Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXIV. The Neighborhood News List

I suppose that it's inevitable in the era of social medical that all forms of it devolve to the lowest common denominator.

It's unfortunate, but also oddly illustrative of how people think.

Our city and maybe every city, has a net based site which sends out emails and has a webpage on things of importance and interest to the community.  Indeed, I think it's a national service, which is tailored for each community.

It's supposed to be focused on community news.

You know, such as "saw weird creeper looking through my car on XYZ street last night" or "what's the weird insect that's been mowing my lilacs down . . . "

But of course, sooner or later, you get the the same deluded crap that shows up on all social medial everywhere and, ultimately, pollutes it.

You know, of course, what I mean without even saying it.  The comments by those who seriously believe that everyone thinks exactly what they do on controversial issues.  Perhaps this forum is even more tailor-made for it, as its local.  So you have some poor sot who thinks that everyone in his community must think the same way as he does, as of course he believes that he's the soul of reason.

Some examples.

Riiterhouse

Just recently somebody posted the results of the Ritterhouse jury on the service, apparently believing that everyone must be following the results of a trial in Wisconsin even if they live in Wyoming, and of course it's posted in the "hurrah" type of fashion.

This came about as in "Hey!  Ritterhouse in!" or something like that.

This isn't Wisconsin, and based on what little I've paid attention this, we all ought to be mighty glad about that.  We don't need random opinions, really, on jury verdicts in controversial cases in other states.  It only drags their slop into ours.

Beyond that, in backrooms and places where people can express their true feelings about matters, a lot of Wyomingites have pretty nuanced feelings about the case.  I'm not hearing too many people cheering the kids three shootings, and even he doesn't seem to be doing that now.  

At any rate, that issue has nothing to do with your neighborhood.

And of course, politics

And things being what they are, that means extreme right wing politics.  

Just yesterday somebody with strong right wing populist feelings posted a "remember not to vote for" post about a member of the House.  This person claimed the Representative is "no good for Wyoming".

Pretty quickly, some people rose to his defense, naturally enough. And in doing so they took aim at another Representative who is in the news a lot, and whom they noted is from California.

The first commenter never did say what it was that the Representative he was complaining about did, other than that he said he'd gone to them with the concerns "of a lot of people".

It's pretty clear that the complainer is an extreme right wing populist, but the interesting thing here is the "Wyoming" claim.  I know that the person he's complaining about is a Wyoming native.  The person he's praising, is not.  Indeed, the candidate the writer is complaining of is a third generation Wyomingite and the one he likes really is a fairly recent out of state import.

And this is super common with our state's politic's, actually. The real fire breathing street level right wing populists tend to be imports from other states. Wyoming is a Republican state, but most of the GOP here is pretty middle of the road, at the street level, and not so populist, at least in the towns.  Out in rural areas this tends, however, to be different.

I've noted this in person as well.  I'll meet people from other areas and they'll comment on an issue with their very right wing opinion with the assumption that because I'm a native, my view must be populist on the far right.  Most people from here, however, have a real mix of views and are pretty nuanced.

Which gets back to lists.  Why annoy a neighborhood list with this sort of stuff.

Babble

While I'm on this, I'll note that a really good way to tell if a person, even in print, is an import from outside the region is if they use diction that demonstrates that they've watched too many Western movies.

"While doggone me jibbers, pilgrim, that ole politikking jabberer . . . "

Yeah, you're from New Jersey.

Stray Dogs

I do think the lists serve the purpose of people who have lost pets posting to find them, but there are some people who seem to sprint to their computer every time they see a dog.

More distressingly, there seem to be some people who capture any dog they seem and assume its lost, rather than just on a walkabout. If that dog wasn't a stray before, he is now.

I'd much rather have that, however, than "don't vote for candidate X. . he won't support my petition to ban the liberal commie barista industry, why dagnabbit I ordered a coffee and. . ."

The argument to preserve Roe v. Wade inspite of its ineptitude.

The United States Supreme Court held oral arguments on an abortion case on December 1, with the discussion focused on Roe v. Wade.  

Perhaps the most interesting comment came from my least favorite Justice, Justice Sotomayor, who made the comment, in the form of a question

Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception — that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

In fairness to the Justice, the full quote is:

Now the sponsors of this bill, the House bill, in Mississippi, said we’re doing it because we have new justices,” she says, adding that the same was true about a separate Mississippi law, passed earlier this year and not before the high court, that would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.  Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception — that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

Stench, however, is the right word.

