The best post of the week of April 11, 2021
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgist Part 13. Nature and Homo Sapien Sapien
It ain't your Disney Nature
Okay, this isn't relevant, but I have posted a lot on the Punitive Expedition, and I hadn't seen this cartoon before.
Headline:'Mad Men' star January Jones 'forced to bludgeon' a rattlesnake after one bit her dog.
Good for her.
I don't know who January Jones is, and I've never seen Mad Men. I'm probably the only person on earth who has not. I'm not going to either as the concept of a drama based on advertising executives bores me. I think it was probably popular in the first place as people who are young enough that the 50s and 60s seems like ancient times are fascinated by the second half of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, wich are "the 50s" in our imagination.
Indeed, while that diverts from this, its interesting how nobody thinks of the first half of the 1950s in this fashion. The Korean War, for example, wasn't fun. Or glamorous. And American Graffiti is set in 1962, even though everyone seems to think it was set in the 50s. It wasn't. Indeed, it was filmed in 1973, which is really remarkable, as it was nostalgic about a prior era that was clearly separated from the one it was filmed in, and that era was only a decade prior.
Anyhow, rattlesnakes kill and they're snakes. You need to watch out for them. That a member of the Hollywood set would beat one to death is a good sign.
I'm sure she'll get complaints.
The guy who tossed a bobcat out from under his wife's car probably will get complaints too. He shouldn't, but he was pretty lucky that worked out for him really. I like cats, but I wouldn't want to tangle with one.
Will somebody turn off the microphones please?
Headline:
Trump goes after McConnell, Fauci in off-script Mar-a-Lago speech
Somehow Donald Trump, after driving the GOP into the ground following his defeat in the election, has managed to retain a following. What the crud? It's truly amazing.
The Republicans ought to be irate right now with Trump. He ruined their changes of keeping the Senate. Somehow, he still gets air time. This is a bit like some somewhat inebriated guy who was offered to give a toast failing to get off the stage after starting to tell embarrassing stories about the bride and her family.
Turn off the mike already before things get worse.
Of course, this may be because there's nobody who can seemingly carrying the populist standard. There are some populist candidates right now, but either they're politically unattractive in some ways, or just get more or less ignored. It's interesting.
On this topic, Trump was interfering with Wyoming politics this past week as well. He announced that he was assessing the candidates who will run against Elizabeth Cheney and will endorse one of them, but he's not sure which. It won't matter, that candidate is going down in defeat. He also endorsed the head of the state's GOP in that role, which isn't too surprising as that person has been such a big backer of his.
All this while the GOP in D.C. is trying to distance itself from Trump, with Biden opening up some doors for them in that regard. They'd get further if Trump wasn't in the news.
Burn Notice
Matt Gaetz, not Michael Weston
A Trumpite and Cheney opponent who has been getting a lot of air time, first welcome, and now not, is asserting that the "Deep State" is after him.
The Deep State is a hard right concept that bureaucrats deeply entrenched in office operate to keep themselves in office from administration to administration as they're primary goal and that they basically function to override democracy.
As with most better myths, there's an element of truth to this as bureaucrats really are deeply invested in their own jobs and tend to, at some point, value them above everything else. And many do indeed ride out careers over multiple administrations. Making it that way was a goal of reform in the early 20th Century when Civil Service rules were put in place such that entire groups of bureaucrats didn't loose their jobs when high offices went from one party to the other. Before that, they were all subject to patronage, which still exist to some degree, but not anywhere near to the degree which it once did. None of that is particularly sinister however.
A bit beyond that it can be the case that career civil service people will dislike an administration. That's pretty common as well. But the conspiratorial assumptions that get attributed to this are largely unmerited. Not only that, but they fed into a Q Anon belief that everything was in control of some sinister forces, which simply isn't true.
Anyhow, Matt Gaetz says that he "may be a cancelled man", and, moreover he may even be cancelled by the "Deep State". This really feeds into that conspiratorial nonsense.
It's also part of the times now in a way that was trailblazed first by Donald Trump but more perfectly by Governor Cuomo. During the recent "Me Too" episode it was pretty clear that an accusation alone, unless it was flat out false or flat out unprovable, was the end of a public person's career. Trump just ignored such accusations against him, however, and they didn't stick. Cuomo denied them but has flat out refused to resign. Gaetz is following the Cuomo playbook but ramping it up.
