The best posts of January 21, 2024.
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Thursday, January 27, 1944. Siege of Leningrad declared over.
On this day, the Soviets announced the end of the Siege of Leningrad.
Tenuous ground communication with the city had happened prior, but now the relief was solid, and the two year, four months, and five day siege was broken.
The battle was one of the most horrific in human history.
The 34th Infantry Division captured Monte Maiola and Caira.
The Marines expanded the Cape Gloucester beachhead on New Britain.
US defensive position on Bougainville, January 27, 1944.
The governments of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States protested Japan's treatment of POW's setting the ground for war crime prosecution.
Anglican Peter Jasper Akinola was born in Nigeria. He would rise to the position of Anglican Primate for Nigeria, and while he was a Low Church Anglican, he was staunch in his opposition to Anglican accommodations to homosexuality. He is retired.
Sunday, January 27, 1924. Lenin's funeral.
Entertainer Mary Bay driving a miniature car, Janaury 27, 1924.
The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.
Action was pledged on the Teapot Dome scandal
The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.
Representatives of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome, providing that Fiume would be annexed to Italy and Susak to what would become Yugoslavia.
Fiume today is in Croatia, as is the island of Susak.
Friday, January 26, 2024
Unyielding
Maasai man, Kenya.
It was John Pondoro Taylor who noted that when he lived in Africa, there remained members of one of the indigenous tribes to the region, I forget which one, who would come into Nairobi and walk through, carrying spears as they always had, ignoring its existence.
It had been their land before, and they were refusing to acknowledge the change.
Admirable?
Stubborn?
Delusional?
All three?
I note this as earlier we noted that one of our resolutions was to be Honest, and another to be Authentic.
Those can come across as unyielding. Or stubborn. Or wacko.
And sometimes they really are.
But sometimes they are not, and are perceived as being so.
This gets back to a topic that we discussed recently, more than once actually, in regard to Fiducia Supplicans and also in regard to our lengthy post on the unfortunate change in domestic law over time. We noted there that some Catholic spouses who have opposed divorce and annulment refuse to acknowledge them. In the latter case, those people are truly poorly received with Priests reacting in horror to that thought.
I admire them.
That's because I'm skeptical that people don't lie to obtain annulments. All the posts you see concerning the process are adamant that this doesn't occur, and that lairs are weeded out. My problem is that if you've done a year or more of actual litigation work, that gets pretty difficult to fully accept.
This isn't really about that, but I'd go on to note that the opposite of being honest and authentic is that by and large most Christians fully accept divorce, even though Christ did not, and most Protestant denominations don't bat an eye about remarrying people, even multiple times.
That's dishonest, if some thought is given to it.
But then, here's the problem. How do you come across as honest and authentic without being a weirdo or a jerk?
Well, sometimes you cannot. But a lot of it is demeanor.
I wouldn't, for instance, suggest running up and telling somebody you know to be divorced and remarried that they're living in adultery. Indeed, that might assume a lot. For instance, their first marriage may truly be invalid, and in their denomination, annulment might not exist at all. You really don't know.
By the same token, I wouldn't run up to a divorced/annulled and remarried Catholic, or a divorced and remarried Orthodox Christian, and say "hey, you are committing a fraud".
But, if asked to go to a second marriage, or third, or sixth, I would be inclined to say, "I'm sorry, I want you happy, but I believe that you can't be married more than once and I can't testify by my appearance that I think otherwise. . . I hope you understand, and I'll pray for you both."
Most of the time, an approach like that generally works. Most people don't take offense, for example, to the LDS barring non-Mormon's to temple weddings. They shouldn't take offense if they do. And most people don't take offense to Jews and Muslims not eating or serving pork, or Catholics not eating meat on Lenten Fridays, and the like. People get curious about it, and may say some things in jest, but usually they're just disarming some surprise and disease by a serious belief.
There are exceptions, of course.