And that stench was created by the whopper that the court deposited in 1973 when it flopped down a real stinker of an inept decision in the form of Roe v. Wade.  She even got the source of the fifty-year-old stinker right, sort of.  Roe v. Wade was an extrajudicial act, so it was basically a political act.  Removing the stench and getting it out into the pet walking receptical would require overruling Roe.

To read Roe is a shock. Very few people do, of course, and by this point very few people are really interested in doing it. But the decision is shockingly thin on any kind of reasoning. It makes very little legal sense and next to no scientific sense.

Indeed, it was later learned that the part which is most often noted, the fetal viability portion of the case, was "dicta", i.e., the author really didn't even regard it as important, which shows how badly drafted the entire thing was.

From here, it's easiest to link in some of the quotes and commentary found at one of the Blawgs that's linked in below.

Roberts asks Stewart how fetal viability was addressed in Roe, noting that Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of that decision, revealed with the release of his personal papers that the viability line was “dicta.”

Roberts calls the papers, released five years after Blackmun’s 1999 death, “an unfortunate source.” Later in the argument, Roberts says the release of the Blackmun files “is a good reason not to have papers out that early.” So I think we will be waiting for the Roberts papers for a good long time.

So, in essence, Justice Blackman admitted that the entire trimester viability thing was just dicta, science has since shown it to be lacking any scientific viability, and frankly the entire Constitutionally protected right to privacy it found in the "penumbra" is just made up.

This is frankly widely known by anyone whose read the opinion and is pretty much the view in the law.  Nobody really takes the text of Roe seriously.  The question is whether the Supreme Court has the right to create new rights that don't exist, or whether it's restricted to the Constitution.

Liberals who are arguing for Roe don't argue that its text makes sense. Rather, their real argument is that if the Supreme Court should strike it down, then the people, through their state legislatures, will restrict or outlaw abortion.  I.e, democracy on the issue will break out, and liberals don't really trust voters.  

Opponents of Roe argue that it's an immoral decision as it licenses killing based on nothing more than the calendar.  Some abortion proponents are getting frank about admitting that's in fact the case.  They don't tend to argue what liberals fear, however, which is let the people decide the issue.

But I'll state it.

You can't intellectually get to argue that the people should decide some big issues but not others on the basis that nine people in Washington D. C. have an opinion about it.  Like in other areas, you are either for democracy, or you aren't.

Tuesday, December 2, 1941. 新高山に登る (Climb Mount Niitaka).

The Japanese fleet was authorized to attack Pearl Harbor at any time after midnight, December 7, 1941.  This came via the coded message "Climb Mount Niitaka" (新高山に登る)

On the same day, President Roosevelt sent Japan a request for an explanation of the large Japanese troop concentrations in Indochina. Vichy France and Imperial Japan had agreed to limit the number to 25,000, which had been exceeded by the Japanese.

The Under Secretary said that the Secretary was absent from the Department because of a slight indisposition and that the President had therefore asked Mr. Welles to request the Japanese Ambassador and Mr. Kurusu to call to receive a communication which the President wished to make to them. Mr. Welles then read to Their Excellencies the following statement (a copy of which was handed to the Ambassador)

"I have received reports during the past days of continuing Japanese troop movements to southern Indochina. These reports indicate a very rapid and material increase in the forces of all kinds stationed by Japan in Indochina.

"It was my clear understanding that by the terms of the agreement-and there is no present need to discuss the nature of that agreement-between Japan and the French Government at Vichy that the total number of Japanese forces permitted by the terms of that agreement to be stationed in Indochina was very considerably less than the total amount of the forces already there.

"The stationing of these increased Japanese forces in Indochina would seem to imply the utilization of these forces by Japan for purposes of further aggression, since no such number of forces could possibly be required for the policing of that region. Such aggression could conceivably be against the Philippine Islands; against the many islands of the East Indies; against Burma; against Malaya or either through coercion or through the actual use of force for the purpose of undertaking the occupation of Thailand. Such new aggression would, of course, be additional to the acts of aggression already undertaken against China, our attitude towards which is well known, and has been repeatedly stated to the Japanese Government.