Did Gaetz do the icky things he's accused of? I have no idea, but we'll probably all get to find out. At any rate, a man who is so modelesque as himself really ought not to be trusted, in my view, as there's something wrong with that, and it has nothing to do with the "Deep State".
Dignified Schadenfreude
Cheney was asked about Gaetz and Trump on this weekends Face the Nation, which I don't normally watch. She was first asked about Trump and pretty much, in as dignified way as possible, and very effectively, seated him next to Jefferson Davis in the nation's list of people whom you wouldn't find seating for even if they slipped you a $50. Her dissing of Gaetz, however, was simply beautiful.
The hose of Face the Nation is Margaret Brennan, who is pregnant and obviously showing. Cheney congratulated her right off the bat and Brennan very genuinely thanked her. When Gaetz came up, Cheney noted that the allegations were "disgusting", noting her own role as a mother of daughters, and then basically dumped Gaetz in the category of people you wouldn't want your daughter to be associated with. It was masterful.
Really not gasping the wiring
The way we'd probably like to remember Marilyn Monroe, if we could. We really can't, however, as she built her career on her figure in a more revealing way than still rather obvious here (with a nice Yaschaflex camera by the way). From this earlier thread here. Playboy's co-opting of her body, sold several years earlier to a calendar photographer when she was unknown and desperate, nearly ruined her career, which was saved only by Life magazine determining to beat Playboy to the punch and publishing it first. Life's parry saved her from an immediate ruined career, but the overall publicity launched Playboy. In the end, of course, she'd be only one of the lives effectively ruined by Playboy, although her own selling of her image in less graphic form, combined with an early tragic history, played a larger measure in that.
On a somewhat related item to the last couple, a female photographer in town has taken a photo of a group of women in town topless on one of the main streets. It's supposed to highlight "rape culture".
It won't, and that's an incredibly stupid assumption.
I haven't see it, so I'm unable to answer the question, and I'm not going to look for it out of a sense of decency and also, should I see it, I might know somebody and I don't want that image in my mind. But here's a news flash for the photographer.
Men like boobs.
And the like them, um that way.
Entire magazine empires generating billions of dollars have been based on nothing but boobs. Some outrageous percentage of the Internet is basically devoted to boobs, according to people who track such things. Probably more of the Internet is devoted to boobs, and viewed by males, than any other single subject that may rival it in any sense.
Men, everywhere, like boobs. Even women tend to be more than a little fascinated by boobs.
Human beings are mammals and mammals. Of the mammals, primates have the highest sexual dimorphism by quite some measure. Members of the Homo genus, moreover have the highest sexual dimorphism of the primates. It's basically off the charts in the animal kingdom. If you were a space alien and popped down on this planet with no prior knowledge of our species, you'd assume it was two different species the way that you'd note that cattle and sheep are two different species, and one of the things you'd probably note is that one of the species had quite a different body from from the other, and that other was fascinated with it the way that cats are with catnip mice. The dimorphism extends to our physical bodies in an off the chart fashion, and it also, like it or not, extends to our psychological makeup.
Part of that is that human beings, our species, Homo Sapien Sapien, has the highest sex drive of any member of the primates. So we are the pinnacle, for good or ill, in this category. We're extremely unusual in terms of a mammal, including a primate, in that both males and females are attracted to sexual intercourse outside of the females reproductive receptivity. Men are, moreover, off the charts on this, and interested pretty much at any time, if the conditions arise.
One of the ways that condition arises, and indeed the primary one for males of our species, is visual. This goes clean across cultures, beliefs and ages. Basically, men are "turned on" by female bodies. For this reason vast amounts of time and effort are generated across the globe photographing women without their shirts, without their pants, and without their shirts and pants.
Women, on the other hand, are "turned on" in a different, and perhaps we should say more sophisticated, manner, although its one that students of the topic say is messed with by pharmaceutical birth control. Women are more receptive "in season" and their minds automatically figure in a bunch of things about men they meet in regard to their suitability for a lifelong, and that's how it is figured, mate. In other words, when on a hot summer day a single man is met with a woman in a t-shirt that's revealing, his mind goes through something like "woo wee. . . she's hot. . . look at those. . . , is she nice, do I have anything in common. . woo wee. . . she's hot", where as a female's mind goes through something like "is he nice, is he decent, does he look healthy. . . " Etc.
Obviously there's more to it than that, but a lot of first encounters are basically of that nature.
