Friday, April 19, 2024

Blog Mirror: Why You Can’t Be an Iran Hawk and a Russia Dove

 

Why You Can’t Be an Iran Hawk and a Russia Dove

RUDE.

It has been noted by a press pool reporter that when the defense is introduced to the potential jurors seated in the audience, Defendant Trump does not rise to face them like his lawyers do.

What an idiot.  Setting himself up to lose through rude conduct. Everyone rises when the jurors come in, and the defendant should always directly face them.  They've surely instructed him to do so.

Wednesday, April 19, 1944. Operation Ichi-Go.

 Operation Ichi-Go commenced in China.

Japanese plans for the offensive, which would be a largely successful Japanese effort.

Control of the ground at the end of the war.

The massive and highly successful offensive was designed, in no small measure, to help force a conclusion to the war in China, something perhaps best demonstrated by its alternative Japanese name, Tairiku Datsū Sakusen (大陸打通作戦), "Continent Cross-Through Operation"). It would gain a huge amount of ground, and demonstrate the importance of the war on the mainland to the Asian conflict.  It's specific goas were to link railways in Beijing and Hankou in northern China to the southern Chinese coast at Canton and spare shipping and avoid American submarines; to take the airfields in Sichuan and Guangxi to preclude U.S. bombing of Taiwan and the Japanese mainland; and to destroy elite Nationalist units to cause the Nationalist government to collapse.

It was ambitious and would be, late war though it was, the largest military campaign of the Japanese war against China.  Japan committed 80% of their forces in China, some 500,000 men, as well as 100,000 horses, 1,500 artillery pieces, and 800 tanks.

700,000 Nationalist Chinese troops were eliminated from combat in the operation, which would continue into October.

The Allies launched Operation Cockpit, an operation that featured all of the principal Allied forces in the East, the same being an air assault on Sabang Indonesia.



The RAF mined the Danube.
 
Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:
Today in World War II History—April 19, 1944 In the US, shortening, salad & cooking oils are removed from rationing, but butter & margarine are still rationed. Read more: “Make It Do—Rationing of Butter, Fats & Oils in World War II.”

Congress extended the Lend Lease Act.  Apparently the 78th Congress was a little more active than the 119th.

The 1944 NFL Draft was held, and the first draft pick was Angelo Bertelli, who was drafted by the Boston Yanks.  It wouldn't matter, Bertelli was already slated to enter the Marine Corps.

Canadian Gérard Côté won the Boston Marathon.

Côté winning the 1940 Boston Marathon.

He was serving in the Canadian Army at the time, and took leave to run in the race, sponsored by a Montreal restaurateur.  While the Canadian Army, which initially used him as a physical education instructor, and then stationed him in a munitions plant, had been proud of his status as Canada's premier runner, it had taken heat for perceived preferential treatment that he received, and reacted negatively to his taking leave and running in the race. Côté was shipped to the UK and served the rest of the war in Europe, winning three English marathons during that time period.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 18, 1944. 4,000 tons v. 53.

Holy Saturday, April 19, 1924.


The Saturday Evening Post went to press observing Easter with a Leyendecker illustration.

National Barn Dance, a direct precursor to the Grand Old Opry, premiered on Chicago's WLS, running a whopping four hours every Saturday night.  It would run until 1968.

The Washington Post depicted Coolidge holding fast in a political cartoon.



In Casper, there was a big meeting to oust a city councilman who had been convicted on a liquor charge.


And Arizona tourists could get into California before Easter.

It's interesting to realize that motor tourism had become a thing by 1924.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 17, 1924. Japanese reaction.

The 2024 Election, Part XVI. The Compromised Morals Edition

Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich

April 10, 2024

Donald Trump released a four-minute video attempting to thread the needle on abortion, and largely failed.

Abortion is proving to be an odd issue in this election.  Following 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, the Democratic Party became increasingly pro death, with left the GOP as the pro-life default party.  It was generally pro-life, as a conservative party, but it was more vague about it for many years than a person might suppose.  This paid off for pro-life forces when the decision, which even informed left wing legal thinkers felt impossible to really defend, fell due to a Mitch McConnell influenced Supreme Court, appointed by Donald Trump.   That was a long wished for conservative result, which Trump claimed credit for, not without some justification, but largely due to Trump giving McConnell free rein on Supreme Court appointments.

