Marines completed a withdrawal from Nicaragua after a thirteen year occupation.
They'd be back.
Last edition:
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Marines completed a withdrawal from Nicaragua after a thirteen year occupation.
They'd be back.
Last edition:
Coming at a particularly odd time, given the resurgence of the type of views that the monument represents1, the Federal Government is removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.
A massive allegorical work, the monument by Moses Jacob Ezekiel2 portrays the Southern cause heroically, and includes a slave in the "mammy" role, saddened by the departure of her soldier owner.
Probably always offensive, the work was part of the rise of the Lost Cause myth in the early 20th Century, which is when many of these monuments date from. It's being removed and will be relocated at a park dedicated to Confederate monuments.
This process has been going on for a while. Under President Biden, military posts named for Confederate generals have been renamed, but even before that, monuments in Southern states started coming down on a local basis. Interestingly, right now the Southern cause is strongly in mind as Donald Trump tacks closer and closer to the secessionist's view of the nation that brought the war about and which preserved racial segregation for a century thereafter.
The monument itself was located in the Confederate Section of Arlington, which was created in 1900 at the request of those who felt that Confederate dead in the cemetery should be located together. Ironically, the move was opposed by some in the South, who felt that they should be relocated to "Southern soil". Laying of the cornerstone of the monument came in 1912, and it was dedicated, Woodrow Wilson in attendance, in 1914.
Things like this are particularly problematic in various ways. For one thing, the monument is a work of art, and as such it has its own merits, no matter how dramatically flawed its image of the Southern cause was. And they have, interestingly, an image of the South which was, while false, sort of bizarrely aspirational in that it depicted, as many such monuments of that period for that cause do, a South which was a yeoman state, when in reality the South was controlled by strong large scale economic interest to the detriment of the Southern yeoman, and certainly to the massive detriment of Southern blacks.
And they also reflect a period of American history, lasting roughly from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Era, when the nation as a whole adopted a false view of itself, or at least a large portion of itself. They reflect, therefore, the zeitgeist of that time and our own. Removing the monuments is understandable, but it doesn't cure the massive defect of past racism and slavery. It does serve to help us forget how racist we once were, and not only in the 1776 to 1865 time frame, but the 1865 to mid 1970s time frame as well.
Footnotes:
1. Just this past week Donald Trump, whose acolytes sometimes brandish the Confederate battle flat at his events, or in support of him in general, spoke of immigrants "poisoning" the blood of Americans, much like Southern Americans sometimes did in regard to desegregation in the 1960s. The Nazi allegory has come up frequently, but to my ear, perhaps because I'm old enough to remember the tail end of that era, it sounds more the Southern view of the 60s or even 70s.
2. This work is by far Ezekiel's best known one. Interestingly, another major one is an allegorical monument from the 1870s dedicated to and entitled Religious Liberty.
Last Prior Edition:
The Germans invaded Leros in the Aegean's/
We tend not to think of the Germans engaging in offensive operations this late in the war, but they did, of which this was a successful example. After four days of fighting, they'd take the island from its British, Italian and Greek defenders. The island had been occupied by a reduced British force as the Italians, during their Axis period, had heavy fortified the port facilities. The US had not approved of the British, i.e. Churchill, focus on the Aegean, so it had not participated with the British in the occupation of various Aegean islands, including this one.
According to some, the novel The Guns of Navarone is based contextually on the Battle of Leros, but I don't see that really.
Leros is extremely close to Turkey. So much so, that it's a bit amazing that the island wasn't transferred to the Turks in 1923. It has a Greek population, but it became an Italian possession in 1912 following the Italo Turkish War, one of the pre World War One wars that's nearly wholly forgotten now, leading to the commonly cited falsehood that Europe had been "at peace for fifty years" prior to World War One breaking out. It was annexed by Italy in 1923. It became a Greek possession at the end of World War Two.
The Allies won the Battle of Treasury Island in the Solomon's.
The Japanese bombed Darwin, Australia for the last time.
Remaining Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft are withdrawn from Rabaul. The overwhelming majority had already been lost.
The Allies bombed Arezzo, Italy, for the first time.
Franklin Roosevelt left for the Tehran Conference on board the USS Iowa.
Women in Lebanon turned out in the streets in favor of their deposed government.
The U-508 was sunk in the Bay of Biscay by a US B-24.
I just posted this photograph here the other day.
