of the ships then being commissioned, but finished to late to serve in the war.
The Corry was one of 60 ships decommissioned as too expensive to maintain at the beginning of the Great Depression.
The Australian Department of Civil Aviation was formed as the Civil Aviation Branch of the Australian Defense Department.
An Easter Egg roll was held on the White House grounds. Easter was the day prior in 1921.
