The Aerodrome: Junkers-Larson 12. A ground attack aircraft from 1921

The Aerodrome: Junkers-Larson 12. A ground attack aircraft from 1...: 

Junkers-Larson 12. A ground attack aircraft from 1921.

I posted these photos the other day on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet

Gen. Mitchell was checking out aircraft.

Thompson submachine guns made the press

Lt. Gen. Wise & Lt. Brooks Hyde-Pierson, 10/21/21

I didn't realize at the time I did this, that these were photographs of the same thing.  One Junkers JL12 ground attack aircraft.

It's hard not to view this as anything other than "goofball", but then this was in the early days of aviation and there was a lot of experimentation going on.

The Junkers-Larson 12 was a militarized version of the Junkers F13, the world's first all metal transport aircraft.  The origins of the F13 actually extended back to World War One, but its first flight came in 1919, so it came too late to see service in the war.  Obviously, it represented a big step forward in aircraft design, so perhaps it isn't too surprising that it was militarized pretty quickly.

If oddly.

The aircraft was equipped with 30 Thompson Submachine Guns.  They were operated by single levers in two batteries, with most of them firing straight down.

The Thompson was brand new that year, although its origins also dated back to World War One, for which it had been designed, but which it missed seeing service in as the early variants didn't come out until 1919.  1921 was the first year of real production.

Hap Arnold with Liberty V12 engine.

The JL-12 was equipped with a Liberty V 12 engine, which may explain its name.

Did anyone buy them?  

Well, I don't know.  It was an interesting idea that foreshadowed later aircraft like Douglas AC-47 Spooky and the Lockheed AC-130, so the whole concept wasn't as absurd as it at first might strike us.  The problem would have been that Thompson's in .45 ACP wouldn't have really given the advantage of altitude that an aircraft needs.  If many were made, it probably wasn't very many.

Wednesday October 26, 1921. Warren G. Harding speaks on race in Brimingham, Alabama.

Warren G. Harding became the first U.S. President to advocate for black civil rights in the US while standing on Southern soil.

The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Birmingham, Alabama.  By contemporary standards the endorsement of African American rights was lukewarm as it advocated for segregation in private life, while at the same time, however, endorsing and advocating for full political and economic equality for African Americans.  The text of the speech read:

Mr. Mayor, Citizens of Birmingham, and People of the South: I have been wondering, as we have seen the Birmingham district and the marvels of this region’s industrial development, whether any of us have yet quite realized the significance of the fact that Birmingham has been called “The Magic City.” The basic, characteristic industry on which modern civilization rests is iron and steel; and Birmingham is the world’s last word in development of the iron and steel industries.

We have come here to pay tribute to the marvelous achievement of a brief half century to which this city and its industries stand as a monument. They testify to us how far the South has progressed in a single generation: the generation since slavery was abolished and the rule of free labor and unfettered industrial opportunity became the rule of all of our great Republic.

Somewhere my attention has been called to the legend, possibly a historical fact, that when Fernando De Soto was leading his expedition of exploration and conquest from Florida to the Mississippi, some of his metal workers not only discovered the wonderful deposits of coal, limestone, and iron ore in this area and told De Soto that here was an even greater treasure house than that which he was seeking; not an El Dorado of precious metals, but the opportunity for making the world’s dominating iron industry. I have been told, I do not know whether it is literally true, that the first reduction of iron in this district was  actually accomplished by members of the De Soto party who supplied certain of the expedition’s needs by smelting some of these wonderful ores. But De Soto was led on by the mirage which filled his vision, and instead of the pot of gold he sought, he found the mighty Mississippi, and in it his grave.

So far as concerns more modern development, it appears that General Andrew Jackson also utilized your mineral and metal riches. When he was on his march to New Orleans for the great battle in which the yeomanry of the South won the single notable land victory of the War of 1812, his metallurgists discovered that from these easily smelted ores they could supply their requirements of iron, of which they stood in great need. Accordingly, they erected rude furnaces and reduced considerable quantities of iron. From that time on there appears to have been more or less sporadic and intermittent utilization of these deposits, and during the Civil War they provided a considerable part of the needs of the South.

In this connection I have many times wished that there might be a wider appreciation of the energy, resourcefulness, and genius for industrial development which the people of the South demonstrated during that war. Essentially an aristocratic agricultural region, the South suddenly confronted the need to turn out iron and steel, and a vast complexity of their products which were absolutely vital to the conduct of the War. Not only did they arise to the occasion, but they gave what I have regarded as one of the greatest demonstrations in all history of the possibilities of adaptation, organization, and industrial development under stress of great necessity. We will do well to recognize that the industrial achievement of the South during the Civil War was one of the marvels resulting from that unhappy conflict. It marked the beginning of that diversification of industry which has made the South of to-day an industrial as well as an agricultural empire; I have often wished that some inspired son of the South might one day devote the time and effort necessary to record the history of that Aladdin-like industrial wonder which was a large part of the story of the South in the civil contest. It is one of the phases of American history that has had too little understanding attention. When we have studied the Civil War we have been so engrossed with military and political aspects that we have slighted the industrial and economic phases. I am going to venture, therefore, the suggestion that a comprehensive study of that aspect of the war period would be of inestimable value to the South and to the great story of our national progress. Not only would it constitute an eloquent testimony to the genius and devotion of our southern people, but it would present a picture of opening opportunity and widening horizon whose contemplation would challenge every remaining vestige of prejudice and sectional antagonism.

It has been a truism that the War between the States started the Nation as a whole in its way of colossal industrial growth. But I have wished that the particular story of that war-time experience in the South might better known. I have been told of the almost overnight development of munition factories out of smithies; of the expansion of railroad repair shops into locomotive works; how shipyards, ordnance plants, powder factories were conjured up and put to work almost in the twinkling of an eye; of improvised industrial processes and mechanical contrivances, not a few of which have been of permanent value, some of them fairly revolutionary. We will, I am sure, be forgiven if, as Americans, we remind ourselves that wooden navies had fought each other for thousands of years until Americans fell to fighting among themselves. Then came iron fighting craft—came so quickly and unanimously that both sides had their first armored warships ready at the same moment, so well matched that they fought to a draw. It was a revolution; yet it was only one incident in this matching of American genius and resourcefulness in titantic struggle.

