The best post of the week of September 27, 2020. . . and its been one heck of a week.
I can't help but be envious. In a couple of years I'll be 60 and I haven't had five weeks off my entire life.
Leslie's wanted the nation to be reminded that the allegorical eyes of the nation were on voters in its issue out this day in 1920.
Meanwhile, the Country Gentleman was reporting on "Farmer Rule For Canada", which was an article predicting that results based on recent elections in Canada.
The Saturday Evening Post featured a less rural cover.
The last triple header to be played in major league baseball took place on this date when Pirates and the Reds played three games. The Reds one. Triple headers are now banned in the major leagues except under unusual circumstances that are sufficiently rare, they haven't occurred.
King Alexander was bitten by a monkey when he tried to intervene and save a dog that had been attacked by another monkey. The bite would result in an infection leading to his death, which brought King Constantine back to the throne.
King Alexander had been a controversial king. A playboy early on, he'd been smitten by a commoner whom he married over his family's objections. While the marriage was ultimately recognized, she was only accorded formal royal status after his death in order that their daughter be recognized as a royal.
Greece, under a government formed under King Constantine, would go into a war with Turkey that had disastrous results. Winston Churchill later remarked to the effect that the monkey's bit may well have resulted in the death of 250,000 people.
A friend of mine is fond of saying that history is a pendulum, it swings right, and then left, and then back again. His point is that if you don't like the way history is going, or society, or politics, just wait, and it'll swing back.
Well, it sort of does.
But only sort of.
It's more like a giant screw, or drill, it has left and right edges contacting what its going through, with that being history or time, I suppose, but it also keeps going in a direction. Every once and awhile, the drill hits something hard and diverts its path, and its really hard, if not impossible, to get it going in the same direction.
We're about to hit something hard like that. And my prediction is that it'll change things, permanently.
There have been things like that in the past. The United States had one character from 1776 to 1860, but 1860 to 1865 changed everything forever. Signs that something was going to happen were clear in the 1840s, and there were lots of arguments developing over it. But the Civil War brought the change and the United States in 1866 wasn't the same country it had been in 1859. It'd never be that earlier country again.
The Great Depression is another example. Going into the Depression in 1929 the country was pretty much the same country it had been in 1866. By 1945 it wouldn't be that country anymore.
Part of the hard spot, if you will, that the drill hit was just fatigue. The Civil War not only defeated the Southern slaveholders, it fatigued the entire South to the point where it accepted defeat. . . for time. The Great Depression fatigued the entire nation to where it accepted changes in the role of government that it would not have before.
And like it nor not, we're about to do that again, or so I suspect.
Fatigue has certainly set in, in the general populace.
The country has been struggling since the 1970s over developments that happened post World War Two and which culminated in the late 60s and early 70s. Since then, the pendulum, if you like that analogy, has swung back and forth. But something really started accelerating socially in the late portions of President Obama's second term, brought about in no small part by the sitting Supreme Court. A reaction in part to that but also in part to policies of the 1970s, including a high immigration rate, export of manufacturing, etc., all caused a slow burning populism to elect Donald Trump.
Trump's about to lose the election. Amy Coney Barrett is about to go on the Supreme Court. We're about to enter an era of political liberalism that's going to move the country permanently to the left, while at the same time one of judicial conservatism that will cause people to actually have to pay attention to their elected officials, who will have new powers in lots of ways they haven't since the early 1970s.
What that exactly does should be cold comfort to everyone. Nobody is going to get what they want. Some people are going to be howling in frustration, as I hinted at that here:
My prediction is that some of the social policy fights that we've been having but which we've been relying on the high court to mediate will come roaring back. Those fighting over gun control are going to find that the Supreme Court will hold that the 2nd Amendment is a real personal right restricting legislatures, but that won't mean that those same bodies, including the national one, can't actually impose some restrictions, and those restrictions are coming, and coming extremely rapidly.
Those on the left who have been depending upon the court to hold back the development of societal attitudes disfavoring abortion, but not completely eliminating it, are going to see some states go as far as they can, legally, soon to do just that. Some states will go the other way. There won't be one national law.
Those on the right who were hoping for the definition of marriage to return to the states, where it was before the court ruled otherwise recently, are going to be disappointed. That ship has sailed and the argument is now a cultural one not a legal one. On the other hand, those who are hoping for the expansion of all sorts of self definition based on ones private parts and inclinations are going to be disappointed as well as the law is going to stop at its current position and the mass of the populace is going to move on to "don't care."
General government involvement in all things, economic and otherwise, is going to increase and markedly and in a leftwards direction. Part of that will be in the area of environmental policy. Arguments about climate are about to end, and policies are about to arrive.