Which gets to the photos.
Sure, some female photographer, or even a male photographer, may feel "this highlights rape culture", but that's complete and total BS. The half of the population you're trying to direct that attention to is going to, no matter, what, think something like "wow, tits. . . now I'll pretend that I'm thinking about oppression. . . look at those tits".
Want to address rape culture? Show a photo of somebody beat up, somebody in poverty, or somebody in the morgue.
A biology class make help too.
I'm not, please note, saying this is great. We live in a fallen world. Providence has made us this way and we have fallen, which means that we need structure in a major way here least we be destructive or miserable. None of which means that this is not so.
And none of which, by the way, means we don't know that. It's easy to pretend we're stripping for art, or a cause, or whatever. In the modern era it happens quite a bit. But when those female shirts come off for what we deem a cause, we haven't really forgotten our existential self. We're just suppressing it.
Obsessed.
The Casper Star Tribune is obsessed with the unproven allegations against retired Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart.
The obsession no doubt stems from his being a Catholic cleric. This doesn't excuse the scandal in the Church that was so much in the news a few years ago and which the Church has now largely addressed. Indeed, nobody has really been willing to look at the larger issues involved in that which tend to run directly counter to cherished liberal sensibilities on society, and would argue for going in a direction that they don't want to go.
Like a lot of places, Wyoming had a little bit of this story in its field, although like every other place, scandals associated with other religions and institutions of the same nature didn't get that much press here. It's odd how that occurred, and indeed while its been largely ignored, the evidence remains that these scandals, considered loosely (i.e., with their specifics, which do vary from religion to religion) are just as prevalent in other faiths. Beyond that, they occurred in other institutions, with the one that plagued the Boy Scouts being the most analogous to the one that struck the Catholic Church. Overall, it still remains the case that the person by far most likely to be be involved in something inappropriate in this area is a school teacher, not a cleric. The fact that school teachers, as a body, are by far the biggest danger is given net to not attention at all even though its the biggest risk. That risk probably largely has a different origin, but it's exceeding odd that you'll have instances of school teachers, including female school teachers, who engage in multiple sexual relationship with their students and its always regarded as an individual, not an institutional failing. Always.
It's actually a societal one.
Anyhow, Bishop Hart has always denied the accusations against him and after multiple investigations he's never been charged. At some point, people need to move on from this as a story, but neither the local press or Diocese of Cheyenne are, even though in the last instances a legal inquiry from Rome also did not find Bishop Hart guilty of the accusations levied against him.
The practical truth is that once such an accusation is levied, it's impossible to ever restore your reputation. Its' just ruined. For that reason, such accusations really ought to always be approached exceedingly cautiously. False accusations of sexual misconduct are not as uncommon as a person might wish to believe, and even accusations of rape, one of the worst crimes imaginable, have been shown to be completely false over time. Recently there was an example of a man released from prison here who had served years and years on a false accusation of rape. Whey a person would make such an accusation, I don't know, but it occurred, and later DNA evidence proved it false. In terms of a religious example, St. Padre Pio, now a very venerated saint, suffered such accusations during his lifetime that proved to be false.
No matter, the Tribune is now basically accusing the local district attorney of dropping the ball on the last attempt to prosecute and the Cheyenne police are complicate in the effort. The Trib is throwing rocks at both institutions and basically asserting that the Bishop is guilty, even though multiple district attorneys have passed on a prosecution.
People who aren't in the law aren't really aware how inclined prosecutors are to charge in general. They aren't hesitant. When they actually don't, there's a good reason they aren't.
No matter, the Trib has decided guilt here and that's enough for them, and probably most of their readers.
The Diocese of Cheyenne cant' seem to give this up either, which sort of oddly places them on the same train as the Trib. I've written about that before, but during this era of pandemic, the Diocese has done a very poor job in reaching out to their current parishioners, while doing a really good job of keeping everyone apprised of its current views on Bishop Hart. What is seemingly missing here is that most Catholics here weren't here when Bishop Hart was the Bishop. Quite a few of them weren't alive, and many of those who were, were either very young or living in a different Diocese. Bishop Hart has almost no relevance to any Wyoming Catholic today.
Coronavirus and the Diocese failing to reach out to its flock do.
On a slightly related matter, news has broken that Boston's PD may have covered up multiple allegations of sexual molestation by one of its members, who was also a union rep, back in the 1990s.