The railway and the telegraph were first bidden to the service of war on a great scale during our civil contest. The huge ordnance which both North and South created and used was as sensational in that day as the most startling constructions of the World War were more than a generation later. In both South and North our people learned and demonstrated what it means to mobilize all the human, industrial, financial, scientific resources of a great community for the purposes of war. That, indeed, was the most characteristic and most revolutionary development of the struggle. When we had done with our war we had well-nigh made over the whole art of war. The old things were gone forever. By land or by sea both its material and its methods were sweepingly changed. Glory and glamour had been taken out of it and in their place had been put the grim, hard reality of whole peoples measuring against each other their last ounce of power and resources.

In that contest of industry and resources the South started with a fearful handicap; a handicap so great that its accomplishments constituted one of the industrial wonders of all time. It is to this wonder that I have wanted to call attention to-day, for I have felt that it has never been appraised as it ought to be. From that contest the South emerged, not only with the foundation of industrial greatness securely laid but freed from the incubus of a labor system that had from colonial times chained it to the status of an almost purely agricultural community.

The industrial and commercial development of States and peoples has always been strikingly influenced by their wars; perhaps even more than their social and political development. That older war founded industry in the South under stress of sternest necessity; and so we may recognize in your Birmingham district and its industrial splendor one of the fine products of the industrial revolution which was forced upon the whole South.

We are gathered to-day to celebrate the semicentenary of the founding of Birmingham. That this wonder could be wrought in so brief a time tells us how fast our modern world moves; so fast that we are wont to forget our yesterdays before our to-days are fairly begun; so absorbing in its concerns of the present that too often we have neither time nor interest for the morrow. Yet there never was a time when we needed so much to study our past and, in the light of its lessons, give earnest thought to the tomorrows. So I have thought that here in your Magic City, whose story seems a very compress of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, it may be proper to suggest a few thoughts regarding the critical times which are faced by our country and all countries and some of the issues which command our consideration.

Exhausted and affrighted by the horrors of the World War, the nations are seeking means to prevent repetition of such an experience. They see the need for effective reform in international relationships, and along with this, for many alterations and adaptations of domestic institutions which will better fit them for the new time. Our own country, though its necessities are less onerous, its difficulties not so grievous as those of many others, has yet occasion to consider wherein it may better its methods, adjust itself to the new relationships, and equip itself for the new sort of struggle that lies ahead. Concerning one phase of this national problem, I want to say a few words.

If the Civil War marked the beginnings of industrialism in a South which had previously been almost entirely agricultural, the World War brought us to full recognition that the race problem is national rather than merely sectional. There are no authentic statistics, hut it is common knowledge that the World War was marked by a great migration of colored people to the North and West. They were attracted by the demand for labor and the higher wages offered. The slow movement had been in progress for decades before, but it was vastly accelerated because of the war, and has continued at only a slackened pace since. It has brought the question of race closer to North and West, and I believe it has served to modify somewhat the news of those sections on this question. It has made the South realize its industrial dependence on the labor of the black man and made the North realize the difficulties of the community in which two greatly differing races are brought to live side by side. I should say that it has been responsible for a larger charity on both sides, a beginning of better understanding; and in the light of that better understanding perhaps we shall be able to consider this problem together as a problem of all sections and of both races, in whose solution the best intelligence of both must be enlisted.

Indeed, we will be wise to recognize it as wider yet. Whoever will take the time to read and ponder Mr. Lothrop Stoddard’s book on The Rising Tide of Color, or, say, the thoughtful review of some recent literature of this question which Mr. F. D. Lugard presented in a recent Edinburg Review, must realize that our race problem here in the United States is only a phase of a race issue that the whole world confronts. Surely we shall gain nothing by blinking the fact, by refusing to give thought to them. That is not the American way of approaching such issues.

In another way the World War modified the elements of this problem. Thousands of black men, serving their country just as patriotically as did the white men, were transported overseas and experienced the life of countries where their color aroused less of antagonism than it does here. Many of them aspire to go to Europe to live.

A high-grade colored soldier told me that the war brought his race the first real conception of citizenship—the first full realization that the flag was their flag, to fight for, to be protected by them, and also to protect them. He was sure that the opportunity to learn what patriotism meant was a real opportunity to his race.

These things lead one to hope that we shall find an adjustment of relations between the two races, in which both can enjoy full citizenship, the full measure of usefulness to the country and of opportunity for themselves, and in which recognition and reward shall at last be distributed in proportion to individual deserts, regardless of race or color. Mr. Lugard, in his recent essay, after surveying the world’s problem of races, concludes thus:

“Here then is the true conception of the interrelation of color—complete uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserving his own race purity and race pride; equality in things spiritual; agreed divergence in the physical and material.”

Here, it has seemed to me, is suggestion of the true way out. Politically and economically there need be no occasion for great and permanent differentiation, for limitations of the individual’s opportunity, provided that on both sides there shall be recognition of the absolute divergence in things social and racial. When I suggest the possibility of economic equality between the races, I mean it in precisely the same way and to the same extent that I would mean it if I spoke of equality of economic opportunity as between members of the same race. In each case I would mean equality proportioned to the honest capacities and deserts of the individual.

Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. Indeed, it would be helpful to have that word “equality” eliminated from this consideration; to have it accepted on both sides that this is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, and inescapable difference. We shall have made real progress when we develop an attitude in the public and community thought of both races which recognizes this difference.

Colonizing countries everywhere have in recent times been more and more dealing with the problem from this point of view. The British commonwealth of nations and races confronts it, and has been seeking its solution along the lines here suggested. There is possibility of our learning something applicable to our own country from the British. It is true that there is a great difference between bringing into our own land the colonists of another race and going out to another land and subjecting it and its people to the rule of an alien race. Yet the two cases have so many elements of similarity that it seems to me the experience of each must furnish some light upon the other.

