Monday, October 23, 1922. Bonar Law becomes Prime Minister.

Bonar Law of the Conservative Party became the British Prime Minister.

Law had been born in New Brunswick, which was at the time a separate British colony and not part of Canada.  His father was a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, and the family returned to Scotland when Law still young after the death of his mother. He left school at the age of 16 and went to work in the office side of the iron industry, which was not unusual at the time.  He was a wealthy man by age 30.

He'd be Prime Minister for less than a year, resigning in May 1923, as he became increasingly ill from throat cancer.

Out of Sync. The Hail Mary makes a surprising appearance in advertising.

How you can tell you are: 1) out of sync with the culture, and 2) Catholic.  I thought this Coca-Cola tweet was about real Hail Mary's, the prayer.

Go big or go home, that’s what game day is all about! Here’s to giving every game and watch party your all. #CocaCola

coca-cola.com

Savor Every Moment

Coca-Cola was referring, of course, to the long desperate forward pass in football which has been irreverently nicknamed after the prayer.  I don't watch football (it's titanically boring), and it took me a minute to realize what this was referring to.

The Hail Mary is, of course, the ancient Christian prayer petitioning Mary for assistance.  Its basic text is:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

I actually learned it in the post Vatican II American Church as:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with you.

Blessed are you amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

The formulation of the prayer is a little lost to history, but it seems to have come about gradually.  Some of it's text, of course, comes right from the New Testament.  References to early forms of the prayer appear in the mid 11th Century through the 13th.  It rose in the Latin Rite and therefore, the early versions took shape in Latin, which of course was also the language of the Latin Rite up until the 1960s.

In Latin, it's the Ave Maria, the text of which is:

Ave Maria, gratia plena

Dominus tecum

benedicta tu in mulieri­bus, 

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.

Sancta Maria mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus, 

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. 

Amen.

Contrary to what some seem to think, it has an Eastern Rite expression as well, and therefore also an Orthodox one.  The Eastern version is not used as extensively as the Latin Rite version, but isn't infrequently used.  Its text is:

Θεοτόκε Παρθένε, χαῖρε,κεχαριτωμένη Μαρία, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξί, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου, ὅτι Σωτῆρα ἔτεκες τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

Translating from the Greek is a little dangerous, as terms can be translated straight across and lose their meaning, but using that sort of translation, this translates to:

God-bearing Virgin (Theotokos), rejoice, grace-filled Mary, the Lord with thee. Praised thou among women, and praised the fruit of thy womb, because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest.

The Slavonic version, used in some of the Eastern Rite churches, is:

Богородице дѣво радѹйсѧ

ѡбрадованнаѧ Марїе

Господь съ тобою

благословена ты въ женахъ,

и благословенъ плодъ чрева твоегѡ,

Якѡ родила еси Христа Спаса,

Избавителѧ дѹшамъ нашимъ.

The prayer not only has crossed certain lines following the Great Schism, but it's done the same in regard to the Reformation, being used in the Lutheran churches and in the Anglican Communion.

All of which goes to show something, and among the things shown by Coca-Cola's use is that somebody at Coca-Cola is as clueless on certain things as I am.

Best post of the week of October 16, 2022.

The best posts of the week of October 16, 2022

Culpability for murder.

Lost as to what to do, Stepping back to the bench, Leaving and coming back, and Cultural heritage. More conversations, was Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Overheard retirement conversations.

Rennovating the University of Wyoming law school?

 

Two Wyoming Students Mauled By Grizzly Outside of Cody; One Tried to Pull Grizzly Off Of Friend

 

Poisonous Death Cap Mushrooms Already In Mountain West, Will Spread To Wyoming Soon

Free Derry

 Well, not really.

Nice British Army Land Rover seen on the local streets.

Wednesday, October 21, 1942. Mark Clark's Mission, Eddie Rickenbacker's plight.

Clark in November, 1942.

Today in World War II History—October 21, 1942: Maj. Gen. Mark Clark lands by submarine at Cherchel, Algeria, for a clandestine meeting with the Vichy French in preparation for the upcoming Allied invasion.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The photogenic Clark was a favorite of the Press during the early part of World War Two. This event, resulting in the beginning of the formal separation of the French military from Vichy, may have been the high point, in real terms, of his career.  His later command in Italy, where he was in command until the war's end, has been subject to less impressive analysis by historians, and he was held in bitter contempt by veterans of the 36th Infantry Division who had taken huge casualties trying to cross the Rapido.  The sought, and received, a post-war Congressional investigation of that incident, for which Clark was cleared.