You haven't heard of that? It's funny what scandal related stories get lots of press and those which don't. Police departments have certainly been in the news a lot recently, but not for this sort of stuff, and they more or less still are not.
One heck of a towing bill
The Ever Given is being held by Egyptian authorities until the price tag for the recent Suez Canal incident can be worked out. It's a huge bill, something like $1B.
It reminds me in a weird sort of way of what happens when cars are towed off.
This was on my mind anyhow as somebody parked in my parking spot for two days running. It miffs me when somebody parks there as I have to park in somebody else's spot when that happens and I have to guess which one is actually free to park in. One day is bad, but two days?
This isn't a good sign as usually when this starts to occur its somebody who is living downtown and is under the assumption that a private parking lot is public, or is just flat out ignoring it, so it tends to repeat.
New Mexico opts for stupefaction
Joining the North American rush to make the general populace stupefied, New Mexico has become the latest state to legalize marijuana.
There's no good evidence that we need to numb the population any more than it already is, or at least none to suggest that this produces a positive result. It's distressing that moving in this direction is becoming an overwhelming trend. The entire culture seems intent on self medicating itself.
Calculating risk
On medications, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was pulled due to a risk of blood clots that's way below that of being struck by lightening.
I guess the medicos must do what they do, but there's already a fair number of Americans who aren't getting the vaccinations even though almost all of them have been vaccinated for something else in the past. Indeed, its heavily concentrated, oddly enough, by region and political party, even though the leaders of both parties have endorsed vaccination.
I had a conversation with somebody on this who is up in the age group that ought to get vaccinated but is "going to wait". I never could get a clear explanation on what they were waiting for, but what this caused me to recall is that there are pharmaceuticals out there with really demonstrated risks that people freely accept the risk for without a second thought. Birth control drugs are one. They actually have pretty significant risks of all sorts, but nobody really bothers to ponder that as we don't want to. COVID 19 vaccinations, on the other hand, have low risks that people are over weighing.
We can't shovel snow?
The recent snowstorm before the last series of storms cost Casper $500,000. It's thinking of asking for help from FEMA.
It seems weird to ask the Federal Government for emergency funds for something like this.
The Famous
The Gibson Girl.
Then one of the local news outlets reported that one Jeffree Star and his close friend had been an automobile wreck the other day. This is not surprising as the weather had been crappy and the roads bad. Lots of people had wrecks. Most of them didn't make the news however.
As far as I can tell, Star is famous for being famous. Without bothering to research him, he's apparently a media personality who combines being a transvestite with outrageous and reportedly racist opinions. At some point during the later period of the Trump Administration he moved here out of the misimpression that Wyomingites harbor views similar to his.
In reality at least the natives do not, but those of us who are natives or who are regional natives are admittedly getting very tired of being told what we think by those who have moved in here in recent years and harbor similar misimpressions. It's getting pretty silly. Just a few weeks ago a politician here insulted Elizabeth Cheney for not living here when the same person moved in here and isn't a native either.
There's no doubt however that something strange is in the air now days. The primary weltanschauug of the region and particularly the state used to be "I don't care what the crap you do, just leave me the heck alone.". This is quite a bit different from the populist view that's been circulating in recent years. Indeed, I can recall back in the late 1980s when I was finishing law school (it seems amazing to realize that it was that long ago) that some group tried to move into a Wyoming community in the northern part of the state that espoused racist ideas and met with a huge protest that basically drove them out of town.
We're rednecks, basically, not racists.
I don't know about Star as I'm disinterested in him, and I'm amazed that people are interested in him, but I note that as he apparently says some awful things. But I also don't get the entire class of people who are famous just for that.
Not that this is a new thing, really. Just a couple of months ago on a daily update regarding 1921 I noted a person who was basically famous for being famous. In another sort of way the entire character represented by Holly Golightly, whom I also mentioned in a recent thread, also was that sort of person, albeit in fiction but apparently at least somewhat based on reality.
Social media and Youtube, combined with television, has really unleashed the floodgates on this however. Early media took the vulgar and made some of its participants famous, as when Barbee Benton transitioned from being one of Playboy's big boob models to being Hugh Hefner's girlfriend to being some sort of actress, something that wouldn't have happened quite so seamlessly, or at least openly, in an earlier era. But now those steps are really skipped.