Take first the political aspect. I would say let the black man vote when he is fit to vote: prohibit the white man voting when he unfit to vote. Especially would I appeal to the self-respect of the colored race. I would inculcate in it the wish to improve itself: distinct race, with a heredity, a set of traditions, an array of aspirations all its own. Out of such racial ambition and pride will come natural segregations, without narrowing any rights, such as are proceeding in both rural and urban communities now in Southern States, satisfying natural inclinations and adding notably to happiness and contentment.

On the other hand I would insist upon equal educational opportunity for both. This does not mean that both would become equally educated within a generation or two generations or ten generations. Even men of the same race do not accomplish such an equality as that. They never will. The Providence that endowed men with widely unequal capacities and capabilities and energies did not intend any such thing.

But there must be such education among the colored people as will enable them to develop their own leaders, capable of understanding and sympathizing with such a differentiation between the races as I have suggested—leaders who will inspire the race with proper ideals of race pride, of national pride, of an honorable destiny, an important participation in the universal effort for advancement of humanity as a whole. Racial amalgamation there can not be. Partnership of the races in developing the highest aims of all humanity there must be if humanity, not only here but everywhere, is to achieve the ends which we have set for it.

I can say to you people of the South, both white and black, that the time has passed when you are entitled to assume that this problem of races is peculiarly and particularly your problem. More and more it is becoming a problem of the North: more and more it is the problem of Africa, of South America, of the Pacific, of the South Seas, of the world. It is the problem of democracy everywhere, if we mean the thing we say about democracy as the ideal political state.

Coming as Americans do from many origins of race, tradition, language, color, institutions, heredity; engaged as we are in the huge effort to work an honorable national destiny from so many different elements; the one thing we must sedulously avoid is the development of group and class organizations in this country. There has been time when we heard too much about the labor vote, the business vote, the Irish vote, the Scandinavian vote, the Italian vote, and so on. But the demagogues who would array class against class and group against group have fortunately found little to reward their efforts. That is because, despite the demagogues, the idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every appeal to mere class and group. And so I would wish it might be in this matter of our national problem of races. I would accent that a black man can not be a white man, and that he does not need and should not aspire to be as much like a white man as possible in order to accomplish the best that is possible for him. He should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man, and not the best possible imitation of a white man.

It is a matter of the keenest national concern that the South shall not be encouraged to make its colored population a vast reservoir of ignorance, to be drained away by the processes of migration into all other sections. That is what has been going on in recent years at a rate so accentuated that it has caused this question of races to be, as I have already said, no longer one of a particular section. Just as I do not wish the South to be politically entirely of one party; just as I believe that is bad for the South, and for the rest of the country as well, so I do not want the colored people to be entirely of one party. I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Democratic South and the tradition of a solidly Republican black race might be broken up. Neither political sectionalism nor any system of rigid groupings of the people will in the long run prosper our country. I want to see the time come when black men will regard themselves as full participants in the benefits and duties of American citizenship; when they will vote for Democratic candidates, if they prefer the Democratic policy on tariff or taxation, or foreign relations, or what-not; and when they will vote the Republican ticket only for like reasons. We can not go on, as we have gone for more than a half century, with one great section of our population, numbering as many people as the entire population of some significant countries of Europe, set off from real contribution to solving our national issues, because of a division on race lines.

With such convictions one must urge the people of the South to take advantage of their superior understanding of this problem and to assume an attitude toward it that will deserve the confidence of the colored people. Likewise, I plead with my own political party to lay aside every program that looks to lining up the black man as a mere political adjunct. Let there be an end of prejudice and of demagogy in this line. Let the South understand the menace which lies in forcing upon the black race an attitude of political solidarity. The greater hope, the dissipation of hatred, the discouragement of dangerous passions lie in persuading the black people to forget old prejudices and to have them believe that, under the rule of whatever political party, they would be treated just as other people are treated, guaranteed all the rights that people of other colors enjoy, and made, in short, to regard themselves as citizens of a country and not of a particular race.

Every consideration, it seems to me, brings us back at last to the question of education. When I speak of education as a part of this race question. I do not want the States or the Nation to attempt to educate people, whether white or black, into something they are not fitted to be. I have no sympathy with the half-baked altruism that would overstock us with doctors and lawyers, of whatever color, and leave us in need of people fit and willing to do the manual work of a workaday world. But I would like to see an education that would fit every man not only to do his particular work as well as possible but to rise to a higher plane if he would deserve it. For that sort of education I have no fears, whether it be given to a black man or a white man. From that sort of education. I believe, black men, white men, the whole Nation, would draw immeasurable benefit.

It is probable that as a nation we have come to the end of the period of very rapid increase in our population. Recent legislation to restrict immigration will be in part responsible for a slacking ratio of increase. The new immigrants have multiplied in numbers much the more rapidly, but as the immigrants become Americanized, amalgamated into the citizenry, the tendency has been toward less rapid multiplication. So restricted immigration will reduce the rate of increase, and force us back upon our older population to find people to do the simpler, physically harder, manual tasks. This will require some difficult readjustments. It has been easy, indeed, but it has not been good for the people of our older stock, that a constant inflow in immigration made it possible to crowd off these less attractive and profitable tasks upon the newcomers. I don’t think it has been good for what the old Latins called the national virtue. That is a word 1 have always liked, employed in the Roman sense. I wish we might have adopted it into our vocabulary, in this sense. It strikes me as a good deal better than morale. Anyhow, we are under necessity to raise honest, hard, manual work to a new dignity if we are to get it done. We will have to make its compensations more generous, materially, and, if I may say it, spiritually; to make usefulness of service, rather than spotlessness of hands, the test of whatever social recognition depends on the individual’s occupation. I confess a large disgust with all such classifications, and I earnestly bespeak an attitude toward good, honorable, hard work that will end them. I do not want to coddle and patronize labor; I want us all to get out, put on blue denims, roll up our sleeves, let our hands be honorably soiled, and do the work. That’s what we’ve got to do, if we are to get on. We must do it, and be glad we can; for there is small chance that we will ever again have such armies of laborers landing on these shores, as have come in the past.

In anticipation of such a condition the South may well recognize that North and West are likely to continue their drafts upon its colored population, and that if the South wishes to keep its fields producing and its industry still expanding it will have to compete for the services of the colored man. If it will realize its need for him and deal quite fairly with him, the South will be able to keep him in such numbers as your activities make desirable. At any rate, here is a problem and it is pressing for settlement.