During the Korean War he was commander of the United Nations forces following the command of Matthew Ridgeway.  He occupied that role from May 12, 1952 until the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.  He retired that following October, after which he became president of The Citadel.  He died in 1988, at age 84.

That last item is worth considering.  It means, for example, that when Clark was dispatched to negotiate with the French, he was 41, and when World War Two ended he was 44, younger than we often imagine World War Two generals to be.  In reality, in the U.S. Army, they tended to be relatively young.

Sundin also reports that a B-17D provided by the Army to Eddie Rickenbacker went down in the Pacific.  Rickenbacker was on a tour of Pacific air bases to review operations and living conditions.  Faulty navigational equipment caused the plane to go widely off course and run out of fuel over the open ocean.  The crew was adrift thereafter for twenty-four days before being picked, with one of the men dying from dehydration.  Ultimately, the men split up in lift rafts at sea, but they were found.

The experience caused the Navy to alter life raft equipment to incorporate fishing equipment in them.

She also notes that the Revenue Act of 1942 went into effect in the US, which increased individual income tax rates and corporate tax rates, with top tax rates going from 31% to 40%.  The act also reduced personal exemptions.  An excess profits tax of 90% was also put in effect.  Medical expenses became a deduction for the first time.

The war ushered in an era of generally high upper tax rates that remained in effect for the next couple of decades, meaning that they remained high during the boom years of the 1950s.  The concept that American tax rates were unfairly high really didn't come about until Ronald Reagan's presidency.

Saturday, October 21, 1922. Fall

Country Gentleman appeared at the stands with a Fall theme.

The Shriners held a huge barbecue in Washington, D.C.  Presumably the Budweiser was alcohol free.

The Saturday Evening Press had a fall theme too, but it was less obviousl

And there was the news of the day.

Rennovating the University of Wyoming law school?

And, we might note, to the tune of $30,000,000, at least if what reports from a recent event I went to indicate.  The public, i.e., State of Wyoming money, portion of that is $10,000,000, which is important to keep in mind, although that's wroth pondering in and of itself. That means anyway you look at it that 2/3s of that come from donations, which is amazing, if accurate.  

UW's summation of the project is as follows:

A 19,300sf, two-story addition will wrap the northwest end of the existing building. 25,000sf of the existing facility will be renovated creating spaces for clinics, accessible restrooms and improved vertical circulation. The facility expansion and improvements will bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards, centralize College of Law clinics with the broader legal education program and allow students, professors, and the community better access to resources. The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

Super nifty, eh?

Hmmm. . . maybe not so fast.

First, as is so often the case, a little history.

1926 University of Wyoming debate team.  I wanted to put up a photo of the 1923 College of Law graduating class, which I think would be the first one, but I couldn't find one.

A big renovation that occurred some years after I went there also was to "bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards. . . "

At least if this goes forward, and it seems like it certainly shall, the 1970s styling of the current law school will be abandoned for a more traditional look.  That's good, as the current law school is really ugly.

Apparently, the new structure will look like this:

And apparently it will include something called the Alan K. Simpson Center for Clinical and Experiential Learning.¹ 

And as a graduate of the institution, I'm thrilled. . . . well, like a lot of lawyers if you talk to them quietly. . . I'm not.

Why are we doing this?  And don't give me the "ABA says. . . ".  If it's the case that the school falls out of ABA compliance on a fairly regular basis, there's either something systemically wrong with the school, or the ABA standards.

The law school was founded in 1920 and was the first professional degree program offered by the University of Wyoming, if "profession" is constrained to its original meaning, that being an occupation that professes by its nature, it would include only law, divinity and medicine.  That definition is probably too narrow by contemporary terms, but it would still be limited, in spite of the American social trend to define everything as a profession, to the law, divinity, broadly defined medical occupations (human medicine, veterinary medicine dentistry) and accounting.  Looked at this way, FWIW, the medical fields have expanded their knowledge and reach, taking over two areas that were formerly practiced by tradesmen (dentistry and veterinary medicine) and accounting has become so complicated that it's a subspecialty of the law in reality. 

