Last edition:
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Friday, December 15, 1944. Glenn Miller Lost.
The airplane carrying definitive band leader of the 1940s, Glen Miller, disappeared over a fog bound English Channel. Miller, age 40, was serving as the leader of the US Army Air Forces Orchestra.
Miller's influence on US military music would be profound.
The U.S. Seventh Army captured Riedseltz, Salmbach and Lauterbourg in France.
The RAF made a largescale daylight raid on the submarine pens at Ijmuiden.
The Sixth Army landed on Mindoro and faced very little ground resistance, but heavy air resistance. The US forces included a regiment of paratroopers.
Admiral William D. Leahy was promoted to five star rank, the first officer to be so promoted and the senior most officer in the Armed Forces.
The Chinese Army captured Bhamo, Burma.
Hollywood Canteen including the Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Dorsey and Roy Rogers was released.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 14, 1944. The tragedy of Lupe Vélez.
Tuesday, December 15, 1914. Belgrade retaken.
The Serbs retook Belgrade.
The worst coal mine accident in Japan's history occurred when a gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hōjō mine in Kyushu, Japan killed 687 miners
Last edition:
Sunday, December 13, 1914. Austro Hungarian troubles.
Friday, December 15, 1899. British defeat at Colenso.
The British lost 1,097 men at Colenso, the their such serious loss in one week.
Boer commandos with their sights set on long range at Colenso.
Last edition:
Wednesday, December 13, 1899. British victory in the Cape Colony.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
The Best Posts of the Week of December 8, 2024
The best posts of December 8, 2024.
Tuesday, December 8, 1914. Battle of Falkland Islands.
Last edition:
Blot Mirror: This is why we can't have nice things. This National Crime.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I think, sometimes could be real. The battle for land and people owning that agricultural landscape. The pretty views that we have, the clean water that comes with it, the beautiful tall grass that’s waving in the wind. I mean, they want to buy it because they like that. And then they put a house on every 40 that we used to run cows on.
Montana rancher commenting on a big influx of people into Montana because of the claptrap soap opera, Yellowstone.
It's not just Yellowstone, the moronic dipshit Western melodrama that has caused this, by the way. A River Runs Through It, which is one of my favorite movies, had the same effect, as well as making fly fishing something that locals just did, along with using spinning rods, into some sort of elite yuppie thing in some quarters.
Here's the thing. A lot of it has a lot to do with the lack of proper land use laws in the US. Large blocks of land really shouldn't be owned as huge yards for hobbyist or the wealthy, but for agricultural production. Agricultural land shouldn't be owned by anyone other than those who work it. People who admire the wilderness, of any type, ought not to be building houses on it.
Japanese Artillery. National Museum of Military Vehicles.
Japanese weapons receive much less attention that those of other armies, in part because their ground weapons tended to be obsolescent or odd. Artillery is no exception.
A lot of Japanese weapons tended to reflect an earlier era, sometimes only slightly so, and sometimes greatly, than that of the 1940s. Japan tended to adopt a weapon, of a copy of a good Western design, and stick with it for a long time, savor for naval and air weapons, where they were advancing all the time. In terms of artillery, much of it was light and antiquated.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 14, 1944. The tragedy of Lupe Vélez.
The great Mexican actress Lupe Vélez, pregnant with the baby of her recent fiance, Harald Ramond (Harald Maresch) committed suicide after a dinner with friends in Los Angeles, leaving this note:
To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him. – Lupe.
How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time, you didn't want us? I see no other way out for me, so goodbye, and good luck to you, Love Lupe.
Ramond confessed confusion, declaring that even after their recent break up he had promised to marry her. In spite of the official ruling of suicide, there has been ongoing speculation about her death.
She had, at one time, been married to Johnny Weismuller.
May God rest her soul, and that of her child.
The Japanese murdered 150 Allied Prisoners of war near Puerto Princesa in the Philippine province of Palawan to prevent their liberation by American troops.
The Japanese attempted, but failed, to mount a large scale air attack on the U.S. Navy's invasion task force heading to Mindoro. The U.S. Navy hit airfields on Luzon.
The HMS Aldenham was sunk in the Adriatic by a mine. It was the last Royal Navy destroyer lost in World War Two.
Congress authorized the five start senior officer rank to address American commanders technically being junior to high ranking British ones.
The Germans banned the use of electricity in Holland.
Last edition:
Wednesday, December 13, 1944. USS Goshen commissioned.
Friday, December 13, 2024
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?
Наро́дная во́ля?
The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats
Hanauer is a very wealth man.
Hanauer concluded his article with:
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three
generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.
Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
I suspect we're past that point now. We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".
He won't be.
I suspect the rage will amplify.
So, what am I talking about?
I've never had any problems with my health insurance. People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.
I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking. I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread. I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder. Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.
Let that sink in. Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.
We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.
That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
What's that tell us?
Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.
And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong. The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love. That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.
I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism. We're entering a very bad space.
It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s. Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.
Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.
It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family. He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.
Deluded, no doubt. Left winter, maybe. But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was. Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.
Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.
Goebbels in 1916.
Lenin was from a middle class family, whose parents were monarchists. He was a lawyer, hardly a proletarian occupation.
The point of this? Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left. He personally may have been. We don't know. He may be just a nut.
But the widespread cheering for him, and it is widespread, shows that Hanauer may very well be very right.
Last edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*
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