Is it not possible, then, that in the long era of readjustment upon which we are entering for the Nation to lay aside old prejudices and old antagonisms and in the broad, clear light of nationalism enter upon a constructive policy in dealing with these intricate issues? Just as we shall prove ourselves capable of doing this we shall insure the industrial progress, the agricultural security, the social and political safety of our whole country regardless of race or sections and along the line of ideals superior to every consideration of groups or class, of race or color or section or prejudice.

Here are the reflexes of magical industrial development, here are the fruits in the making of a nation and its commitment to free productivity and trade. There is a materialism which sometimes seems sordid, but on the material foundation we have expanded in soul, and we have seen this Republic the example to freedom aspiring throughout the world. We wish to cling to all that is good. We want to preserve the inheritance over which we fought because our conflict made it more precious. But we wish to go on as well as preserve.

The march of a great people is not a blind one. We can not be unmindful of human advancement. We wish to be more than apace with progress—we wish our America leading and choosing safe paths. Fifty years is a narrow span. Yet the marvel of Birmingham is less than the marvel of our astounding America. And we mean to go on. If we are just and honest in administering justice, if we are alive to perils and meet them in conscience and courage, the achievement of your first half century will be magnified tenfold in the second half, and the glory of your city and your country will be reflected in the happiness of a great people, greater than we dream, and grander for understanding and the courage to be right.

The speech was not well received by Southern (white) politicians.

It was a brave thing to do really.  He didn't have to do it, but did so anyway.

In many ways we can legitimately look down on Harding as a failed human being, if not a failed President.  And his speech certainly didn't go so far as to advocate full equality.  But it did go much further, for a President standing where he was,, than had been done previously.  The reaction of Southern politicans proved that.

Vice President Coolidge, meanwhile, was dedicating the cornerstone at the new City Club building in Washington, D.C.

Senator Underwood and his wife were photographed with their dog.

Monday October 25, 1971. The Recognition of the People's Republic of China, The Electric Company and The Rural Purge

On this day in 1971 the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China s the US recognized representative of the Chinese people.  A resolution to oust Taiwan, i.e., Nationalist China, failed, but the Taiwanese representative walked out in anticipation of the inevitable future results.  Taiwan also announced that it would not pay the over $30,000,000 it owed the UN, given this result.

Chiang Kai-Shek was still living at the time and officially the Republic of China sought reunification with the mainland with it as the Chinese government.  In reunification, they were aligned in principle with the People's Republic of China, but only on that point.  The PRC saw reunification under their banner, not the Nationalist one.  As a practical matter, the U.S. Navy had precluded that from occurring following the 1948 retreat of the Nationalist to Taiwan.

The US had been a major factor in the hold out in according the PRC recognition at the UN. While the US, tired of Chiang Kai-Shek following the Second World War, and despairing of his abilities to force a successful conclusion to the Chinese Civil War, had chosen to slowly decrease its involvement with the Nationalist Chinese efforts following the war, was nonetheless shocked by the sudden collapse of the Nationalist Army in 1948.  This had caused Congress, which hadn't been taking a huge interest in the Nationalist's plight, to suddenly focus on China with the "who lost China?" query becoming a tag line for conservatives.  Moreover, the Chinese Red Army's recovery from eons of civil war and World War Two was evident when it intervened in the Korean War (using some formations that had been Nationalist ones earlier).  A widespread assumption that the PRC danced to Moscow's tune ramped up the concern, although PRC government was plenty repressive and scary in its own right without, as it turned out, much influence from the Soviet Union.

Be that as it may, the relucatance of the US to recognize Red China as the Chinese government had reached the fairly absurd level by the mid 1960s. It was clear that the Nationalist were not capable of jumping the Straits of Taiwan and taking on the Chinese Red Army.  And as the most populous nation in the world, recognition of it was overdue.  This didn't, of course, accord it American recognition, but that would be on the near term horizon.

Taiwan since has developed into a parliamentary democracy and the current ruling party has an official policy of independence.  Taiwan functions as a putative state, although it still is not recognized as a sovereign by anyone anymore, and it has not declared independence, that being too risky given its massive aggressive neighbor that still claims Taiwan as its own.  It's now likely the longest running unrecognized state in the world, and its odd status is such that it functions as a country in everything but name.  Tensions with Red China, of course, have been very much in the news recently.

From the outstanding Uncle Mike's Musings, we also learned that this is the day when PBS's Electronic Company premiered.  As he states there:

October 25, 1971, 50 years ago: The Electric Company premieres on PBS. A companion piece to Sesame Street, it is geared toward kids a little older who were, by then, learning to read. As the closing tagline say, it is produced by the same production company: "The Electric Company gets its power from The Children's Television Workshop."

The show had a truly remarkable cast, which I had not realized until I read the entry.

The odd thing about this for me is to realize how little I participated in this sort of television from the era.  I was just a kid when this came out, but I don't recall ever watching it.  That might be because, like a lot of other television from the early 1970s, it seemed so very urban.  I suppose it was all part of the "Rural Purge" of television that took place in the early 1970s.

Tuesday, October 25, 1921. Comings and Goings.

Bat Masterson in 1911.

On this day in 1921, Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, of OK Corral fame, died at age 67.  He'd been working as a columnist there since 1902.

Like a lot of frontier lawmen, Masterson had a few run-ins with the law as well as enforcing it.  He was born in Quebec to an Irish Canadian family and had served in most of the classic frontier roles in the West before becoming well known due to the events in Tombstone.   His family moved to the United States while he was a child, and he grew up on a series of farms before becoming a buffalo hunter and Army scout.  He was at the famous battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.  He became a lawman in 1876 and after his famous career in Arizona he occupied that position in Colorado.  He  moved to Denver in 1882 where he was involved in various scrapes and then to New York in 1902.

Masterson was an acknowledged expert on boxing and became a columnist in New York, a position he occupied for the remainder of his life.

Masterson provides an interesting example of how we tend to compartmentalize figures by their historical period.  He was a classic Frontier figure, but lived well beyond the Frontier's close and, no doubt to himself, seemed to always be living in the present even while depictions of the gunfight would continue to be famous all through his own life.  He was outlived, FWIW, by Wyatt Earp, who died in 1929.