To add a bit, this reminds of a natural view of the world. Some women who has a vlog on fashion has one, that's really well done, on female beauty in the first half of the 20th Century that tracks media images, such as the Gibson Girl and the movie starlets, against the actual times. It's pretty though provoking, starting off with the fact that in 1900 when the Gibson Girl was the standard, 40% of women were employed in rough menial work. We've noted this before in regards to the evolution of women's employment. So there's the image, and theirs the reality.
Reality for good or ill is reality, and we ought to be real.
April 17, 1941. Contrasts.
It remained the Easter season and Orthodox Easter had not yet occurred. Armenian Orthodox at St. James Church in Jerusalem were conducting the foot washing ceremony associated with the season.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Italian forces assaulted Tobruk but were repulsed by artillery. The military government in Iraq that had seized power there in a recent coup asked the Germans for military assistance against the British.
On the same day, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany, although that would not bring any semblance of peace to the country, which would soon be the location of a protracted guerilla war.
April 17, 1921. Sir Herbert Samuel's visits Transjordan for the second time.
The first time was a bit of a disaster as the British government had to renounce certain proclamations that Sir Herbert had made.
This time went better. Quite a turn out was there in recognition of the official nature of the event, including the Bedouins depicted above.
Transportation wasn't limited to the old fashioned and traditional, however. British aircraft were present at the Amman airfield.
Friday, April 16, 2021
Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.
Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.: Google seems pretty intent on destroying the Blogger format, which means that for people like me, who have blogged on blogger, we have a cho...
A followup on this item posted yesterday.
Google's detraction from this blogging platform takes place in July of this year, so hopefully a fix is found in the form of a work around before that. Right now, there seems no clear option.
If that's the case we basically have to start a new blog on World Press, which would be a series of new blogs really given as we have multiple ones, or give up blogging entirely. We're leaning toward the latter.
My prediction is that this is the end of blogger. Nobody in their right mind would create a new blog using blogger that laced a "subscribe by email" feature. Somebody might figure out how to do a gadget for it that you can program in, but new blogger blogs are, and now should be, a thing of the past.
Thursday, April 15, 2021
April 15, 1921. Transportation and Loans
Horse transportation in Alaska, April 15, 1921.
On this day in 1921 the French Cabinet of Ministers voted to occupy the Ruhr in Germany if Germany did not make its 1B Mark reparations' payment by May 10.
President Harding met President Charles D. B. of Liberia, following that nations repayment of a $5,000,000 load from the United States.
Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.
Google seems pretty intent on destroying the Blogger format, which means that for people like me, who have blogged on blogger, we have a choice of ultimately finding a new blogging service (which is what I think Google would like for us to do) or continue to try to find work arounds.
Over 1,000 people subscribe to this blog by email. Come July, that feature will be dysfunctional thanks to Google:
FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner) is going away
You are receiving this information because your blog uses the FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner).
Recently, the Feedburner team released a system update announcement , that the email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021.
After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported. If you’d like to continue sending emails, you can download your subscriber contacts. Learn how
So, starting in July, your email subscriptions won't work any longer.
I'd suggest you opt for the RSS feed if you receive this by email so you keep getting the blog, if you like the blog. I'm sure a lot of people will simply drop off.
In the meantime, we'll look for a replacement gadget, but even though the work around allows for a new system, I'm not going to hand enter over 1000 email address as I do have a full time job, etc. You'll probably have to resubscribe if you like the blog, which is a good reason just to opt for the RSS feed.
And we'll look for an alternative platform, although we hate to do it as we do like this platform. Or frankly we'll ponder, if this and other things are going to destroy these blogs, doing what Google apparently wants us to do, and simply quit blogging.
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Mid Week At Work: Realities of the marketplace. Discrimination, the Old Law, Circumstances and Nature
I had one item here I was going to cautiously blog about, and then a second came up by surprise. I'll start with the second and take it first.
I ought to note that these are both items that figure into the "fools rush in" category of things.
Dissing the Guard
National Guard M88, South Korea, 1987.
A friend of mine called me up mad.
He and I had been National Guardsmen together at about the same time.
"Yeoman, you and I both took basic and advanced training at the same time and you know that we were at Ft. Sill so long that we received discharges from the Regular Army".
"Um, yeah. . .?"
"Then why aren't we veterans?"
"Um, well Phil, we are. . . "
Phil went on. What he meant was that while we are both veterans, with honorable discharges from the U.S. Army, we don't qualify as veterans for Federal employment consideration.