None of this means that you have to like any of it, and that gets back to what I posted above. The local Republican party, the only real party in the state, has been enduring an alt -right insurgency. That insurgency is about to be put on the political margins in the entire United States. And not only indefinitely, but maybe forever. The right wing from this point, nationally, is the middle right. Think of the Canadian right, or the British right. If their right wing seems left wing to you, well we're about to join them.
And again, a person doesn't have to like it. Indeed, they can decry it. But the drill has hit a hard spot and its' going to divert.
Of course, as noted, we never really know the course of history, or its outcome. Things do go back, or touch back, or come to be regarded as a place to aim for, in terms of standards and conditions. Some rapidly, some slowly, and some not at all.
I can't say that I was a fan of either, but they were part of the background music of my early late childhood and early teen years. AM radio on local stations featured both, indeed the same channel here played both, in the early 1970s when they were in their prime.
Both died yesterday at age 78.
Davis I remember as a popular singer who had a popular television variety show when there were such things. My parents liked the show. I also recall him from North Dallas Forty, the rather unvarnished and critical movie about professional football with Nick Nolte as a broken up football player reaching the end of his career, although I thought Davis looked like an unlikely football player.
He died from complications of heart surgery.
Helen Reddy was part of the era in particular for her anthem, I Am Woman, which was played absolutely everywhere for awhile and which was the standard of the "Women's Liberation" movement. I didn't realize that she was Australian born until today. Her health had suffered enormously in recent years.
It's really odd to think of the American Legion, which was brand new at the time, even having an opinion on this topic, let alone an anti-Japanese immigrant one in light of Japan having been an Allied power in World War One.
and for it to look right.
They almost never do. It's really hard to pull off.
All the time, if I hit certain sites, I'll get ads like "surprising historic photos of the West . . ." or something like that. I don't hit on them, and you can tell even from the ad that the photos are modern photos just by the way the subjects appear.
Likewise, if you go to pinterest you'll get real historic photos, but you'll also get pins that are reeanactors. It's not really hard to tell which are which.
Some of this is obvious. If you hit on a photo of "World War Two infantrymen", black and white and photographed with 100 ASA or not, it still isn't going to look right if the GIs are all about 6' tall, 30 lbs overweight, and middle aged. Nope. That wasn't the average GI.
Likewise, if the "true photographs of the Old West" ad shows a clean, long haired pouty lipped young woman with her blouse partially unbuttoned, and probably holding a Winchester lever action rifle, that's not depicting how any period woman would be photographed. . . even a young woman who knew how to shoot a lever action and owned one.
But in other instances, it's just something. Something hard to define. But you can almost always tell.
You know?
On this day in 1920 the Black Sox scandal hit the Courts.
Chicago White Sox players "Shoeless Joe Jackson", Charles "Swede" Risberg and Buck Weaver played in their final professional major league baseball game of their career.
For most of its history, the majority of the Supreme Court has been made up, predictably, of the founding demographic of the country and reflected that. Most Supreme Court Justices have been Protestant and the most frequently represented Protestant denomination has been the Episcopal Church. Today, however, only one member of the court is Episcopalian and one member, Justice Thomas, is a former Episcopalian. Indeed, oddly, Justice Gorsuch was raised a Catholic and became an Episcopalian and Justice Thomas was raised Catholic, became an Episcopalian and then reverted to his Catholicism. There is, in fact, some speculation that Gorsuch may in fact regard himself as a Catholic, which some highly traditional Episcopalians do.
No other Protestant denominations are represented on the Court today at all.
The majority of those on the bench today are Catholics or a near majority, depending upon the degree of affiliation with the Church they actually have. Some are known to be quite observant, such as Justice Thomas. Others, like Justice Sotomayor, appear to be nominal Catholics.
The first Catholic justice was Roger B. Taney, who was appointed in 1837 at a time with anti Catholicism was rampant in the country, making his appointment accordingly quite surprising. That he was Chief Justice is all the more surprising. His wife was an Episcopalian and his children raised in that faith, making him, at least to that extent, a non observant Catholic to some degree.
Fifteen member of the court have been Protestants without declared confessions.
Louis Brandeis was the first Supreme Court Justice who was Jewish. He was appointed to the bench in 1916. Interestingly, however, Judah P. Benjamin would have had that honor in 1853 but declined it. He want on to be the Secretary of State for the Confederacy, a much less honorable role. There have been a total of eight Jewish justices to date.