King Michael I of Romania was born.  He was Romania's last king, having became a king as a child due to his father abdicating following his inability to reconcile an illicit relationship with his status as king and renouncing his rights upon his own father's death in 1925.  He lost that title in 1930 when parties dissatisfied with the regency reestablished his father as monarch, but he became king again in  September 1940 when a military coup led by Ion Antonescue returned him to the position of king and removed his father.  He was 18 at the time.

He would be king when Romania declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, but would lead the coup against the military government in 1944, combining with pro Allied officers who also no doubt saw the handwriting of the results of the war on the wall.  He was removed from power in 1948 and died in 2017, by which time he was once again allowed to live part of the year in Romania.

A terrible Categroy Six hurricane hit Tampa Florida. The storm had previously hit Cuba with minimal damage, but Florida was not so lucky.

The government issued a report on the work of government hunters/trappers.

While I know the current thing is to think, "oh, how awful that the Federal Government did that", if I'd been alive then, the life of a government hunter would have appealed to me.  Having said that, you could still homestead in 1921, and likely that would have appealed to me more.

Mrs. Ed Chambers and Mrs. Sid Hatchfield on this day in 1921.

Hatchfield had been the sheriff of Matewan County, West Viriginia and was murdered on August 1, 1921, along with his friend Chambers.  The killings were probably connected with labor problems in the mining industry.  Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Hatchfield must have been in Washington on this date in some capacity connected with the murders of their husbands.

Cliffnotes of Zeitgiest Part XXI. The Missing. States of female dress, Joking, Pride, Horses, Justin Trudeau sorry for skipping first national truth and reconciliation day, and heroes.

Uff

I had this entry nearly ready to go when I lost about 50% of it.

Fortunately, as there is no deadline, and not many readers, that really doesn't matter.

Still, its the pits.  You always think you've done some brilliant writing when something like this happens.

Still, maybe that means I ought to wrap this excessively long post up.

The Missing

When I started this edition of this series, Gabby Petito had not yet gone missing.  When she first was reported missing, I wrote a post on something that sort of riffed off of it, and I still might, although in further consideration, it's now so nuanced there may literally be no point.

When I last updates this, she hadn't yet been found.  Now she has been, and we know that she was murdered, and it seems rather obvious who the killer was.  Her boyfriend, if that's what he had been at the time, or her fiancé, which maybe he had been but no longer was, or in fact maybe was, has been by far the most likely suspect and he was stil missing as well when I lost the text. It would appear that he fled into a Flordia swamp, probably having taken off in a desperate attempt to avoid prosecution, and maybe with the intent to end his own life.  We'll probably soon know.  Assuming that's so, his returning home with her vehicle, but not her, puts him in the category of all time stupid criminals, again assuming guilt, which we are told we should not assume.  And indeed, we should note, that there are other possibilities.

Women are murdered by men all the time.  It's a fact and, unfortunately, in spite of the desperate desire to avoid reality in our society, it's a "natural fact".  Men are bigger, stronger, and more violent.  They are bigger, stronger, and more violent than women for natural reasons.  None of this excuses this reality, but it does partially explain it.  So why did this horrible event garner so much public attention?

What isn't a "fact" however, is that husbands are the always and obvious suspect.  Looking at the data has gotten a little difficult, but at least some figures, and I heard them recently independently repeated, hold that husbands figure in about 8% of female deaths.  It's easier to find older figures, although not really old, on murders by boyfriends, i.e., men that women are linked with romantically but not married to, which is actually right at about the same percent.  More recent figures tend to link the two together, which isn't statistically or existentially valid, in my view, which puts things at a higher percentage rate.  You can double those figures for a relatively common one, although I've seen one that's at 25%, which I question.

While the headlines tend to suggest, based on these statistics, that "romantic partners" are the most likely killers for women, they actually aren't.  That would mean, even accepting the high rate, that 75% of homicides of women are conducted by killers who aren't romantically linked to them. When we consider that it is the case that the majority of murders are committed by people who know their victims, this presents a much different overall picture of things.

To add to that, however, I strongly suspect, but have no data to prove it, that homicides by "boyfriends", "partners" (a term I hate), and husbands are different in character.

Anyhow, this story had, and has, a tremendous following.  Part of that is because it was and is a mystery.  And a very public one was the couple had a YouTube following which meant that they were being followed by fans.  That's a lot of it.  Under any similar set of circumstances, this would have sparked national interest.

Part of it too is that she was young and cute.  That's party of it too.  Undeniably so.  That sparked the following headlines.

710 Indigenous people, mostly girls, were reported missing in Wyoming over the past decade — the same state where Gabby Petito disappeared

If Gabby Petito Was A Person Of Color, Would Anyone Have Cared – Sadly, Probably Not

There's a lot to that, which doesn't reduce the tragedy.

710 is a horrible number.  It doesn't get much attention, it really ought to.

Well, as this plays out, let us hope that she's passed on to Perpetual Light and that the suffering she seemed to be enduring wasn't too awful.

Shacking up is not the same as being married.

What I started to type an item about when this first got rolling was the way that the news stories on this ignored the fact that Petito was engaging in conduct which when I was young would have been regarded as shocking and ill-advised, although even by that point, it might have occurred anyway, somewhat as an act of flaunting standards.  I noted even in typing it out that as I was drawing attention away from the tragedy, I felt hesitant and guilting about noting what I was noting.

Here's the gist of the last, or second to last (maybe) encounter with the couple that's known about.

After the van was pulled over, the officer said Petito was “crying uncontrollably” and told him she was struggling with her mental health. Petito was placed in the back of the officer’s car, the report said, while he spoke to Laundrie on his own.

Petito said she had hit Laundrie in the arm to get his attention as the officer was trying to pull them over, which caused the van to swerve into the curb, the report said. But Laundrie said he thought Petito was trying to grab the wheel while he was driving, resulting in the swerve. The officer said Laundrie's account "was not consistent with Gabrielle's statement" and reported he saw scratches on Laundrie's arm.