Phil is correct. According to an online Guard publication that's supposed to be in the nature of good news for former Guard members:
ARLINGTON, Va. – A recently signed law gives official veteran status to National Guard members who served 20 years or more. Previously, Guard members were considered veterans only if they served 180 days or more in a federal status outside of training.
Twenty years or more. . .
Phil lost his job in the oil slide that's been going on over the past year and he's been looking for a new one. He's not out of work actually, he's a handy guy and one of those people who seems to pick up employment even with things are in the dumps. Having worked at the same place for now 30+ years I'm not a handy guy, that way, and even though I can do a lot of things, I know that if the same thing happened to me, I'd be doomed.
"Thirty years as a lawyer? Go apply at the U.S. Attorney's office. . ."
"But sir, I'm the only living person who knows how to plow a field with a California Plow and a mule named Sparky and. . ."
"U.S. Attorney's office. . . "
You get the picture.
California plow.
Or so I suppose. I haven't seen any job openings for plowmen and for that matter, while I know what a California Plow is, I don't actually know how to plow with one with any sort of equine, let alone a mule named Sparky.
Which raises another point, one touched on below, but I'll get back to that.
I loved being in the National Guard and was in it for six years. So was Phil. That is, he was in for six years. I don't know if he loved the Guard but he didn't complain about it. Anyhow, we were in during the Cold War, which is significant here as it means that during our six years of service we were trained in, and told to expect, fighting the Red Menace.
It wasn't really obvious at the time that the Red Menace was having serious problems. Reddit Marxists would claim that's because "real" Socialism has never been tried, but the experiment wasn't working well and Poland left the orbit, followed by the collapse of the USSR. China was still a menace at the time, of course, but it wasn't acting like Wilhelmian Germany yet and was mostly a menace in its own neighborhood. Of course there was North Korea, like now, which makes a theme out of menacing.
Anyhow, during the Cold War era reservists didn't see much activation for small wars as, for one reason, there weren't very many small wars that the U.S. directly got into, as once it did, they turned into big wars. So, while the US messed around in central Africa and in Central America, it mostly did it in the late Cold War stage through proxies or clandestinely.
Once the USSR collapsed, that changed. In 1980 going into a war in Iraq would have been dicey with the USSR so near. In 1990, with the Soviet Union folding up, not so much.
So we drilled and trained and went to war games. But we never shot at Ivan, or Lee, or Chan.
Which is just fine.
But apparently that's not good enough for the Federal Government if you are seeking employment.
Cold War reservists can't claim veterans status of Federal employment forms.
My supposition is that post Cold War ones called into active service for various wars we've fought since 1990 can, because they were activated and therefore qualify.
Which is odd as Phil and I are veterans for other things. Indeed, it was once suggested to me that for some sort of vaccination I ought to go to the VA, which wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise.
Is Phil right that this is unfair?
Well, my instinct is that he's right. We served for six years in a climate which actually was dangerous to some degree. If there'd been the war we were training for, we would have had to go, and there's a good chance a lot of us wouldn't have come back. Our combat rating was as high as the Regular Armies, and just because we were also training from home doesn't really make an intrinsic difference in that. Sgt. Smith serving in the RA at Ft. Sill and Sgt. Smith working at Haliburton in Wyoming both would have seen the same combat experience. But only one of them is eligible to claim veterans status for Federal employment.
Without knowing for sure, I suspect that some of this is a legacy of really long prejudice in the active military against the Guard, and some of it is lingering prejudice from the Vietnam War. Thanks to Robert Strange McNamara and his bad of deluded technocrats combined with the bumbling of Lyndon Johnson the Guard was not deployed to the Vietnam War until late. The irony is that the US used the Guard in every major war of the 20th Century and couldn't have fought any of them, save for Vietnam, without the Guard.
The mishandling of the Army, including its reserve components, during the Vietnam War nearly destroyed the entire Army during the war and didn't lasting damage to the Guard's reputation. Often missed in the story is that by end of the Vietnam War the U.S. Army was in such bad shape that it was rapidly reaching the point of combat ineffectiveness in the war and it was in a very sorry situation everywhere else. The Guard had declined during the war as well as it became a haven for those trying to evade active service, although following the war it rapidly became a haven for combat vets that weren't able to adjust back to civilian life, meaning that it had an inordinate number of combat veterans. By the late 1970s both forces were rebounding and today they're both excellent.