Extreme examples abound. Instances of soldiers refusing to carry out immoral orders, or things of that nature. One German officer by the last name of Homig, for instance, told his commanding officer that he could not carry out an order to execute civilians as he was a lawyer, a Catholic, and an Army officer. He went so far as to call in his subordinates and men together to inform them of his order.
Bold.
Most of us aren't asked to do that.
But we might be asked to do uncomfortable things of a lesser nature, and some won't be well recieved.
Wednesday, January 26, 1944. Gatchina
Machine gun position, Borgen Bay, New Britain. January 26, 1944.
The Red Army captured Krasnogvardeisk. The Germans set fire to Gatchina Palace and vandalizing much of the town's park on the way out.
Two days later, its pre-1923 name of Gatchina would was restored.
The US II Corps established a bridgehead over the Rapido. The Free French Corps captured Colle Belvedere and advanced toward Monte Abate.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—January 26, 1944: British landing ship LST-422 is damaged by a mine off Anzio; of 700 aboard, 454 US soldiers & 29 British sailors are killed.
Argentina severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers.
A.T.F. 9 Ordnance Section. 26 January, 1944. Kiska.
US Communist figure Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She remains a radical leftist and is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz currently.
The moment the fatal wounds were afflicted.
How did we end up with two ancient, disliked men being advanced by their parties?
Well, we ended up here as the Democrats quit believing in democracy, favoring rule by the courts, until the courts decided they believed in democracy, and because both parties lied to their rank and file, working class, constituents for a period of fifty years.
We've dealt with this before.
However, it can nearly be determined with precision.
The date of the wounds were:
- January 22, 1973
That's the date the United States Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision, replacing its judgment for that of state legislatures. As the dissent noted:
I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
And Democrats concluded they didn't really need to persuade voters anymore, the Courts would impose a new liberal regime on the besotted and benighted public without their participation.
And:
- July 17, 1980.
Seven years in which we went from two functioning political parties and put them on the path to being pure machines, breaking what they claimed to serve.
The Next Trump Administration, Part 1.
Trump's promises:
Trump on his actions upon becoming President.
Like Mein Kampf, this should be taken seriously.
Thursday, January 25, 2024
My father's side.
Lex Anteinternet: I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's...: but it turns out, he died in 1958. He was, therefore, about 67 years of age. Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age...
Carrying this forward, or over, or whatever it would be just a bit, my father's father died on October 9, 1949. He was 47. I'd been told by one of my aunts that it was on her birthday, but it was the day after her birthday when he died. Close enough to burn in an indelible mark, I'm sure.
That aunt was born in 1931, which would have made her 17 or 18 at the time of his death.
His youngest son, my father's brother, was born in 1936, which would have made him 12 or 13, which is a bit older than I recalled. It's still pretty young, however. My father was born in 1929, which would have made him 19 or 20, older than I recalled, but it makes sense in context. In both these instances, I think it's the younger age, 12 and 19, that would be correct. My father would have just completed junior college, as they called it at the time. His oldest sister, born in 1926 (the same year my mother was born) had been married three years and was living in Nebraska. She was the only married sibling, naturally enough, at the time.
My married aunt would come back to Casper when her husband graduated from dental school. He'd grown up at least partially in Nebraska, but had strong Casper family connections, but I'm not sure how that had come about.
My other aunt would go on to the University of Wyoming, something unusual for the time. She didn't graduate. I never thought much of that, but as the family story developed following her death the rest of us ultimately learned of a trauma that would have been about the time of her senior year there, so her failure to graduate, surprising for an extremely intelligent women, make sense.
My father's mother died in 1973, she was 71 at the time. That'd definitely older than I recalled (I had thought it was 65). Somewhat unusually, both she and my father's father were born in the same year, 1901, making them about a decade younger than my mother's parents. They married in 1923, when then both would have been 21 or 22. It's interesting that the oldest of their children wasn't born until 1926, which at that time was a little bit of a delay.
I would have been ten when she died. I can definitely recall it, and having been up at the hospital while she was ill.