The religious makeup of the Court is a significant matter as the Court tends to be weighted heavily towards intellectuals who are often deeply informed by their faiths. The significant number of Catholic members and Jewish members in recent years says something about the demographics of the Court and it reflects back on the world view, albeit not perfectly, of those on the bench. It tends to also show the degree to which the law reflects itself as a profession toward enduringly immigrant populations. Law is often imagined as a career of the wealthy, but in reality it tends to be a profession of minorities, who always have need of it.
Trump’s likely RBG replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, is a Catholic extremist with 7 children who does not believe employers should be required to provide healthcare coverage for birth control. She wants the rest of American women to be stuck with her extreme lifestyle.Documentarian Arlen Parsa.* **
I am not the Catholic candidate for President [but a candidate] who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.In retrospect, Kennedy was a pretty bad Catholic in general, but his position was embraced by American Catholics in a way that brought about sweeping changes.Catholic politicians, rapidly followed in Kenney's wake and adopted his formula, rejecting prior Presidential nominee Al Smith's position that:
I do not want any Catholic to vote for me . . . because I am a Catholic. . . . But, on the other hand, I have the right to say that any citizen of this country . . . [who] votes against me because of my religion, he is not a real, pure, genuine American.Smith didn't walk away from his faith the way that Kennedy did, but thousands of Catholic politicians did to be followed by thousands of rank and file Catholics. In essence, Kennedy advanced the position that a person's religion only really mattered as to what he did on Sundays. Smith didn't state that.
The best posts of the week of September 20, 2020.
On Saturday's, among other things, I try to post stuff outdoorsy.
Ideally, try to go do something outdoorsy, but due to one thing or another, I don't always manage that. Anyhow, given that it is a Saturday, this story, which is just breaking, is sort of fitting.
Followers of the Trump Administration who really look at it, not just the superficial top of the news cycle stuff, tend to find that its difficult to reconcile the headlines with actions in any one area, and indeed, the Administration is quite balkanized in regard to anyone topic. Followers of the Supreme Court, for example, have to be impressed by the line of judges appointed by the Trump Administration even if they're in the camp that's shrill about the the appointments for ideological reasons. Indeed, overall the Administration has been amazingly efficient at appointing judges, and quality judges at that.
Businessmen I know have tended to be impressed by the roll back in regulations, something perhaps no other administration has been able to do to the same degree. Followers of Middle East diplomacy have been impressed by matters involving Israel while simultaneously baffled by the US's relationship with Russia and Turkey. Those following the pandemic have tended to be angered by the lack of a seeming theme to the national approach to that, something that the President is likely to pay for in November.
All this stands aside and apart from simply reacting to Trump and his statements, in any form, themselves.
One area in which conservationist could generally take heart is that his appointments in regard to public lands have been good. They've kept the lands in Federal hands, which means keeping them open to the public, something that has gone in opposition to the expressed desires of regional politicians even though it matters enormously to the region's residents.
And then there was the appointment of William Perry Pendley.
Pendley is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who has made a career that's been, in at least some instances, hostile to public lands agencies and who has associated with wanting them to be transferred to the states, something strongly opposed by the region's residents. When he was appointed regional residents concerned with this issue gasped.* Pendley insisted that as head of the agency he would represent the views of the Administration, which have not supported such a transfer, but area residents never felt easy about his appointment.
Apparently the Senate didn't either, probably reflecting the views of area residents as well as national views, as they didn't confirm Pendley. He remained in as a temporary head but this lead to a suit by Montana's Governor, Steve Bullock, a Democrat who is currently running for the Senate. Bullock is challenging incumbent Steve Daines. Even though outsiders frequently confuse Montana and Wyoming, their politics are radically different and the Democratic Party has remained viable in Montana, whereas its on life support in Wyoming.
Pendley's appointment was in fact hurting Daines who is struggling to retain his seat against Bullock, who started off the election season attempting to run for the Oval Office. Bullock's effort there fell flat, but it hasn't against Daines.
Montana's politics remain much more centrist than Wyoming's and may be described as center left, something that's been attributed to immigration into the state but which in fact has always characterized its politics. Montana sent Jeanette Ranking to the Senate twice, giving Montana the unique status of having the nation's only Senator to vote "No" to entering World War One and World War Two. Montana's rank and file out in the sticks voters tend to have the same "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone" view that Wyoming's native voters do as well, which actually favors the center left if the parties are listening, as long as those candidates are opposed to gun control. They also need to be strongly in favor of public lands. Outsiders describe Montana as "deep Red", but they're wrong.
Daines is in real trouble and has recently been attempting to boost his outdoor creds in legislation, but more than one Montana news outlet isn't buying it. Pendley's presence wasn't helping and back in August President Trump withdrew his nomination in an effort to help Daines get reelected.