The couple had spent the past four or five months traveling together which was creating tension, the report said. “The time spent created emotional strain between them and increased the number of arguments,” the report said.

Antonio Planas, NBC News.

Now, one of the officers involved claims the couple seemed to be in a "toxic relationship".

A couple traveling near Grand Teton in Wyoming now claims they gave a hitchhiking Laundrie a lift in the area when he asked to go to "Jackson", but let him out when he freaked out as they were going to "Jackson Hole" which, if true, would have shown a blistering lack of geographic knowledge around the area.  He was also acting really weird.  Putting two and two together, this would suggest that at first he was attempting to flee on foot, or maybe that he'd left her injured or sick back at their van and was taking off.  He wasn't acting normally.

Petito was 22 years old.  Laundrie was reported to be her fiancé, and then not. Early on it was suggested in reports that they were cohabiting prior to their long trip, but then later reports suggested nothing of the kind.  Of course a very long van ride is a type of cohabitation.  The highway patrol noted that they seemed stressed, which is probably an easy observation to make, as a trip like that even between really good and long friends would be stressful.

Or not.  I can imagine easily making such a trip with my friends of long-standing, including my best friend, my wife, and not finding it particularly stressful.

The modern trend of playing at the incidents of marriage is really foolhardy.

That's treading where most would fear to go.  This couple shouldn't have been one, and they shouldn't have been on the road together.  Something went badly wrong, and a lot of things may have gone wrong.  She was young and cute, and shouldn't have been out there at all as she was, which at the end of the day was with a man she wasn't married to and who didn't look after her as a decent human would, most particularly a decent man bound to her for life, no matter what was going on.

Female Dresses and Undress

I've been getting a bunch of Twitter sidebars, i.e. suggested reading, that have to do with entertainment recently, which is odd as I don't follow the entertainment news.

The entertainment news follows female fashion, and what women "wear", if that term can be used loosely.  As a result, there were a few from the VMA awards of well known, apparently, female entertainers who basically were not dressed. One was Megan Fox, and another was some well known, apparently, female singer.  I didn't click on either, but even from the little box, you could see that Fox might as well have been completely nude, for all she wasn't wearing at the VMA's, and the female singer was dressed, or rather undressed, in an antiquarian style, by which we would mean the way that the over fevered brains of old time set designers imagined members of the harem to be dressed, or not dressed, basically.

Why do women betray other women this way?

It's an interseting cultural phenominon.  In an era when we're still in the aftershocks of the Me Two era in which women justifiably compalined about being treated like sexual objects, popular female figure display themselves as, well, sexual objects.

I've noted it before and will again.  Women will never achieve full equality with men in society as long as some women prostitute their image.  It demans and degrades them all.

There was also a Met Gala, at which a selection of notables appeared.  One was AoC who wore a full lengthy stylish dress with "Tax the Rich" emblazed on it in red.  And of course, Billie Eilish was there wearing a weird 1950s style move dress that flowed on and on which also was cut so that her ample, well you can figure it out, were prominently displayed.  It was her "Holiday Barbie" dress.  She's clearly riffing off of Marilyn Monroe at this point.  Hailee Steinfeld was there, not looking like Hailee Steinfeld, which is really unfortuante as people really ought to look like who they are.

What to make of all of that.

Well one thing you can make of it is that Eilish continues to play from Madonna's playbook. She's now a figure, and a full figured figure at that, whose public image is fully seperated from her voice and singing talent, if she has any.  And she's also clearly angling, as Madonna once did, to be a latter day Marilyn Monroe, and pulling that off more effectively than Madonna did.

Oh well, at least she's not stick thin, so perhaps, at least in her case, this trend isn't a bad one.

AoC's dress caused a Twitterstorm, predictably, even though we all know it isn't really her dress.

On dresses, a local art museum has a display of the dresses of a cross dressing man on display.

He was well known around here for years, long before there was any suggestion that people tolerate such things.  People by and large did, however, and for at least two decades.  His wife donated them for dispaly as she didn't want his legacy to be forgotten.

I'm not sure what the legacy is.  As odd as it may seem, what I most recall about the times I ran into him, generaly in grocery stores and the like, is how out of time and style the dresses were.  That may sound odd, but that was my reaction.  It wasn't that he was wearing a dress, but rather that they were not good looking dresses.  More like the dresses worn by elderly women who dance in polka groups, which also strike me as not very good looking.

Anyhow, I don't know quite what to make of putting a person's clothes on display.  Is this really honoring him?  I suspect, no matter how society may have altered or claimed to have altered its views on this, it was probably an ordeal for him during his life.  It just seems a strange act to me. And an average person's clothes don't really make for art or history.  What they do give, in some context, is a chance for people to virtue signal, however, which isn't really a meaningful thing in and of itself.

Blurred Lines

Speaking of dress and undress, Emily Ratajkowski claims Robin Thicke grabbed her bare boobs during the filiming of the video for "Blurred Lines".  The headlines climed this was a "sexual assault".

I'm sorry, but somehow the "Me Too" dog just doesn't hunt here.  The entire song is about improper sexual conduct, and in one of the two versions of it that was committed to video, Ratajkowski walks around with some other model topless apparently.  If the entire thing is about immoral and illicit sexual attraction, do you really expect Thicke to treat you like a something other than you were portraying.

That's really dense.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The really beutiful Marylin Monroe at the height of her career.

Dimly connected to this post, the other day I watched the 1953 classic Gentlemen Prefer Bonds.

Really.

Now, musicals aren't my cup of tea and even though I have a pretty good knowledge of old movies, I have a pretty good knowledge of certain types of old movies, and not this type.  I'm not really a Marylin Monroe fan and her image grew so large, like Jmes Dean's, I"m inclined to ignore it really.  

Well, this movie caught me off guard.

Frankly, it started off being just as vapid as I expected it to be and I nearly turned it off, but as it went on I found it amusing.

And then shocking.

This is one of the most cynical movies I've ever seen.  I'm stunned that it was a hit in 1953.

Where the film really comes together is near the end, when Monroe's character explains to the father of her fiance that she doesn't intend to marry him for his mother, but rather, speaking to her future father-in-law "I'm marrying him for your money".  She goes on to ask him if it isn't true that men want a beutiful woman for a bride, which he confirms.  She goes on to say that for a woman, "money is like that".