Be that as it may, the intentional decision not to deploy the Guard during the Vietnam War in order to avoid community discontent by removing a large number of men from any one town lead to some prejudice against it that lingered really until the Gulf War. Never mind that those soldiers who served in it during the Cold War would have been just as likely to die in any major conflict as a soldier of the Regular Army, and also never mind that by and large the US avoided the small wars that its fought since the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, out of a fear that they'd turn into big wars. And, as noted, the Regular military has had a prejudice against the Guard that runs back to the 19th Century, even though time and time again its proven unmerited.
So, while I don't know this for certain, I suspect that Guardsmen and Reservists whose Regular service was for training, no matter how long, are dissed in Federal employment due to a legacy of this prejudice.
Or maybe because I was a Guardsmen who holds an Honorable Discharge from the Regular Army, I just think its unfair as Phil does. A personal connection with things will do that.
I'll note by the way that for some of us, that six years meant a lot more than "drills on weekends and two weeks in the summer". For one thing, some summer ATs actually run three, not two, weeks in length. Be that as it may if I include time in which I was simply employed at the armory by the unit in the summer, it's add about eight months of service to my original RA three, which would give me element months. Add to that actual drill times and training periods outside of the summer, I'm up over that. I figured once that I had about two years of time, cumulative, serving.
No matter, it wasn't twenty reserve time. So you can't claim the status for Federal employment purposes. It doesn't matter if your job was combat arms and the guy you are competing against manned the soft serve ice-cream machine in San Diego. . .he's getting the status and you are not.
Oorah.
The Old Rules on Male/Female Employment remain more than people imagine.
It's really common for articles to appear once per year decrying, and legitimately so, the inequality between the pay of men and women.
It's not that easy of a story, however, as often men's pay is due to their being in occupations that men gravitate towards and women do not, and often they're hard, physical and dangerous jobs. In Wyoming, where the income inequality is huge, lots of men have in recent decades worked as oilfield roughnecks.
Very few women have.
But it's a well paying job.
Statistics report that women still make less in truly equal positions, such as, supposedly, female lawyers making less then men, but I somewhat doubt those figures and if that was true, it's rapidly ceasing to be true.
The point may be that, in spite of the efforts of the Woke to compel people to believe that all occupations are gender neutral, in reality they aren't, and men and women tend to gravitate towards certain types of employment.
And one of those areas is the home, for women.
I don't mean to suggest that this is a poor choice in any fashion whatsoever, but rather note that this is a reality.
The reason that this came to mind, although I've thought about posting on it before, is also due to a discussion with a friend. The friend just turned 50 years of age and is now really focused on retirement.
It's an odd focus in his case as he has five children and none of them are out of school yet. None. That means that he has years and years to go in which they'll be in school, and then in university. I don't know the ages of his younger kids so I don't really know how that plays out, but it would mean that he'd be at least 60.
I'd also note that his wife opted to stay home to raise the five.
In our conversation, he mentioned age 55, but that's not realistic in his case at all Be that as it may, it turns out to be the case that at age 55, or maybe 55.5, a person can start drawing on their 401K in some fashion.
Now, this isn't retirement advice as I haven't studied this and I don't know what the parameters are, but I hit 55.5 over two years ago and that therefore was an interesting fact. It was an interesting fact right up until it dawned on me, which was pretty quickly, that my long suffering spouse is a little over ten years younger than I am.
That's significant as when people look at retirement they ought to be looking at the burn rate of their retirement savings. Will you have enough, that is, to last until you die?
Nobody really knows when they're going to die, of course, but a person retiring at age 55 probably ought to expect to live at least to their point of life expectancy, if not longer, even though they very will might not. It'd be the pits to burn through retirement by 65 and then be waiting for the Social Security check to arrive to buy groceries. Of course, that may well mean that a person in that position may die by 57 and never have retired. That may sound extreme but my father died at age 62 and he never retired. For that matter, his father was in his 40s when he died, and my long lived mother's father was 58 when he died. He was medically retired, however, at the time, not a pleasant situation either.
Anyhow, if you are happily figuring "hey, I'll have enough to retire at 55 if I plan on living until 80, when the last drop of my savings runs out", but your wife is 45. . . . , well perhaps you better rethink that.
And here's where the basic nature of the sexes comes back in.