There were a wide variety of 35 mm cameras by the 1920s, and popular personal photograph got an enormous boost with the 1939 introduction of the Argus C3. Through the lens reflex cameras made their appearance in the 1920s, but it wasn't until 1949 that the prismatic SLR was introduced, sparking a revolution amongst photography enthusiasts. Nearly every serious camera maker soon introduced one, and they dominated in the serious photography market until the end of the film era. My father bought a really good SLR Zeiss camera while serving in the Air Force, and the camea was so good that he used it hte rest of his life.Zeiss Contraflex.Lens barrel for Contrafex, which fixed the existing lens on an extension for a telephoto effect. I never actually saw this in use, and it does strike me as difficult to use.My father also had a Yashica 120 mm camera. These cameras used big film for a finer detailed photograph, much the way "full frame" digital cameras due today (while most people don't use full frame digital cameras, the lack of one is a source of ongoing angst for Pentax fans, as Pentax does not make a full frame DSLR, just their regular DSLR). It was a nice, if cumbersome, camera and my father used it less over the years, probably due to that. And film became very difficult to obtain.Yashicaflex with lens caps on and viewer closed.Viewer cover opened.Top of camera, with viewer opened. You viewed the object through the top of the camera and saw the image reversed.
Digital photography seemed likely to put a big dent in SLR cameras, and it did at first, but now they've revived, particularly in the form of Canon cameras in the US. But most of the old SLR manufacturers, save for Zeiss and Leica, which dropped out of the SLR market, still make one, and a couple of makers have entered the field who did not make film cameras. But, just as I suppose more photos were taken with Kodak disposable and compact 35mms back in the day, more now are probably taken by cell phones.
Still, what a revolution in photography, even if things remain familiar.
Dunkirk, of course, is famous for being that location in France where British and French soldiers stages a heroic defense of the town against the Germans in 1940 so that the British forces could be withdrawn. Basically, troops maintaining the line fought to save their army, so that it could be rebuilt in Britain. Will, and others, are now urging Republicans to fight to save House and Senate seats so that the GOP can be rebuilt over the next four years. Basically, the Presidency will be abandoned as a hope, conceding that it is already lost.
Will was blunt in his article that the forces that supported Trump will simply be dumped. He doesn't want them. The proposal, basically, is to create a new conservative party out of the wrecked shell of the current one, a pretty dramatic concession for a lifelong conservative Republican.
If that occurs, chances are that John Boehner will be one of the Republicans joining him in that effort. The former Speaker of the House was caught this past week taking real hard shots at Ted Cruz, going so far as to indicate that he'd support Trump if Trump is nominated, but not Cruz. He didn't apologize when audio of that was released, which we probably would generally have expected. And he showed up with Obama on an amusing video that showed up at the end of the President's speech. Cruz has been ineffective in trying to paint Boehner since then as just the sort of Washington insider that he's been campaigning against, so in a way Beohner's recent actions may turn out to be the "establishment" getting the last laugh on Cruz, whom they truly dislike.
The next Presidential election would see Theodore Roosevelt run for office, and Roosevelt was a very popular President in the West. He was also from the "progressive" branch of the Republican Party, so any Populist elements that were headed towards being Democratic were effectively cut off.
Noted biologist, hunter, outdoorsman, conservationist, rancher, historian, and politician, President Theodore Roosevelt.
Republican fortunes gained during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, and when his hand picked successor, his Vice President William Howard Taft ran in 1908, Wyoming demonstrated that it had lost its fondness for William Jennings Bryan, who ran against him. Taft took 55% of the Wyoming vote. Perhaps reflecting some residual racialism, or perhaps recent immigration from Eastern Europe in some counties, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs amazingly took 4.5% of the vote. Statewide, Wyomingites seemed satisfied with Republican candidates once again.Former Governor of the Philippines and Vice President, and future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Howard Taft.
Taft had the misfortune of following Roosevelt, who was a great man, but who was still a young man, in relative terms, and who just couldn't avoid politics. Taft basically acted as a reformist candidate, but a somewhat moderate one, and Roosevelt, for his part, was becoming increasingly radical. By the election of 1912, the split in the Republican Party that this represented broke the party apart and after Taft was nominated it actually became two parties, with the Rooseveltians becoming the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party would be a radical party even by today's standards, and it says something about the politics of the time that it mounted a very serious campaign and had nationwide support. At the same time, the Democrats began to tack towards the Progressives themselves and pick up parts of their platform. The transformation of the Democratic Party into a liberal party really began with the Presidential election of 1912, and the party by the end of the election was never again quite what it had been, although the change would continue on for years thereafter.
Woodrow Wilson took Wyoming's electoral vote that year, receiving 42% of the popular vote. The combined Taft and Roosevelt vote surpassed that, with Roosevelt taking 27% of the vote, a greater share than that taken by Taft. Socialist Eugene Debs came in with an amazing 6%. Given this, it is not possible to simply write off the election to the split in the Republican Party that year. The combined Debs and Roosevelt vote made up a whopping 33% of the Wyoming electorate that was expressing support for a radical change in direction in national politics. Wilson's 42% was not insignificant either. Even simply writing off the fact that any Democratic candidate of that era would have received at least 1/3d of the state vote, a surprising number of Wyomingites seemed to be espousing the progressive, and even radical, ideas that were the combined platforms of the Progressive and Democratic parties. Even accepting that the Democrats had come at this development through the Populist, which was reflected in their earlier nomination of Bryan, and in Wilson's appointing him to the position of Secretary of State, it seems something was afoot.