I'd be tempted, I'd note, to add engineering, which is now a licensed profession.  It isn't the only one, however, by any means.  Teaching is subject to licensure as well, and so now is being a geologist, which it was not when I graduated back in the dawn of time with a Bachelor's of Science in Geology (the earth was still cooling back then).

So my definition may, I'll confess, be too narrow.

The law school originally held classes on a floor in the old UW library building, meaning that two of the lawyers I once practiced with had gone to the school there.  It was moved to a separate building in 1953, and I practiced with some lawyers who went there at that time.  The current building was opened in 1977, with additional library space added in 1993, after I went there.

Somewhere I have some photos of the pre 93 building, but I've never uploaded them.

The move in 1953 makes sense, and the move in 1977, even if the latter's 1970s architecture leaves a person less than inspired.

But this?

I don't really know why the University added a law school in 1920, but I can guess. UW is a land grant university and was seen as a big step towards statehood when it was formed in 1886.  As that 86 date indicates, it predates statehood.  Land grant universities tended to focus on what was deemed necessary for the state.  I don't know what classes were offered in the early days, but they probably were ones that focused on agricultural and industrial areas that were vital to the state.

Law is vital to the state.  

Indeed, it's vital to a civil society.  It's indeed remarkable that lawyers were the only institution in the entire state that bucked the "election stolen" myth when 41 of them, followed by 52, dared to take on Trumps anointed Harriet Hageman, herself a graduate of the University of Wyoming College of Law, on her backing the stolen election lie.

Law isn't the only thing vital to the state, however, and this is frankly a bit much.

For that matter, I thought the post 93 renovations, while nice, were a bit much.  You can see a little bit of them here:

University of Wyoming College of Law Large Moot Court, Laramie Wyoming

This is the large Moot Court Room for the University of Wyoming.  Having been in most of the courtrooms in the state I can safely say that its one of the nicest in the entire state.

The back half, or gallery half, of the courtroom has a moveable wall that can open up to allow greater space, or perhaps just more conventional space in the courtroom and also allow the courtroom to function as a lecture hall.  Viewed as a courtroom, what we see here in front of us is the bar of the court.

When I went to UW's College of Law it didn't have a moot courtroom at all, now it has two, a large one and a small one (I have yet to see the small one).  This particular room was the large classroom at the time.  It is quite a facility and I guess it demonstrates how much the physical assets of the College of Law have improved in the past three decades.

According to the University, the College of Law will allow the courtroom to be used by the state courts upon request, if it is not already in use.

Indeed, the degree to which a law school is necessary is pretty open to question now.  When I got out of the College of Law in 1990, it was still the case that the state had a state specific section of the bar exam. Since that time, the Supreme Court caused the State Bar to go to the Uniform Bar Exam.  This was controversial at the time, as it should have been.  The net impact of it was to allow out of state lawyers to easily transfer their licenses to Wyoming, which was pretty easy to do beforehand.  Now the floodgates are open. The current exam has no state section whatsoever, and therefore it's just as easy to get a degree from the University of Ohio, or whatever, and hang out a shingle as a "Wyoming lawyer".  Indeed, lawyers who are members of any of the state legal organizations will inevitably find out of state, usually Colorado, lawyers in positions in those organizations.

Indeed, it should be noted that part of the propaganda for the law school renovations is 

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

That really should be read as:

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential out of state students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming in the form of aid to the those on the lower rung of society.

Now, let me note, helping those on the lower run of society is a good thing, but that's what law school clinics do.  That's fine.

But recruitment of out of state students?  That's a byproduct of a collapsing enrollment base.  

Indeed, there have been persistent rumors ever since the Supreme Court mandated the UBE that this was done to try to aid UW and that UW's College of Law wanted it.  The thought, the rumor maintains, was that the UBE would help UW graduates go to Colorado or elsewhere, and thereby boost the school by divorcing it from the practice inside the state.  If that was the thought, it achieved the polar opposite and didn't really help the school.

It also didn't help the school when a former Dean of the Law and a former, then new, UW President got into an enormous spat over the focus of the school. The students sided with the Dean, but they had little knowledge on what they were really achiving. The Dean, at that time, was really focusing on small time law, seemingly haveing given up on the long history of big time law inside the state. The President wanted to link the law school's focus to the energy industry. The Dean resigned and the President failed.