"Please be good enough to request the Japanese Ambassador and Ambassador Kurusu to inquire at once of the Japanese Government what the actual reasons may be for the steps already taken, and what I am to consider is the policy of the Japanese Government as demonstrated by this recent and rapid concentration of troops in Indochina. This Government has seen in the last few years in Europe a policy on the part of the German Government which has involved a constant and steady encroachment upon the territory and rights of free and independent peoples through the utilization of military steps of the same character. It is for that reason and because of the broad problem of American defense that I should like to know the intention of the Japanese Government."

The Japanese Ambassador said that he was not informed by the Japanese Government of its intentions and could not speak authoritatively on the matter but that of course he would communicate the statement immediately to his Government. Mr. Kurusu said that, in view of Japan's offer of November 20 to transfer all its forces from. southern Indochina to northern Indochina, it was obvious no threat against the United States was intended. Both Mr. Kurusu and the Ambassador endeavored to explain that owing to lack of adequate land communication facilities in Indochina a rapid transfer of forces from northern to southern Indochina for purposes of aggression against countries neighboring southern Indochina could not be easily effected. Mr. Kurusu asked whether the reports to which the President referred were from our authorities. Mr. Welles said that he was not in position to say any more on that point than was contained in the statement.

The Ambassador said that it appeared to him that the measures which Japan was taking were natural under the circumstances, as the strengthening of armaments and of military dispositions by one side naturally leads to increasing activity by the other side. Mr. Welles stated that, as the Japanese Ambassador must be fully aware, this Government has not had any aggressive intention against Japan. The Ambassador said that, while he did not wish to enter into a debate on the matter, he wished to point out that the Japanese people believe that economic measures are a much more effective weapon of war than military measures; that they believe they are being placed under severe pressure by the United States to yield to the American position; and that it is preferable to fight rather than to yield to pressure. The Ambassador added that this was a situation in which wise statesmanship was needed; that wars do not settle anything; and that under the circumstances some agreement, even though it is not satisfactory, is better than no agreement at all.

Mr. Welles pointed out that the settlement which we are offering Japan is one which would assure Japan of peace and the satisfaction of Japan's economic needs much more certainly than any other alternative which Japan might feel was open to her.

Mr. Kurusu said that having just recently arrived from Japan he could speak more accurately of the frame of mind which is prevalent in Japan than could the Ambassador. He dwelt briefly upon the reaction which has been caused in Japan by our freezing measures and he said that this produces a frame of mind which has to be taken into account.

Mr. Welles pointed out that, as the Ambassadors must fully understand, there is a frame of mind in this country also which must be taken into account, and that frame of mind is produced by the effect of four years of the measures taken by Japan in China causing the squeezing out of American interests in Japanese-occupied areas. Mr. Kurusu then repeated what he had said two or three times previously about the effect of the Washington Conference treaties upon China which had caused China to flaunt Japan's rights. He said that in view of the actual situation in the Far East there were points in our proposal of November 26 which the Japanese Government would find it difficult to accept. Mr. Welles asked whether we may expect shortly a reply from the Japanese Government on our proposal. The Ambassador replied in the affirmative, but said that it might take a few days in view of the important questions which it raised for the Japanese Government. Mr. Kurusu expressed the hope that the American Government would exercise cool judgment in its consideration of questions under discussion between the two Governments. Mr. Welles said that we are asking for cool judgment on the part of Japanese statesmen.

Then Mr. Kurusu said that the Japanese felt that we had made real progress in our discussions and that the Japanese Government had been hopeful of being able to work out with us some settlement of the three outstanding points on which our draft of June 21 and the Japanese draft of September 25 had not been reconciled. He asked whether the Secretary would be willing to consider resuming our efforts to reconcile our differences on those three points, in view of all the progress that had been made, instead of approaching the problem from a new angle as we had done in our latest proposal which seemed to the Japanese Government to require a completely fresh start.

Mr. Welles said that our proposal of November 26 represented an effort to restate our complete position, as it has always stood. He said, however, that he would be glad to refer to the Secretary Mr. Kurusu's suggestion.

US cryptologist intercepted and decode the Japanese diplomatic code, which instructed the Japanese embassy to destroy codes maintained there.

Closer to home, in a way, as detailed on the entry for this date on Today In Wyoming's History: December 2;

1941  As of this date, on the eve of Pearl Harbor,  Wyoming has 5,600 men in the armed forces.

The Red Army crated the Moscow Defense Zone for the defense of that city.  That day, German forces came within 19 km of the Kremlin, the closest they'd come to that mark during World War Two.