Related thread:
I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .
Today is St. Dwynwen's Day.
The ruins of the church built by St. Dwynwen.
She was a Welsh nun of the early Church, having died in about the year 460.
She is the patron saint of lovers, having lived as a hermit on Ynys Llanddwyn off the west coast of Anglesey, where she built a church. Becoming a hermit was common amongst the extremely devout of the early Church, although it's more common associated with North Africa. She apparently had been very sought after by a young suitor whom she could not marry, and in her isolation prayed that God look after all true lovers.
Her day is widely celebrated in Wales.
In Memoriam. Melanie Safka, 1947-2024
_-_Billboard_ad_1971.jpg)
She performed at Woodstock, still so young that her mother went with her.
What Have They Done to My Song Ma is one I recall from my childhood for some reason, dimly recalling that my mother liked it.
Tuesday, January 25, 1944. Shaggy Ridge.
.png)
The Australian Army captured Shaggy Ridge in New Guinea.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—January 25, 1944: Soviets surround 60,000 German troops in Korsun-Cherkassy pocket in Ukraine. US II Corps successfully crosses the Rapido River north of Cassino in Italy.
The USS Ponape sank the destroyer Suzukaze
Parts of the world experienced an eclipse.
Friday, January 25, 1924. The First Winter Olympics.
The 1924 Winter Olympics opened in Chamonix. It was the first winter games.
.svg.png)
While Lenin's foul body remains in a specialized mausoleum for worship by the secular, the city regained its rightful name in June 1991, when it appeared that Russia might escape the treachery of its recent past.
Mexican rebels took Morelia.
Czechoslovakia and France signed a mutual defense treaty.
Blog Mirror: After New Hampshire
One of the blogs linked in on our sidebar is City Father, the blog of a Catholic Priest in New York. It's always worth reading.
He's made some comments on the recent GOP primary results which are similar to those I've been making, but his most recent one is much more blunt. A sample:
No one should really have been surprised by this. If the moneyed, zombie Reaganite elite that used to run the party - the rich who undoubtedly believe the country is theirs to rule by right - still believed the party was theirs and that their un-rich, taken-for-granted constituents whom they have for decades brought off with culture-war sloganeering were still in their pockets, then they were likely the only ones who still believed one of their own could be imposed upon their increasingly left-behind and increasingly angry-about-it constituents.
I wouldn't put it quite that way, but he's spot on about the "taken for granted constituents". Indeed, for years I've been saying this about both parties, and while not noted in his post, many of the MAGA Republicans are actually disaffected Southern Democrats and Rust Belt Democrats brought into the GOP over a forty-year period, starting with Reagan's Southern Strategy.
Reagan was treated for years as if he was some sort of a saint. He came to define conservatism. Whatever he was, however, he unleashed the "Tea Party" forces that became the MAGA ones, and they are now the GOP. The old GOP isn't coming back. No new conservative party has yet emerged (one will). The Democratic Party, for its part, has ossified into the left wing, 1970s, version of itself and can't get out of it. Hubris has allowed this all to be vested into two, ancient, men. Donald Trump, as he increasingly evidences the onset of dementia, is going to win the general election. Reagan, and the Democrats having become the Supreme Court fan club, up until recently, post 1973, are to blame for that.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Choosing to lose.
Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic candidate for President. He was honest, and Catholic, which made him unelectable.
Kamala Harris says when she talks to parents on the campaign trail, one of their top concerns is that their daughters won't have access to abortion in college
Charlie Spiering, summarizing a recent Kamal Harris interview.
I come from a sufficiently well-educated family such that my grandmother, Agnes, on my mother's side, had attended and graduated from university.
If you consider that she was born in 1891, that's quite the feat.
Now, I'll admit that my father was the first one to attend university on his side of the family, but his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, had all been successful businessmen at a time at which you didn't need a college education to be one, or even a high school education for that matter. My father's father, who I never met, was universally regarded by those who knew him as extremely smart.