At least in my generational cohort, a lot of women aren't as well educated as men, and their employment choices are therefore much more limited. They aren't absent, but they're limited. My wife's a good example. She has some post high school education, but not at the same level that I do.
Now, lots of professional men I know have a wife that's also a member of the same profession. They probably met at school or work. But here's where the difference comes back in again. I've known a fare number of women who have dropped out of their professional employment in order to stay home with children. I've known exactly one man, and only one, who has done the same.
Why is that?
Well, that's because its a feature of The Old Law. It may be the case that society holds that men and women should each have equal employment, but in reality, biology makes this a different matter. Men can father children, but they can't give birth to them, they aren't physically equipped to feed them when they are infants, and they aren't really emotionally equipped to nurture them when they are young. They just aren't. Women are.
Which is an application of biological reality and therefore, fine.
It also means, however that the iron law of male employment is always at work.
Men have fewer options on employment than women, in existential terms. Sure, by nature men can be roughnecks and by biology and temperament they're suited to be soldiers, which women are not, in my view. But they can't just drop out of the work force and stay at home like their wives can. They cannot.
They also at some point are not only pulling the freight, but for a lot of them are pulling it after they probably shouldn't be, as they have no choice.
Is that unfair? Well, probably some people reading this, if anyone does, are assuming I'm endorsing unfairness. Rather, what I'm doing is noting the way of the world. We may deem it personally unfair in all sorts of ways, but that's the way of the world. The fact that I have to wear glasses may strike me as unfair, or that the prior two generations of my male ancestors died young and diverted the agricultural directions of our family into the office, twice, may strike me as unfair. But universal fairness isn't part of the deal.
Basic biological reality, i.e., the difference between the sexes, isn't unfair, however. It just is. The fact that we ignore this to the extent that we do is because; 1) in an a period of unprecedented societal wealth we can get away with ignoring that to some extent, and 2) in the advance stage of the industrial revolution we live in, we've forced, for a bunch of reasons (many just societal) women into the work force full scale the way we did with men in the late 20th Century and 3) with really advanced technology and outsized industrial might, we haven't had to fight and evenly matched wars or quasi evenly matched wars since the end of the Vietnam War (which was evenly matched in part due to the competence of the NVA, and in part due to the fact that we also had to worry about full scale wars in Europe and South Korea, and elsewhere, the entire time).
So what of that? Well, not much. Just that the old existential laws are never far from the surface, no matter how much we might imagine that we're exempt from them.
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
April 13, 1941. Non Aggression and Aggression
The Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan signed a five year non aggression pact. It stated:
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, guided by a desire to strengthen peaceful and friendly relations between the two countries, have decided to conclude a pact on neutrality, for which purpose they have appointed as their Representatives:
The USSR violated it before its expiration, going to war with Japan in 1945.
Well. . . .it did.
The Soviet Union's late entry into the war was inevitable if cynical. The treaty had served its purpose by then allowing the USSR a free hand against Nazi Germany for four years and allowing Japan a free hand against the Western Allies for the same period of time.
On the same day, the USSR and the Japanese Empire reached an accord on Mongolia and Manchuria which stated:
In conformity with the spirit of the Pact on neutrality concluded on April 13, 1941, between the U.S.S.R. and Japan, the Government of the U.S.S.R. and the Government of Japan, in the interest of insuring peaceful and friendly relations between the two countries, solemnly declare that the U.S.S.R. pledges to respect the territorial integrity and inviolability of Manchoukuo and Japan pledges to respect the territorial integrity and inviolability of the Mongolian People's Republic.Moscow, April 13, 1941On behalf of the Government of the U.S.S.R.V. MOLOTOVOn behalf of the Government of JapanYOSUKE MATSUOKA YOSHITSUGU TATEKAWA
Pope Pius XII held Easter Mass inside a chapel in the Vatican rather in St. Peter's Square due to the war.
Today in World War II History—April 13, 1941
The Germans were advancing rapidly everywhere in Greece. And the Germans took Belgrade.
April 13, 1921. Opening Day
Harding throwing out the opening ball for the Washington Senators.
Walter Johnson, Jr., son of the Washington Senators' pitcher and manager.
Pershing raising and saluting the flag.
Monday, April 12, 2021
Lancaster PA, 1946. Bob Hess Dodge Plymouth receiving a shipment of new vehicles.
It was the first shipment of new vehicles since the start of World War Two.
And the first with the brand new Power Wagon.
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