On the same day, the Finns took the Hanko Peninsula.  Hitler issued Directive No. 38 which instructed that the Luftwaffe was to be reinforced in the Mediterranean.

“Feelings run high”: Two hours of tense debate on an issue that divides the court and the country

“Feelings run high”: Two hours of tense debate on an issue that divides the court and the country: Roberts asks Stewart how fetal viability was addressed in Roe, noting that Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of that decision, revealed with the release of his personal papers that the viability line was “dicta.” Roberts calls the papers, released five years after Blackmun’s 1999 death, “an unfortunate source.” Later in the argument, Roberts says the release of the Blackmun files “is a good reason not to have papers out that early.” So I think we will be waiting for the Roberts papers for a good long time.

December 1, 1941. Birth of the Civil Air Patrol.

On this day in 1941, the Air Force auxiliary the United States Civil Air Defense Services, whose named was soon changed to the Civil Air Patrol, came into existence.

The organization came into being through Executive Order No. 9 issued by F. H. La, which provided:

December 1, 1941

Administrative Order No.9

Establishing Civil Air Patrol

By virtue of the authority vested in me through my appointment as United States Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, through the Executive Order of the President creating said Office, dated May 20, 1941. I have caused to be created and organized a branch of this Office of volunteers for the purpose of enlisting and training personnel to aid in the national defense of the United States, designated as the Civil Air Patrol.

In conformity with said organization, Major General John F. Curry, U.S.A. Air Corps has been assigned to this office by the U.S. Army and designated by me as its National Commander. Said organization shall be formed as outlined in the attached chart, which is made a part of this Order as if written herein in full. The Civil Air Patrol shall carry out such Orders and directives as are issued to it by the Director of Civilian Defense. It shall be the duty and responsibility of the National Commander to see that the objectives and purposes and orders issued in conformity with the policy of this office are carried out and that all activities are reported regularly to the Director through the Aviation Aide.

All enlistments and appointments in the Civil Air Patrol may be disapproved by the Director of the Office of Civilian Defense.

F. H. LaGuardia

U.S. Director of

Civilian Defense

The wartime status of the CAP is frankly a little murky.  Often noted that it was a "civilian" organization using private aircraft, it rapidly came to deploy light aircraft owned by the government. Moreover, as the war progressed, the aircraft became armed and the CAP conducted over 80 bombing and depth charge runs on German U-boats during the war, suppressing their activities but sinking none of them.  The members of the organization were commanded by an Army general during the war, and wore Army Air Corps uniforms.  Given all of that, the better argument is that they were in fact a combat organization.  It's role in the Second World War, in that sense, may be imperfectly analogous to the Coast Guard, somewhat, or the United States Health Service, both of which became wartime auxillaries of the U.S. Navy.

Lt. Willa Beatrice Brown. She later unsuccessfully ran for Congress.

As such, they're further notable in that they fielded some women pilots during the war, one of whom, Willa Beatrice Brown, was African American.  This would mean that the Civil Air Patrol, not any of the other branches of the military, was the first to deploy women officially to a combat service and the first branch of the Army to integrate, albeit to a very small extent.

The subsequent view of the CAP is, at least to some extent, confused by the later creation of the cadet branch, which came into being some during World War Two (October 1942) and which somewhat replicated, at that time, JrROTC, which was limited to the Army.  Like the "adult" branch, the cadet program also included females in its ranks.

We've posted on the CAP a fair amount here before, with the longest World War Two themed one being the following two.

Mid Week At Work: The Civil Air Patrol. Bar Harbor, Maine, 1944.

The Civil Air Patrol is the official auxiliary of the United States Air Force.  Created during World War Two, it's original purpose was to harness the nations large fleet of small private aircraft for use in near shore anti submarine patrols.  The light aircraft, repainted in bright colors to allow for them to be easily spotted by other American aircraft, basically flew the Atlantic in patterns to look for surfaced submarines.  As submarines of that era operated on the surface routinely, this proved to be fairly effective and was greatly disruptive to the German naval effort off of the American coast.

The CAP also flew some patrols along the Mexican border during the same period, although I've forgotten what the exact purpose of them was. Early in the war, there was quite a bit of concern about Mexico, given its problematic history during World War One, and given that the Mexican government was both radical and occasionally hostile to the United States. These fears abated fairly rapidly.