What all this gets to is this.  When the state had a state focused bar exam almost all the students know that they were going right into practice with Wyoming firms and the like.  Now, many leave, sometimes nearly half.  Going to UW still provides a direct link to Wyoming firms, but not the hard and fast way that it used to.  It's signficant, but reduced.

Given all that, the point of having a law school is now somewhat debatable.

Alaska doesn't have one.

Now, this is not to say that most Wyoming lawyers aren't from UW, they still are, which speaks for its survival. And it should also be noted that while law is a profession, it's also sort of a trade, and a law school in Laramie serves as sort of a trade school.  Graduaing from there means you are respected by Wyoming firms.

Indeed, the law has long been an occupation for polymaths to a degree, and even more than that, an occupation for lost polymaths.  The law is full of people who liked lots of stuff but not one thing in particular, or who couldn't make a living in that one thing they really liked.  But to be brutally frank, it's also a haven for people who'd reached career dead ends early in life and found the back alley of the law an easy one, or maybe the only one, to duck into.  Sure, there are those who "always wanted to be a lawyer", but right now, of the state's entire population, that's five people.

And the law school also serves as a place that people end up in as they're Wyomingites, have a degree, and have nowhere else to turn to.

Now, that's not intended as a slight to lawyers. Lots of lawyers who really would have preferred to be something else in their young lives are great lawyers.  Some of these, indeed many, so take to the law that, as noted in our recent threads on retirement, can't leave it or won't.  

But we have a law school and $30,000,000 is a lot of money.

It should be used for something else.

A veterinary school would be my choice.  We don't have one, but we sure have a lot of animals in this state, and a lot of those animals are agricultural animals  Wyoming veterinary students have to go somewhere else for their studies.  That speaks of their dedication, but it also speaks to the state's neglect.

A dental college also strikes me as a good idea. Not every resident in Wyoming has legal problems, but they all have teeth.

Massively expanded law school?  Don't need it.

We'll get one anyway.

Footnotes.

1. This would suggest that perhaps the Simpson family or his firm had some role in the donations.  That's just a guess.  He's a 1958 graduate of the UW College of Law.  His father Milward was a 1925 graduate of the Harvard College of Law.  His father, William, was also a prominent Wyoming lawyer, having read the law, rather than going to law school, under two other lawyers.  Alan Simpson's sons are also lawyers, one of whom is a currently sitting judge.

This is remarkable in that this means that the currently actively practicing members of the family are fourth generation lawyers.

Tuesday, October 20, 1942. Non-essential construction halted.

Today in World War II History—October 20, 1942: US War Production Board orders stop to all non-essential civil construction projects. Southern Conference on Race Relations issues Durham Manifesto .

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Naval Air Station Melbourne, Florida, was commissioned.

 

Friday, October 20, 1922. First jump.

The Aerodrome: First Jump. October 20, 1922: 

First Jump. October 20, 1922

Lt. Harold R. Harris bailed out of a Leoning PW-2A over Dayton, Ohio, being the first U.S. military pilot to make an emergency parachute exist from an aircraft.  The aircraft crashed at 403 Valley Street without injuring anyone.

Harris.  He wasn't the first man saved by parachute, contrary to what this caption states.  Balloon crews had used them during World War One and passengers in disabled aircraft had used them before this day in 1922 as well.  He was the first aircraft pilot to use one.

Harris was a test pilot, and unlike many in that field, he lived a long life, serving in the military twice as well as having a role in commercial aviation.  He died at age 92 in 1988.

The crash site.

Indeed Crimean pilot Pavel Argeyev, who had served in the French and Imperial Russian militaries, died this day in an aircraft accident in Czechoslovakia, which he was flying as a test pilot.

Greece turned over the Gallipoli Peninsula to the Allies, who turned it over to Turkey.

A photo taken on this day in 1922.  I don't know what they were doing.

Lost as to what to do, Stepping back to the bench, Leaving and coming back, and Cultural heritage. More conversations, was Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Overheard retirement conversations.

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Overheard retirement conversati...: Now it's 67, after a certain age. . . for the time being.  Just like Wyoming judges used to have to retire at 70 and Game Wardens at 60....