This is just after the legendary scene in which Monroe sings "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes has been sung.  And if you see the entire scene, it's shockingly cynical.

I don't believe that everyone shares the sentiments of this film by quite some measure, but there's more than a little to it.  

Straight Lines

If you wish to be perfect,go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Somebody whose lines aren't blurred are those of Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrewjczyk, who put her Olympic silver medal up for auction.  She is a devout Catholic and did it to donate the money to the parents of a child who desperately requires surgery.

She auctioned the medal and donated the money. The medal was bought by a Polish chain store, which gave the medal back to her.

Everyone did the right thing.

Maybe that's why there's been so little news about it.

Lawyer jokes.

I'm really tired of it

This applies to lawyer jokes.

Like most lawyers, I don't get upset at lawyer jokes in general, although the late Gerald Mason, at one time the president of the State Bar, was so upset about how they impacted the image of lawyers that he had a campaign urging lawyers not to repeat them.

Mason was an earnest man.  I never met him personally, but those who did generally liked him, but he was very earnest. From the far western part of the state, he was a sincere and observant Mormon who worried about the addiction rates displayed amongst his fellow lawyers. For that reason, he hosted the state's only dry State Bar Association Annual Meeting, at least before the Cyber variants brought in during COVID 19, which I’m guessing aren't completely dry.  Anyhow, Mason coined the phrase "Proud to be a Wyoming lawyer" as he was proud to be a Wyoming lawyer.

That was before the Uniform Bar Exam, however, which caused the shipping of legal work out of the state to Colorado.

Anyhow, Mason hated legal jokes and didn't want us to tell them.  We ignored that and his other suggestions, although for quite some time the state did use the "Proud to be a Wyoming lawyer" moniker.

Anyhow, recently I've had more than one occasion in which nervous litigants have been with me and the suggestion has been made, when there's an obvious accident or something, "you should give them your card, hah, hah".

I don't like it.

I don't like it as I'm not an ambulance chaser, and I'm not a plaintiff's lawyer, or at least I never thought I was.  A partner of mine recently pointed out to me that "we're trial lawyers" which, even though I've been a trial lawyer, and I am, for over 30 years, never dawned on me.

Clearly, I'm an idiot.

I guess in my mind I've always made the sharp distinction between lawyers who defend cases and those who prosecute them, in civil court, even though I've prosecuted some myself.  Now I don't have that luxury.

And I don't have it for more than one reason I'll not go into here.  So I'm finding myself, I suppose, like a Confederate veteran in 1870, after the war is over, when somebody says "you fought for slavery", and you realize, well, you did.

Like those guys whom that dawned on, I'll probably not be going to the United Confederate Veterans Association meeting like the guys who always knew that they were fighting for slavery, or those who can still pretend they were fighting for Virginia.

I still don't like being reminded, however.

Proud

Country Joe and the Fish.

My pride in general has been taking a bruising recently as well, for a variety of reasons, some of which would make other people proud.  I'm kind of like that host of Vietnam veterans in the late 1960s and early 1970s who hurled their medals at the White House or Pentagon.

It's a strange feeling.  And I don't even have Country Joe and the Fish to provide an anthem.

Opinion Today: Monica Lewinsky wants to talk about cancel culture

So reads a headline in my New York Times newsfeed.

I can't really see how being willing  to . . . um. . Bill Clinton elevates a person to the level of social critic.  Lewinsky is entitled to go on and live her life, but in order to really be a public figure after, well you know, and other things, she'd really have to break away from that entirely to be interesting or relevant.  Frankly, if you come up in the news due to a scandal like this, and you have some things on your ledger that are at least a little icky otherwise, you really have to probably make a big leap in order to merit being taken seriously on the public stage, or even be on the public stage.

Forgetting old knowledge

President Biden has condemned the ostensibly poor treatment of the illegal Haitian border crossers and Vice President Harris stated that the scenes remind her of slave scenes.

This reminds me of the degree to which modern Americans are, by and large, blisteringly ignorant of animals and hence disconnected from reality.

I’ve been around horses my entire life and very much admire their utility.  Frankly, they’re a very underutilized resource in the modern world simply because most people aren’t very familiar with them on workaday basis anymore.  You can do a lot with horses in a law enforcement scenario that you can’t with anything else, including crowd control and also, FWIW, in looking for the missing (dead or alive).  I always think of this when something like the Petito missing persons situation comes up.

Given that, this has been a frustrating thing to watch for me.

I don’t envy the Border Patrol their job at all.  It’s a tough job that lines a person up for constant criticism.  Right now, just to be a policeman anywhere in the US is to subject yourself to a fair amount of daily criticism even if you police in a region that has nothing to do with any of the events of the past couple of years, but the Border Patrol really gets the heat simply for doing its job.

Within the past couple of days the President has expressed a conclusion of guilt on the Border Patrolmen who were depicted on horseback and the Vice President claimed it reminded her of the days of slavery.   Those views are frankly not consistent with what we claim to be our view about guilt or innocence of a person as we’re convicting the Border Patrolmen without really knowing what they were doing, unless you do know what they were doing, in which case they are not guilty of anything.

The Border Patrolmen who were depicted were using split reins.  I use spit reins. Split reins are really something that working stockmen use, and I was surprised to see them use them, as even a lot of people who ride “western” don’t use split reins as they don’t’ know how to use them.  Riders who use split reins “neck reign”, rather than direct rein.  FWIW, cavalrymen, back in the day, were taught to direct rein.  I know how to do both, but I’ll neck reign by default, as that’s where I started off.

Riders who neck rein only use one had to rein, keeping the other free. That in fact is what the border patrolman in question was doing.  If you look at the photos carefully you’ll see that in the one dramatic photo he has his hand way out, and he’s practically out of the saddle in order to grab a person by the shirt.  He’s not whipping anyone.

Indeed, when you use split reins as a crop, the only thing you are getting the attention of is the horse.  Most ranch horses, in reality, are really rough stock, not anything like the horses that people in towns ride (I used to laugh when my son would say that he was a “poor rider”, as he was riding horses that would have been regarded as widow makers to most people in town).  Every now and then a rider of a ranch type horses will whack the rear end of the horse with the long reins.  You don’t have enough rein to actually inflict pain, but it gets their attention.