Indeed, I once was stopped on the sidewalk by an elderly lawyer who knew my father and his father, who asked about the family. My son must have been in high school at the time, and the odd question "is he extremely smart. . . " like all of the members of the family.
I often, frankly, feel that I'm on the bottom end of the family intelligence pool compared to my own father and my kids.
No real college parents anywhere have, as one of their top concerns, that their daughters won't be able to commit infanticide, unless they've drunk so deeply of the left wing Kool-Aid they're perusing brochures from The Young Pioneers.
Democratic campaigns for the Oval Office, or Democratic campaigns in general, are not smart.
They're about as dumb as can be.
From 1914 until 1980 the Democrats were masters at coalition building. The party kept hardhat workers, urban Irish Catholics, Hispanics, and the entire South together, which was frankly quite a feat. It supported unions and working class families, and generally was pretty pro farmer. It had a left wing, but it also had a conservative one as well. Starting in 1968, when it embraced American battlefield defeat to a degree, and then in 1973, when it took the bloody abortionist hand, it took a turn toward the left, and as it did that, it dumped democracy like a hot rock in favor of an imagined Platonic body of robed elders who would tell the people what to do, and they'd like it.
Absolutely everything about the current Democratic message is wrong, including some things that shouldn't be regarded as wrong, but which are in the current political atmosphere. One thing that's definitely wrong is the concept that infanticide is a winning ticket. It isn't. The Democrats have read single issue matters on ballots here incorrectly. Maybe in that'st the only thing on a ballot, you get the voters only concerned about that to come out. Otherwise, people aren't going to vote that way.
Moreover, if Harris is really being told this by the parents of college women, it's because she's talking to the most liberal parents imaginable, and they're going to say crap like that no matter what. Moreover, the college educated are largely voting for Biden already. Biden/Harris need to get votes that they don't already have. The college educated have largely already left the GOP.
What's left of the electorate that is in the GOP is made up of the working class, small business owners (some college educated), and residents of rural regions (including quite a few well-educated ones in those areas). They don't believe "diversity is strength", they aren't interested in tolerating non "Judeo-Christian" religions, or gender mutilation, and they feel that their lives and livelihoods are threatened by out of control illegal immigration. They love their regions, but they're largely incapable of believing in climate change in spite of the evidence. They quit listening to scientist and social scientist of all types because they were lied to about some things, and therefore don't believe any of it. They listen to Evangelical pastors who tell them what they want to hear, and who make their massive departures from Christian doctrine irrelevant by not mentioning them (ever hear any of them criticize Trump for living in an adulterous relationship, which by conventional Christianity he is? Or of an Evangelical Church refusing to marry two people who have been married before?)
When I first started practicing law, a firm partner, a true Christian gentleman, told me about litigation that "this isn't a nice game". It isn't. Politics is even less so, and you have to be smart about it.
There's 0 reason that the Biden/Harris ticket needs to mention abortion at all. Where that's been an issue, they had no role in it. And they're driving Democrats away right now who are Catholic, which includes the Hispanic voters they imagine they'll be gaining. And their absolute incompetence on the border is in fact a good reason to vote against them. A competent ticket would shut up on abortion and would make a very serious effort on the border.
Obama, it might be noted, had a very controlled border. And while he was President before Dobbs, he didn't say much about abortion either.
He won twice.
Pointing out that more IRS agents punishes the wealthy, not the middle class, would help too. Pointing out that Trump has been a personally immoral man, might as well. Pointing out that he was the one who surrendered to the Taliban would as well.
And parking Harris somewhere would be a good idea, if not dumping her entirely.
And that's where you have to say thing that re uncomfortable.
Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President in 1928. He would have won, but he was Catholic. Yes, that meant a lot of the electorate was bigoted, but it also meant that the Democrats weren't smart in running him.
They would be now, but Smith wouldn't be a Democrat any longer. He'd likely be an independent. He wasn't willing to compromise on his Catholicism, like Joe Biden has, and he wasn't a liar of any kind either.