I posted this just the other day, but since that time have heard two more conversations, both among fellow lawyers, regarding retirement that made me pause.

The first was from a lawyer I know well, well I'm related to him, more or less (it's sort of complicated).

Anyhow, he stated something to the effect that he'd be completely lost as to what to do with his time if he retired and therefore, implicitly, has no intention of doing so.

Now, it's not the case that this individual is 80 years old or something.  He's in his mid 60s.  But still, this is remarkable for a variety or reasons that I'll not put in here.

One of the most remarkable things about it is that an individual with a really lively mind, in an occupation that appeals to polymaths by it very nature, wouldn't at some point to want to leave it to explore other interests, while they still could.

It truly baffles me, but I hear that a lot.

Of course, some of that view is subject to a person and pressure.  At least, from what I've observed, lawyers who have that view are the ones who have a very limited number of things going on at any one time.  Lawyers who are extremely busy seem to be more inclined to ponder retiring, as they really can't look into things other than what their work demands.

I'd note that there's a legal journal out there that notes this view as a problem for the law.  Some lawyers get to where they can't leave it, as they're so dedicated to their work. But their work starts to decline anyway with advancing age.

Not related to this conversation, but to another one that I recently also heard, a lawyer I know whose just past his mid 60s and who has been talking about retirement for years, now says he wants to step back to a more advisory role.

The concept that this can be done is something you'd read in things like the ABA Journal.  Maybe some small percentage of lawyers actually can do that, but I think it's pretty small, and it also depends on what they did.  Litigators?  Nah, can't be done.

Again, it's interesting.  A person goes from wanting to step back, and just take life easy, to wanting to step back and let somebody else carry the ball and only be called in for special plays.  But once you are the quarterback, if you will, you probably are going to be hesitant to do that, particularly with an older lawyer, who will tend to criticize your decisions, if you are younger.  And lawyers who do only what they want to do, in litigation, rather than what has to be done, don't turn out to be that much help and people know that.

Which leads to another random observation.  A couple of years ago I ran into a lawyer who had switched from some sort of business law field into litigation, and into insurance defense litigation at that.

That's the hardest kind of law there is, and people don't get in it when they are old.  But he must have entered into it in his 60s.  He was good at it, I'd note, but I think that's frankly crazy.  It's also a little pathetic.

It's crazy for one thing in that it's one of the fields of law that's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all the time.  Just at the time most people would actually think about retiring, that's effectively retiring into backbreaking work.  It's like giving up a seat in the construction company's front office to go dig ditches.

Of course, there are some people who like fighting or crave field excitement.  That's why you see old guys try to volunteer for wars in some instances, or policemen who have worked as bailiffs for 20 years ask to go out on the street.  They probably really love their occupations, but felt less worthy of them as they'd never been in the thick of it.  People who have been in the thick of it are less likely to feel that way later on.

And on another overhead item; 

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came to talk about becoming native to this place—

Wes Jackson, taken grossly out of context.

There's a fellow (I'm clearly not going to name him) whom I first knew when he was part of a professional firm years ago.  It was significant, to be sure, and therefore, he was also, as part of it.

He left it for some reason, I never knew why.  In the following period, he practiced his profession on his own.  He ran for office in that time period.  I might have voted for him, I can't recall, but he remained a pretty serious figure and I recall at least contemplating voting for him.

Then he left the state.

For decades.

Things happened in the intervening decades.  People died, people arrived, new political figures came and replaced the old.

He returned. But, as would be the case, he returned a couple of decades older, or more than that, than he'd been when he left.

A couple of decades in a person's life is a long time.  We sometimes tend to forget that.  

Returns from long absences are not uncommon in this region.  People grow up and move out, taking jobs in far off regions of the country, and then come back in retirement.  Others, like the fellow I mentioned above, grow up here, go to work here, and then leave for brighter horizons, or due to marriages, or due to family, or just because they've become sick of living in a place where life is always hard, and life here is always hard. And then they return, having secured their fortunes, usually, in the form of some sort of secured retirement.

Everyone once in a while, however, a person returns to go back to their original pursuits. That's really rare.  That's the case here, however, in the instance of the fellow I'm mentioning.

This nameless essay is about all sorts of these folks.