Former head of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey, President Woodrow Wilson.
Indeed, in the same year, the sitting Governor, elected in 1910, Joseph M. Carey, left the Republican Party and joined the Progressive Party. Carey, like most (but not all) of the Progressives, including Theodore Roosevelt himself, would eventually return to the Republican Party, but it's at least interesting to note that a sitting, elected, Wyoming Governor publicly abandoned his party to join a third party. A think like that would simply be inconceivable today.
Governor Carey just months prior to his defection to the Progressive Party, with a bored looking Dorothy Knight, the daughter of a Wyoming Supreme Court justice, at the launch of the USS Wyoming.
This tread, moreover, continued. Carey's successor in the Governor's office was not a member of the Republican Party, nor a Progressive, but Democrat John B. Kendrick. Kendrick did not remain in that office for long, however, as he was elected to the United States Senate by the electorate, now able to directly elect Senators, in 1916, a position he held until his death in 1933. His companion in the Senate for most of that time, however, was very long serving Republican Senator Francis E. Warren (who of course had also been a Governor) who served until his death in 1929, when he was replaced by Republican Senator Patrick Sullivan.
Senator John B. Kendrick.
A slow shift began to take place in the early teens, however. In the 1916 Presidential election the state again supported Wilson, giving him 49% of the vote. 3% supported Socialist candidate Allan Benson, and those votes would certainly have gone for a any more left wing candidate than the Republican Charles Hughes, but a period in which Wyoming leaned Republican but which would swing towards Democrats was emerging. The state went very strongly for Warren Harding in 1920 (60%) and for Coolidge in 1924. In 1924, however, the Democrats fared very poorly in the Presidential election, with the Progressive Candidate Robert LaFollette, who had taken up where Theodore Roosevelt would not have wanted to leave off for him, and then some, receiving 31% of the Wyoming vote. David, the Democrat, came in a poor third, showing that a strong Progressive streak remained in the Wyoming electorate at that time. That election saw the nation nearly completely go for Coolidge except in the South, which went for Davis. Geographically it was one of the most divided elections in the nation's history.
AN OPEN LETTER TO MAJORITY AMERICA
TO: Those who think both leading presidential candidates are dishonest and have little chance of leading America forward:(…or, stated more simply)
TO: The majority of America:Note: If you are one of those rare souls who genuinely believe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are honorable people – if they are the role models you want for your kids – then this letter is not for you. Instead, this letter is for the majority of Americans who wonder why the nation that put a man on the moon can’t find a healthy leader who can take us forward together.I want to tell you about four unsolicited conversations from the Fremont Wal-Mart this morning:**Retired union Democrat meat-packer:
“What the heck is wrong with that city where you work? Why can’t they give us a normal person? Is it really so hard?”Me: “Actually, it is for them – because most people in DC buy the nonsense that DC is the center of the world. You and I, despite our party differences, both agree that Fremont is the center.”Union Democrat (interrupting): “…Because this is where my grandkids are.”**Young evangelical mom:
“I want to cry. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on almost every single thing – but I will vote for her before Trump. I could never tell my kids later that I voted for that man.”**Middle-aged Republican male (more political than the other folks):
“It feels like the train-car to hell is accelerating. Why is DC more filled with weirdos and yet more powerful at the same time? How do we slow this down long enough to have a conversation about actually fixing our country?”**Trump supporter (again, unsolicited):
“Please understand: I’m going to vote for him, but I don’t like him. And I don’t trust him – I mean, I’m not stupid. But how else can I send a signal to Washington?!”
________I’ve ignored my phone most of today, but the voicemail is overflowing with party bosses and politicos telling me that “although Trump is terrible,” we “have to” support him, “because the only choice is Trump or Hillary.”This open letter aims simply to ask “WHY is that the only choice?”Melissa and I got the kids launched on homework, so I’ve been sitting out by the river, reflecting on the great gap between what folks in my town are talking about, and what folks in the DC bubble are talking about.I trust the judgment of this farm town way more than I trust DC. And so I’d like to share a dozen-ish observations on these Wal-Mart and other conversations today:
1. Washington isn’t fooling anyone -- Neither political party works. They bicker like children about tiny things, and yet they can’t even identify the biggest issues we face. They’re like a couple arguing about what color to paint the living room, and meanwhile, their house is on fire. They resort to character attacks as step one because they think voters are too dumb for a real debate. They very often prioritize the agendas of lobbyists (for whom many of them will eventually work) over the urgent needs of Main Street America. I signed up for the Party of Abraham Lincoln -- and I will work to reform and restore the GOP -- but let’s tell the plain truth that right now both parties lack vision.