Kamala Harris is like Al Smith in one fashion. She reminds bigoted voters who they hate. She's a lawyer (regular people hate lawyers), she's the child of two immigrants (MAGA people don't like immigrants), one of whom was Indian and the other Jamaican, making her a "person of color" (a lot of MAGA people really don't like people of color, let alone immigrant people of color), she's married to an entertainment lawyer (oh, oh) who is Jewish (again, MAGA people like Israel, but Jews. . . ) and the children of the couple are from his first marriage, meaning she has low parent street cred.
Are any of those items a reason not to vote for Harris? Absolutely not. Her policies are a reason not to vote for Harris. But will some MAGA people vote for Trump for these reasons? You bet they will, and in a race this close, in a handful of states that matter, that's a problem.
I don't know who would be a better VP candidate. Amy Klobuchar strikes me as one who would be better in every fashion. If you could find an American Christian Levantine politician (and there definitely are some) they'd be absolutely perfect, particularly if the choice was a woman. But what I am saying is that in a race with democracy itself on the ticket, choosing to go with a candidate this old for President, and a VP who is so disliked, is just dumb. And emphasizing the aspects of your campaign that the populist right hates, even if they do so wrongly on some of them, and the nervous middle aren't comfortable with, isn't very smart either. Having the disliked person, even if the dislike is immoral, who people fear might end up President isn't very smart, either.
This isn't a nice game. Sometimes choices have to be made in the candidates and the strategy that aren't very palatable. A lot of Republicans will do what Cynthia Lummis admitted to doing in 2016 as to Trump, and "hold her nose and vote". The Democrats should hold their noses and make some smart choices.
But they will not.
I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .
but it turns out, he died in 1958.
He was, therefore, about 67 years of age.
Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age, either.
That was, FWIW, the same year my parents married.
His wife, my grandmother, died at age 89, however, which is a little younger than I remembered. It was in 1979, which is later than I remember, which means that my recollection didn't make mathematical sense, either. I was in high school at the time, but I don't recall it that way.
That also means that she lived long enough to see one of her children die, which I knew, and two of them fall into severe illness accompanied by mental decline, which must have been hard in the extreme to endure.
Monday, January 24, 1944. Red Advances, Luftwaffe attacks at Anzio, Rendering skunk fat.
Red Army troops on T-26 light tank in Korsun-Shevchenkovski region.By RIA Novosti archive, image #606710 / I. Ozerskij / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15579411. The use of "tank riders" by the Red Army, anticpating the use of later Armored Personell Carriers, or perhaps recalling that of mounted infantry or cavalry, the latter of which was still widely used by the Soviets, was common during the war.
The Battle of Korsun–Cherkassy commenced as part of the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive in Ukraine.
Near Leningrad the Red Army captured Pushkin and Pashovsk.
The British hospital ship was sunk off Anzio. 96 of the 229 aboard died.
The USS Plunkett (DD-431) was also hit.
53 of her sailors would die in the attack, but she'd be back in action by May.
The Anzio beachhead expanded slowly. The Free French Corps attacked Monte Santa Croce on the Gustav Line. The U.S. 2nd Corps continued attacking over the Rapido.
In Cheyenne, a War Salvage lecture was given on the topic of "How to get fat from skunk without smell". Attribution: Wyoming State History Society Calendar.
I don't think I'd try that.
Some apparently do, however.
The question is why?
Klaus Sperber, know by his stage name Klaus Nomi, and remembered principally for his operatic performance of his pop song Total Eclipse of the Sun, was born in Immenstadt, Bavaria. He was one of the first well known personalities to die of AIDS, passing away in 1983 at age 39.
Of interest, perhaps, as Sperber was German, German pop music producer Franz Reuther, known by his stage name of Frank Farian died yesterday at age 82. He had been responsible for Boney M and Milli Vanilli. His father had been killed in World War Two prior to his birth.