When you leave a place, you leave it.  Some of that place remains with you, but it remains with you in a way that's sort of fixed in time.  Ft. Sill is that way with me.  It'll always be part of me, even though I wasn't there for eons, but it is the Ft. Sill that existed in the early 1980s.  It's changed since then.  I know that from people who have been there since.  Yes, much of what makes Ft. Sill, Ft. Sill, still exists, but the Army of 2022 isn't the Army of 1982.  I can look back and still see it in my distant rearward looking mental view, but that view isn't the same, exactly, for those who are receiving artillery training in 2022.

Now, things would be much different if I'd never left Ft. Sill.  It'd all be part of my mental makeup.

When you leave and go to a new place, and stay there for quite some time, that new place becomes part of you significantly.  At some point, while the old place never leaves you, what it is today isn't.  Or, in quite a few places in modern American life, quite frankly, no place becomes part of you.  You aren't native to this place. . . . you aren't native to any place.

The fellow I started this essay off with is beyond retirement age, which makes this sort of a strange return in the first place.  He's not retired.  He's at an age where he really should be, truly.

And in the intervening years, he's lost his relevance, but doesn't seem to know that. Due to a recent event in which he participated, he really ought to.  You really don't get to spend half your life somewhere else, and then go back to where you were from, and pick up again and expect people to know or care who you are, or to treat you like you are thirty years younger than you really are.  You are an old stranger in a country which, as Cormac McCarthy reminds us, is "no country for old men", at least to the extent that you were a young man when last here, grew old somewhere else, and came back as though you never aged.

Back to my original interlocutor, the other thing he noted is that he'd be worried whether or not he had saved enough money to retire.

Knowing him, I'll bet he has.  As we are from the same extended family and share the same general cultural roots, we're in the group of, essentially, blue collar Catholics who ended up lawyers.

There are, frankly, a lot of us, and in many instances our parents weren't industrial workers either.  But we're drawn from the same pool of Irish, Italian, and South Slavs by cultural heritage whose ancestors never would have thought of going to university prior to World War Two, and who worked in industries or agriculture in one way or another that were pretty working class in some fashion.  He tends to bring that up, in another form, more than I do.

The reason that matters is that we all live pretty modest lives, so it's not like we're taking big fancy vacations or driving new cars all the time.  

It also means, however, that even in our early 60s we probably still have kids in college and, due to the history of our families, we expect things to fail.  There's going to be an economic depression. There's going to be hyperinflation.  Things are going to be bad.  It's just earlier to work until we're sure that we're safe, and that day will never come.

Thursday, October 19, 1922. The fall of David Lloyd George.

 

Wyoming's long serving Senator, Francis E. Warren, on this day in 1922.  He is wearing his Congressional Medal of Honor from the Civil War.

The British Conservative Party pulled out of a coalition with the Liberal Party leading to the fall of the government that day, and ended David Lloyd George's eventual term in office as Prime Minister.

Painted Bricks: Women of Wyoming, Casper Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Women of Wyoming, Casper Wyoming: 

Women of Wyoming, Casper Wyoming

The spectacular, but hard to photograph, mural Women of Wyoming in downtown Casper.  It really must be seen, in part because It's hard to photograph it when it's not in shadow.

Culpability for murder.

 This is from a Twitter post:

This is Viktoriia. Today she died in Kyiv. Her colleagues write that her body was found in her beloved husband Bohdan's embrace, their cat was with them in the building attacked with the Russian drone. She was pregnant. They had been expecting for child.

11:00 AM · Oct 17, 2022·Twitter for iPhone

Recently, on an email list I'm on, the topic of the individual culpability of Russians for the war in Ukraine came up.  Most of the people who posted on the topic, not surprisingly, held that individual Russians had no culpability, it was all Putin, or Putin and his cronies.  A few held the opposite view.

I tend to hold that opposite view.

Now, it is not the case that some babushka in Vladivostok just trying to get by really has blood on her hands, but rather at some level, and I'd but that level fairly low, responsibility for actions in wars vests.  

After the Second World War, and even continuing on to the present day, thousands of Germans were put on trial from crimes during the Second World War.  "I was only following orders" was held not to be an excuse.  Crimes, we supposedly learned, are crimes no matter what.

Of course, it's easier to see those crimes if you are ordered to shoot civilians, but what about bombing them?  That's effectively what's going on.

Well, it's no different.