2. As a result, normal Americans don’t like either party. If you ask Americans if they identify as Democrat or Republican, almost half of the nation interrupts to say: “Neither.”
3. Young people despise the two parties even more than the general electorate. And why shouldn’t they? The main thing that unites most Democrats is being anti-Republican; the main thing that unites most Republicans is being anti-Democrat. No one knows what either party is for -- but almost everyone knows neither party has any solutions for our problems. “Unproductive” doesn’t begin to summarize how messed up this is.
4. Our problems are huge right now, but one of the most obvious is that we’ve not passed along the meaning of America to the next generation. If we don’t get them to re-engage -- thinking about how we defend a free society in the face of global jihadis, or how we balance our budgets after baby boomers have dishonestly over-promised for decades, or how we protect First Amendment values in the face of the safe-space movement – then all will indeed have been lost. One of the bright spots with the rising generation, though, is that they really would like to rethink the often knee-jerk partisanship of their parents and grandparents. We should encourage this rethinking.
5.These two national political parties are enough of a mess that I believe they will come apart. It might not happen fully in 2016 – and I’ll continue fighting to revive the GOP with ideas -- but when people’s needs aren’t being met, they ultimately find other solutions.
6. In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate. This year, we have two. In fact, we now have the two most unpopular candidates ever – Hillary by a little, and Trump by miles (including now 3 out of 4 women – who vote more and influence more votes than men). There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two “leaders.”
7. With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger. That’s what we do.
8. Remember: our Founders didn’t want entrenched political parties. So why should we accept this terrible choice?
9. So...let’s have a thought experiment for a few weeks: Why shouldn’t America draft an honest leader who will focus on 70% solutions for the next four years? You know...an adult?
(Two notes for reporters:
**Such a leader should be able to campaign 24/7 for the next six months. Therefore he/she likely can’t be an engaged parent with little kids.
**Although I’m one of the most conservative members of the Senate, I'm not interested in an ideological purity test, because even a genuine consensus candidate would almost certainly be more conservative than either of the two dishonest liberals now leading the two national parties.)
10. Imagine if we had a candidate:
...who hadn’t spent his/her life in politics either buying politicians or being bought…who didn’t want to stitch together a coalition based on anger but wanted to take a whole nation forward…who pledged to serve for only one term, as a care-taker problem-solver for this messy moment…who knew that Washington isn’t competent to micromanage the lives of free people, but instead wanted to SERVE by focusing on 3 or 4 big national problems,
such as:
A. A national security strategy for the age of cyber and jihad;
B. Honest budgeting/entitlement reform so that we stop stealing from future generations;
C. Empowering states and local governments to improve K-12 education, and letting Washington figure out how to update federal programs to adjust to now needing lifelong learners in an age where folks are obviously not going to work at a single job for a lifetime anymore; and
D. Retiring career politicians by ending all the incumbency protections, special rules, and revolving door opportunities for folks who should be public “servants,” not masters.
It's hard to read that and not imagine that Sasse is endorsing his draft movement, although getting on the ballots anywhere now would be tough. If a person actually could, they might have a fair shot at the convention, if they kept Trump from getting the nomination before the convention, which would also be tough. Maybe it's an endorsement of a third party run. It's hard not to see it as an open invitation for revolt against what's occurred, which doesn't mean that shall occur. Nonetheless Sasse is now being talked about openly a great deal, and has come just as close as he can to endorsing the idea of his running an a conservative independent without saying he'd do it. His resistance to it so far has been stated in terms of his being a father and not being able to devote full time to the effort, but it's hard not to read his statement as stating that he would accept an offer if it were made. And right now, it's hard not to see it being made.This really shouldn’t be that hard.The oath I took is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. In brief, that means I’m for limited government.And there is no reason to believe that either of these two national frontrunners believe in limiting anything about DC’s power.I believe that most Americans can still be for limited government again -- if they were given a winsome candidate who wanted Washington to focus on a small number of really important, urgent things -- in a way that tried to bring people together instead of driving us apart.I think there is room – an appetite – for such a candidate.What am I missing?More importantly, what are the people at the Fremont Wal-Mart missing?Because I don’t think they are wrong. They deserve better. They deserve a Congress that tackles the biggest policy problems facing the nation. And they deserve a president who knows that his or her job is not to “reign,” but to serve as commander-in-chief and to “faithfully execute” the laws – not to claim imperial powers to rewrite them with his pen and phone.The sun is mostly set on the Platte River -- and the kids need baths. So g’night.Ben
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