Thursday, January 24, 1924. Different reactions to the use of power.
.jpeg)
Oilman Edward L. Doheny testified that he had loaned Senator Albert B. Fall $100,000, when Fall was Secretary of the Interior under Harding, breaking open the Teapot Dome Scandal.
New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall.
Fall's political career would soon come to an end, and he'd serve a year in prison.
Doheny would be indicted, but acquitted.
Khiva fell to the Red Army.
Sister Marie of the Poor, the former Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde of Luxembourg, died of ill health and influenza at age 29. She had been the last royal of that country to wield real power, which caused her to abdicate after World War One due to her decision to try to steer the country clear of active resistance to the Germans. Following that, having never married, she had become a nun.
Saturday, January 24, 1874. The Pratulin Massacre.
On this day in 1874 the Pratulin Massacre occurred in which the Imperial Russian Army shot down thirteen Greek Catholic (Ruthenian) congregants who had gathered to protest the forced assignment of a Russian Orthodox Priest to their parish.
The city today is in Poland, on the border with Belarus.
Ruthenians are members of an Eastern Rite Church which was first separated from the West at the time of the Great Schism, but which came back into communion with Rome in 1646. Contrary to what might be supposed, particularly today, after time and distance passed from the 1054 schism and its renewed 1492 schism various Eastern Rite bodies that were in the Orthodox communion did start to come back in, with it indeed being the case that several Russian Orthodox Bishops came back in. In Imperial Russia, however, this was violently opposed, including in the case of at least one of the bishops. In the instance of Pratulin, this was one of several such instances as Russian Orthodox clerics were assigned to Ruthenian parishes against their will.
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hat Shaping
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hat Shaping: I'm more of a straw hat guy, but for six months out of a year, Wyoming cowboys are in felt hats. Felt hats take a bit more care. Because...
The Cheney Maxim and MTG.
Trump is the one that gave shock and awe to the whole world when he walked across the DMZ line, hand extended, shaking hands with Kim Jong Un, ending Little Rocket Man’s reign
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Kim Jong Un is still the Communist monarch of the Stalinist theme park, North Korea.
He's a bigger problem now, then he was then.
He still has nuclear weapons.
Trump's shacking hands with him probably did nothing more than cause Kim Jong Un to run back to the latrine and wash his hand thoroughly.
What on earth is wrong with Greene's district that they return this person to Congress?
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
You don't have to accept a "two party" system.
Our government wasn't set up to have a "two party" system. Indeed, the founders warned against "factions". They hoped people would vote for candidates they supported, not parties that shoved big piles of crap out on the electorate.
Be that as it may, Duverger's Law holds that countries using first-past-the-post voting systems will always have two party politics. While he declared that in 1997, it's obvious and hardly a shocking revelation, although recent some have declared that it's become a uniquely American thing.
Well, observations of the Canadian system show it's operating north of the border too.
The thing about it is that recently not only has that advanced the absolutely moronic concept that "there are two kinds of people", but it's really caused politics to evolve to the extreme. The GOP has gone completely populist and believes that large sections of the citizenry are class enemies. The Democrats have done the same. There's more of a hope that the Democrats will come back to a wider centrist party than there is that the GOP will do the same, but right now the choices are two really extreme ones, at least on a national level, and frankly increasingly on a local level.
We don't have to do this.
Part of the reason we do is that when third parties emerge, folks like Robert Reich run around yelling you can't vote for them, as that's a vote for the other big party. Bullshit. A vote for a third party is a vote for a third party. And as we've recently discussed, occasionally a party dies, as the GOP has done, and it's always replaced when that happens with a new, third, party.
"You have to vote for the Whigs! If you don't, that's a vote for the Democrats".
There are third parties, and I suspect there's a good chance of a new, conservative, party appearing within the next couple of months.
I hope one does.
Because, right now, it's hard to see how a person of good conscience could vote for either of the likely "main party" Presidential candidates.
Prior Related Threads:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)