Bombing of cities was once a controversial subjected in a way that it always should have been, but which after World War Two it wasn't.  In 1939-40, both sides in Europe stuck to bombing military and industrial targets, but the Germans actually accidentally hit civilian targets during the Blitz that seemed to observers to be calculated acts.  The British, who rapidly went to nighttime bombing, fairly quickly quit worrying much about collateral damage, and things were off and running.

Theoretically, most Allied bombing in Europe was targeted, but the targeting was relatively loose.  American daylight bombing was conducted during the day for precision, but even it hit a lot of residential areas.  British nighttime bombing was much looser by default.  Frankly, at some point at least the British passed over to where the Germans had already been, and were effectively bombing civilian targets, or at least bombing so cavalierly that they knew that they were killing a lot of civilians.  Lest Americans feel too good about this, the US deliberately went to the same tactic against Japan, bombing highly flammable civilian housing on the theory that making workers homeless would wreck Japanese production, even though it was effectively already wrecked.

The US is the "good war", as Studs Terkel put it, to Americans, and it's practically the high point of modern British history.  But in truth, the areal bombing campaigns crossed over into the criminal and immoral.  And in both instances they had no discernible impact on shortening the war by way of loose targeting.

The exception to that last statement, of course, was the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, which directly ended the war with Japan.  The US has been struggling to justify destroying two Japanese cities in what was a terror attack ever since, but it can't be justified.  Excuses have ranged from it was no worse than the firebombing of Tokyo, which was also immoral, to it hypothetically saving the lives of a lot of Japanese soldiers and civilians, as well as allied ones.  We don't know that, of course, and at the time of the bombings, that was only a theoretical possibility.  

We've basically found it impossible to reconcile with ushering in the age of atomic weaponry ever since, but we have abstained from its further use in spite of it being urged from time to time.  Indeed, it was urged during the Korean War, the French Indochinese War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even during the Vietnam War.  Most of the civilians and military figures in authority always said no to the suggestion.

The fact that the US blazed the trail on this has been used recently by Putin as an excuse for suggesting he might go nuclear.  It doesn't provide one, as we've abstained.  Indeed, since World War Two the Western Way of War has become more and more precise, and excuses for collateral damage of any kind less and less tolerated.  Single USAF bombs to neighborhoods have been regarded as inexcusable by the US.  On the ground, photographs by Marines with Afghan dead combatant bodies have been regarded as criminal, when their grandfathers in arms routinely cut the ears off of dead Japanese soldiers and nobody thought anything of it.

Putin's war has stripped the band aid of the noble Russian combatant off and showed to us an ugly wound that goes back at least as far as World War Two.  The Red Army was effectively a large armed mob that committed at least the crime of rape on a massive scale.  The current Russian army doesn't seem much better.  Indeed, it seems as the crude vulgarity of Russian servicemen that came in with the Russian Revolution just won't go away.

Nobody has let the Germans get away with supporting the Nazis and all that meant.  Nor should they. The Third Reich tarnished the reputation of the Germans in a way that will take at least two centuries to change.  The Russians are working on the same thing.

One of the reasons that the July 20 plotters attempted to kill Hitler in 1944 is that they wanted to show the world that not every German was fully invested in the evil, although even those in on the plot were to some degree.  Russia's reputation now can only be saved for generations to come if some brave Russians refuse to cooperate in the evil and do something, whether that means voting with their feet and leaving Russian ranks in Ukraine, to parking a tank in front of the Kremlin and declaring Putin's regime over.

Whether or not that happens is yet to be seen.  But what we can say is that every Russian missile crew that points a missile towards Ukraine and helps fire it is complicit in murder to some degree.

Wednesday, October 18, 1972. Congress overrides Nixon to enact The Clean Water Act, The Soviet Union agrees to pay on Lend Lease, ZZ Top in Kentucky.

Congress overwhelmingly overrode Richard Nixon's veto to pass the Clean Water Act. The Senate voted 52–12 for an override, and the House 247–23.

It was clearly a different era.  It's almost impossible to imagine the GOP supporting the act today, and the television "news" would be full of vindictive comments.

The public had been mobilized by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, back in the day when it still could sit and read a book, and the 70s saw a host of environmental legislation pass.  As the ABA has noted:

The 1970s was a seminal decade for environmental protection. Its first year saw three major accomplishments: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, and the creation of the EPA. NEPA alone was groundbreaking

All of which is an understatement.   And that text omitted the Endangered Species Act.