The CAP still exists, with its post war mission having changed to search and rescue.  It also has a cadet branch that somewhat mirrors JrROTC.  Like JrROTC it has become considerably less martial over time, reflecting the views of boomer parents, who have generally wished, over time, to convert youthful organizations that were organized on military or quasi military lines into ones focusing on "citizenship" and "leadership"..

Mid Week at Work: The Civil Air Patrol.

Photographs of the Civil Air Patrol during World War Two. The CAP was made up of civilian volunteers organized into an axillary of the Army Air Corps for the purposes of patrolling the coasts.  They detected over 100 submarines during the war.  The organization exists today as an axillary of the USAF and performs search and rescue operations.

As those threads explain the CAP pretty well, we'll leave it at that.

Franklin Roosevelt cut short a vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia to deal with the mounting crisis of almost certain war with Japan.

Also on this day, the Japanese Navy suddenly changed its communications code, a significant event in that the US had cracked the prior one. This meant that the US was suddenly unable to eavesdrop on radio communications of the Japanese navy, although the Japanese had gone radio silent on their dispatched missions leading towards the events of December 7.

Yugoslavian partisans attacked Italian forces in Montenegro at Pljevilja.  They were predicatably put down, after which the local movement began to severely split, with sizable numbers joining pro Axis militias.

Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, feuding with Hitler after ordering a retreat against Hitler's orders following the German setbacks at Rostov, resigned.  In North Africa, the Afrika Corps fought with New Zealand and British troops at Belhamed Libya with inconclusive results.

Karl Jäger issued a report detailing with precision the murderous activites of Einsatzkommando in the Baltics.

Map from report.

Related Threads:

The Aerodrome: Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182T, Natrona County International Airport

Youth organizations. Their Rise and (near) Fall, or is that a myth? And, did you join?

Thursday December 1, 1941. Lighter than air.

The US airship C-7 flew from Hampton Roads, Virginia to Washington D.C. filled with helium, rather than explosive hydrogen, making it the first airship to use that gas.

This was a large event given that helium, of which the United States has a large supply, is so much safer in this use than hydrogen.

The Federal Government was dealing with other modes of transportation on this day as well.  The task was to find a safer way of delivering the mail, in light of robberies which had been occuring.

Postmaster General Will Hayes and other Post Office officials and a Marine inspecting new armored trucks proposed as a means of protection for the mails.

On the same day, the Federal government imposed regulations on the right to radio broadcast commercially. The regulations required a license and set aside two specific AM frequencies for their operations.

The United Kingdom announced that it intended to offer dominion status to Ireland, but that it intended to retain Ulster.  Talks between Irish Republicans and the British had become dangerously stalled, with there being predictions of a resumption of fighting between the two forces.

The US was looking to introduce a new silver dollar design for 1922.

Director of the Mint, Raymond T. Baker, and Anthony de Francisci examining model of new silver dollar to be issued by Jan. 1st.

A statute to Date was unveiled in Washington D.C. on the 600th anniversary of his birth.

All things Italian remained in vogue at the time.

Page (and Blog) Updates for 2021

 

We've been really bad about updating the pages and features of this blog for one reason or another, but there have been a few recently, so we'll start off this thread by noting those.

One rather obvious thing is we reformatted the layout.  Now items appear on the left margin as well as the right.  The reason is that the items linked in have grown so large that they trail out beyond the posts, no matter what we do.  They still do, but not as severely.

We also culled a bunch of the linked in blogs on the right.  Some are just gone, mostly due to the links being dysfunctional, but many others now are down in the inactive blog list.  Some blogs just stop, and that's where the links to those are.

We also fixed some links that weren't working.  Turned out a few blogs linked in at the right actually update regularly, but their links were incorrect, so their content was being missed.

October 4, 2021

Hmmm. .  I really need to update the pages around here.  Indeed, I know that I've put up piles of posters on the main site, for one thing, I know that I need to add to the collections.

Well, anyhow, there is a new page added to the site:

The Killetarian Cookbook:  Cooking Wild Game.

This was just put up, and it doesn't have any recipes yet. As they're added, as with other pages, I'll update here.

Promise.

October 4, 2021, cont.

The Killetarian Cookbook:  Cooking Wild Game.

Added to.

October 7, 2021

Added to:  The Killetarian Cookbook:  Cooking Wild Game.

Antelope recipes.

December 1, 2021

Added to: They Were Lawyers.

Banastre Tarleton.