And Cory Gardner.
Gardner is a Senator from Colorado who is in huge trouble. The one term Senator is behind former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in the polls. Colorado hasn't been reliably Republican, in spite of what the press says, for a long time, and while there's a ways to go and the race is close, Gardner is likely to go down in defeat.
The Federal Court ruling last week that Pendley had to go, ousting him, gives Bullock a victory. So the irony is that while Trump moved to replace Pendley to help Gardner and Daines, it likely places Bullock a bit up in a race in which he very well might be part of a Democratic wave that flips the Senate and which Gardner appears likely to lose. Holding on to the public lands, in Federal hands, is a big deal in Montana, like Wyoming, and while Bullock holds center left views on many things, on the regional core issues, like gun control, he's right of center.
The Department of the Interior expressed "outrage" and promised to appeal immediately. Be that as it may, it appears Pendley's days are up and there's no earthly way that an appeals court will handle this by the election. Chances are it'll stay the order, but that can't be guaranteed.
And there's a lesson here even in Wyoming, where there's been no reversal of opinions on the administration. Pendley's appointment caused stress here among public lands users and it can't be said that the nomination was popular. The GOP has been slipping into internecine conflict in a way that's breaking open in the public, and the Democratic Party is fielding, for the first time in years, candidates for the Senate and House which, while they won't win, can't be simply dismissed. The Trump administration dropped the ball on this one by nominating Pendley in the first place as he could only engender animosity and those whose views he championed didn't need a champion in the first place. Indeed, their keeping views a bit quiet would have been a better approach. Failing to pick up that fumbled ball left it in play, and now the Democrats have successfully picked it up.
Not that the Administration can be fully blamed. Wyoming's senior political leadership at the national level has taken a position that's the opposite of the public's wishes here and an active element of the local GOP has as well. When this breaks out in the legislature it provokes massive reaction from locals, but at a national level, that probably wasn't obvious. It probably won't become obvious until local politicians start to pay the price. They already are, in fact, but it's not apparent for some reason. Hard right GOP candidates didn't win the state house in the 2018 Gubernatorial election here and concern over issues like this is part of the reason why. Now Daines and Gardner appear set to pay the price in November. Jason Chaffetz already paid the price in Utah, leaving office without running for election in 2018.
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*Pendley's also another strange example of the Boomers retention of power. He's currently 75 years old
The first football game played by a member team of the AFPA, the precursor today's NFL, the Rock Island Independents was played against non AFPA St. Paul Ideas. It was counted in the associations season in spite of a non AFPA professional team being the competitor.
The first games between member teams would occur on October 3, 1920 when their were seven matches, but even then two of those seven were against non member teams. Non member teams would figure as a minority of teams that played in the season, but they played nonetheless. The season ran into December.
It's interesting that even in 1920 Sunday games were their norm.
Of the original fourteen teams, only the Chicago Bears remains. Most folded in the 1920s. The Bears were originally the Decatur Staleys.
Now, for this to make sense, it's not just like the Minnesota Long Goodbye. No, these are more like people who showed up an hour into a private party, noted that they weren't invited, and loudly declare that you must have forgotten not to invite them. How could you not, they're they life of the party?
After looking over, and complaining about, the cheese tray, the pick up four or five bottles of beer from the iced sink of beer, proclaim them all pedestrian, and then open your refrigerator to look for the bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti Grand Cru they're sure you have as a good host. You don't, so they settle for opening the bottle of pedestrian Chianti you were saving for a Sunday Italian dinner, opening it without asking. After that, they spend the rest of the evening loudly dominating the conversation on topics that nobody else wants to talk about, until all the guests go home and they fall asleep on the couch after spilling garlic cheese dip all over their clothes. . . and the couch.
Hillary Clinton is one such person.
She's showing up on all the news shows. The Biden/Harris campaign must cringe every time she does.
And she's starting a podcast. . . just the focus on a Democrat that Biden and Harris really need.
Not only that, but wherever Hillary goes, Monica Lewinsky isn't far behind. Lewinsky's moment in the sun came for being involved in an icky tryst with Bill Clinton. But that's over. We don't bother Bill about that anymore, and we don't want to hear from Monica about it either. Indeed, following the wake of the times, she's' gone from dimwit paramour to abused victim of the patriarchy in her presentation, when in reality the whole thing was two people of dubious personal morality meeting up in the wrong place and time. At least it's not as bad as the stuff Kennedy was up to.
Hillary. Go home.
Monica, don't get out of your car.