The counter reaction set in soon, and already by the mid 1970s there were those who urged the repeal of nearly everything that had been passed, although it never occurred. What has occurred, however, is that an increasingly polarized public, fed slop by such things as "news" outlets that cater only to a person's preformed views, and loud voices on Twitter and Facebook, have made listening to unpleasant scientific news a political act that can be disregarded if it conflicts with a person's preformed views.  This reflects a wider crisis in the culture on political issues, that are similarly fed, which is rapidly making the United States nearly ungovernable

On the same day, the USSR agreed to pay the United States $722,000,000 over 30 years for repayment for Lend Lease.  The Soviets reneged the following year, but started again, with a reduced amount, under Gorbachev.  They paid until 2006, with payments of the renewed obligation having been scheduled to run through 2030.  In 06, however, the Russians paid in full and retired the debt.  About that same time, the United Kingdom did as well.

ZZ Top preformed at Brannen's Tobacco Warehouse in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Sunday, October 18, 1949. Hitler issues the Commando Order.

British Combined Operations patch.

Hitler issued the illegal Commando Order. It stated:

On 18 October, after much deliberation by High Command lawyers, officers and staff, Hitler issued his Commando Order or Kommandobefehl in secret, with only 12 copies. The following day Army Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl distributed 22 copies with an appendix stating that the order was "intended for commanders only and must not under any circumstances fall into enemy hands". The order itself stated:

For a long time now our opponents have been employing in their conduct of the war, methods which contravene the International Convention of Geneva. The members of the so-called Commandos behave in a particularly brutal and underhanded manner; and it has been established that those units recruit criminals not only from their own country but even former convicts set free in enemy territories. From captured orders it emerges that they are instructed not only to tie up prisoners, but also to kill out-of-hand unarmed captives who they think might prove an encumbrance to them, or hinder them in successfully carrying out their aims. Orders have indeed been found in which the killing of prisoners has positively been demanded of them.

In this connection it has already been notified in an Appendix to Army Orders of 7.10.1942. that in future, Germany will adopt the same methods against these Sabotage units of the British and their Allies; i.e. that, whenever they appear, they shall be ruthlessly destroyed by the German troops.

I order, therefore:— From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called Commando raids in Europe or in Africa, are to be annihilated to the last man. This is to be carried out whether they be soldiers in uniform, or saboteurs, with or without arms; and whether fighting or seeking to escape; and it is equally immaterial whether they come into action from Ships and Aircraft, or whether they land by parachute. Even if these individuals on discovery make obvious their intention of giving themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given. On this matter a report is to be made on each case to Headquarters for the information of Higher Command.

Should individual members of these Commandos, such as agents, saboteurs etc., fall into the hands of the Armed Forces through any means – as, for example, through the Police in one of the Occupied Territories – they are to be instantly handed over to the SD

To hold them in military custody – for example in P.O.W. Camps, etc., – even if only as a temporary measure, is strictly forbidden.

This order does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner or give themselves up in open battle, in the course of normal operations, large-scale attacks; or in major assault landings or airborne operations. Neither does it apply to those who fall into our hands after a sea fight, nor to those enemy soldiers who, after air battle, seek to save their lives by parachute.

I will hold all Commanders and Officers responsible under Military Law for any omission to carry out this order, whether by failure in their duty to instruct their units accordingly, or if they themselves act contrary to it.

It figures, somehow, that he'd issue the order on a Sunday. 

On the same day, as Sarah Sundin notes:  "Vice Adm. William Halsey replaces Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley as Commander South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force."

Halsey was a 1904 graduate of the Naval Academy and was in his early 60s, having been born in 1882.

Wednesday October 18, 1922. BBCs.

The British Broadcasting Company, Ltd, a short lived commercial radio company which is unrelated to the Beeb, was incorporated.  It'd go into bankruptcy in 1926 and this trademark be taken over by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

It gets confused, even today, with the other BBC.

Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell set a new flight speed record flying a Curtiss R-6.

Curtis R-6.

Released on this day in 1922:

Blog Mirror: Can a politician successfully re-flip? The case of Tulsi Gabbard

 

Can a politician successfully re-flip? The case of Tulsi Gabbard