The reins aren’t long enough to hit anyone on the ground either.  Keep in mind that they’re attached to a bit of some sort, and the horse that uses them reins from the touch of the rein on the neck.  If you have that much rein, you are going into some big weird curve and aren’t going to do what you meant to do, assuming the horse doesn’t revolt and throw you off.  Indeed, the thing with split reins is that the rider needs to know how long or short they need to be, as if they’re too short the horse will protest, and if they’re too long, he won’t stop.  Every horse is a little different on this.

Horses are a long domesticated animal, and it's actually very difficult to get one to run into or over a person.  There are accounts of policemen charging crowds, for example, in which the horses leap over the people who have fallen as they generally won’t mow down a person.  I’ve seen men turn horses that were bucking or upset lots of times simply by stepping out in front of them and putting out their arms.  I personally have been bucked off horses and had a horse roll on me when it fell, but I’ve had one try to mow me over, and I’ve been around a lot of horses.  I can’t say the same, for example, about cattle, which have tried to stomp me flat and which actually have picked me up with their heads and thrown me around.  Horses can be dangerous, bud the real danger is getting thrown or kicked, not run down.

All of this is actually what makes horses good for crowd control.  A trained horse won’t kick a person, and they won’t run over them. But they are very large and look larger if you are on the ground.  As late as the Bush War in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe of the 80s, it was demonstrated that even armed men pretty much miss hitting horses when they’re running at you as it's scary.

All the Border Patrolmen were doing, in my observation, was trying to keep the border from being illegally crossed.  That’s their job.  Depriving them of horses will make it that much harder to do that job, which is pretty hard to do as it is, and it’ll deprive them of a patrolling asset that they need (and which the border customs agents, who also once used horses, no longer have as an asset, since the 80s I think).

Anyway, I’m pretty disgusted by the way the officers are being treated. They’re being compared to slave masters for simply trying to keep our border from being any more porous than it already is.

Trump is suing Twitter to force Twitter to restore is account.

It's a private company. They don't have to restore anyone's account.

Trump is suing Congress over subpoenas

The January 6 commission has been issuing subpoenas on figures associated with Trump.  Trump is suing to stop it.  It's almost as if that material might be embarrassing or something.

We're all for individual rights except when we aren't.

A Cheyenne attorney and former congressional candidate has declared YouTube’s ban of anti-vaccination content from its platform to be illegal censorship and in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

YouTube isn't the government, and we always hear around here that we're for individual rights.

We also hear that we're for property rights, and we're a right to work state.  A local politician appeared recently to support nurses who stand to be canned for not getting vaccinations, even though it's their employer's right to require them to do so.

And the legislature is going into session in order to take on a Federal mandate, in the name of individual rights, that would require employers with more than 100 employees to require those employees to be vaccinated.

All this is really confusing if we take any of this rights stuff serious and if we have also sworn an oath, as legislators (and lawyers) have to the Constitution.  The supremacy clause is well established, and we seemingly have no problem with the Federal Government requiring hard hats and steel toed boots of some workers. We also have no problem with vaccination requirements for school attendance, unless its for COVID 19, then we do.  We don't have a problem with employers telling employees how to dress.  There's no consistency here.

There is opportunism, however.  I'm sure some of the legislators going back to Cheyenne are completely sincere in their beliefs, but in this odd election season, there being no break from the past election, you have to wonder.

Justin Trudeau sorry for skipping first National Truth and Reconciliation Day

As The Guardian notes:

Canadian prime minister took family holiday on day to underscore bitter legacy of Indigenous residential schools – ‘I regret it’

It's hard to imagine how politicians get in this situation, but they continually do. Somebody will have a strict mask order, and then go dine out.  The Canadian PM virtues signals all the time, and then on the first Reconciliation Day event he goes on vacation.

Of course, the reality of it is that really reconciling isn't easy to do.  It's one thing to apologize for the sins of your ancestors, but that doesn't really accomplish anything.  Both Trudeau and I hail (him more than me) from people who decamped from Normandy in the 17th Century and went to New France, where their mere presence helped displace the native population, although in the French example, much less than the English example, as the French genuinely saw the natives as fellow souls to be saved, whereas the English, corrupted by the legacy of King Henry the Vandal and Queen Elizabeth I saw things in a more mercenary manner.

Be that as it may, neither Justin or I can really apologize to anyone impacted at the time or for anyone impacted at the time. They're all gone.  This would mean, of course, that you have to look out at the people in the real world today, and in regard to indigenous populations, there's plenty to be done.

For the most part, however, people aren't going to do it.  It's easier to lament the sins of those long gone and the plight of those long departed, than to look around and do something about anything now.

And then. . 

One guy who definitely isn't going to be apologizing for anything is Donald Trump.  He's not a truth and reconciliation kind of guy.  Indeed, he's still boosting the election was stolen line, and its pretty clear that he's out for revenge against anyone who didn't back him whom he thinks should have.

One of the guys that Trump apparently had a bit of an axe to grind about was the late Gen. Colin Powell.  Powell was the child of Jamaican immigrants and was born in Harlem.  He's a huge success story, which you have to accord even if you don't agree with every policy he supported when he was Secretary of State.  In response to the news of his death, Trump stated:

Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!

Okay, I'm not one of those people who take the line that you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but Trump can't help but be a jerk.  The mistake that Trump apparently is referring to Powell's endorsement of the "weapons of mass destruction" line at the time of the second war with Iraq.

Powell later apologized for being in error on that.  Frankly, in my view, that line never justified the war in the first place, as "weapons of mass destruction" principally meant chemical weapons which are darned near worthless in the real world, as well as missiles, which lots of nations have.  But Powell's view stemmed from intelligence reports which were inaccurate, as he later acknowledged, and you can't fault a guy for believing erroneous stuff your own intelligence sources tell you.

And he was certainly a remarkable person.  He was the son of immigrants who rose up to be one of the most important figures in the country.  And like so many immigrant's children, he served the country in time of war whereas, like so many of the native born, our last couple of leaders can't say the same.