This has ended up being a hot election issue ever since, but it's still very poorly understood as to its impact.  Various conservative states have enacted laws restricting or banning abortion (some old laws have just come back into operation) and it's ended up a ballot issue elsewhere.  Democrats believe that the issue works in their favor, although how that squares with elected legislatures restricting it isn't very clear.  Added to that, right wing Republicans began to push for a Federal nationwise restriction on abortion, which is something they haven't really fleshed out, thinking wise.  A Federal law, while universal, seems to suggest a compromise on the topic, which is a topic that can't really be compromised on, at least on the pro-life side.  That is, unless its just a nationwide ban, which seems to have little chance of passing.  The various proposals make just about 0 intellectual sense whatsoever.  A person either believes that all life has value, in which case it does from the first instance, or they believe it really doesn't, and should only be protected at an arbitrary point at which its too icky to admit to killing.

Enter the candidates on the issue. . . 

Joe Biden, who is a Catholic and morally obligated to believe that all life is sacred, instead has opted for an apparent state of personal mortal sin and is for allowing the killing, with his campaign featuring that position, and he is still being allowed to receive Communion for some reason that's hard to grasp. Donald Trump, who has a predatory relationship with women to at least some degree, and who has been pretty keen on bedding women of a certain type, kept his views secret until earlier this week when, in a four-minute video, he came out for no Federal law at all.

No Federal law is the position of some conservative, but politically savvy, Republicans who aren't Trumpers.  It is, for example, Chris Christie's position's was that the states should decide the issue for their states.  But the concept of a nationwise ban has received increasing support in conservative camps due to some states enacting broad permissive abortion laws.  It should be noted, others have enacted restrictive ones, like Wyoming (whose law is gummed up in court due to an incredibly dim witted paranoid law that enshrines personal medical choices as its supporters were rampaging paranoid about imaginary Obamacare "death panels".

This raises a lot of interesting questions, one being what does Trump actually think?  Frankly, Trump doesn't appear to be a deep thinker on anything, but on this issue it's known that he's run the gambit in views, originally being in the pro death camp.  His coming out the way he did appears to be in hopes of avoiding the issue, stating that it's a state rights issue.  After giving his four-minute flat affect speech, he came out again today on the Arizona Supreme Court finding a territorial era statute banning abortion was constitutional and revised, which makes perfect sense legally.  Noting that it was his appointees that brought the reversal of Roe finally around, he stated that the Arizona action, which again makes perfect legal sense, "went too far", which makes no legal sense but which reflects the view that most people have on courts which is that they're a policy legislature, which they aren't.

Life or death being a state's rights issue is lame in more ways than one.  A person could argue it on a practical basis, that being that leaving it up to states is the only way for any peace on the issue at all, which is more or less Christie's position. Trump's view came out like a rambling mish mash of a confused intellect, which is a bit surprising as somebody must have written his statement for him.

Indeed, the fact that he read it brings up the issue of his mental status. Statements that he reads tend to come out with a very flat affect, which has yet to be explained.  People continue to ignore the question of what's going on, organically, in his head.

All this has left some interesting fallout.  Serious pro lifers are left wondering about who to support, with some having supported Trump in the past solely because of this issue.  "He's better than Biden" seems to be the common reaction.  But some are really upset. By the same token, Biden's designation of Easter as Transgender Visibility Day disgusted some who are fellow travelers on this issue.  Pro lifers have been major supporters of the GOP since 1973, and now they have reason to question the party's loyalty to them.

And it all shows how compromised the values of politicians are in general.

April 12, 2024

The Trump campaign, which avoided debates in the primaries, wants more debates in the general election and wants them to start soon.

Trump is likely worried that a lot of his speaking coming up will be in the form of testimony, and wants to distract from that.  Also, Trump no doubt feels he's a better speaker than Biden.

In actuality, neither of them are good speakers. Biden has had a lifelong stuttering problem which makes his speech a bit odd, and Trump's speech suggests that he's in the early to early-mid stage of the onset of dementia.  Absent a spectacular performance, or spectacular failure, by either candidate, debates probably aren't going to matter much, but contrary to common belief, Trump, who really goes off the rail if he departs from the teleprompter, is more likely to say something extraordinarily off the mark, weird, or incoherent.*

Cont:

Governor Gordon rightly rejected Secretary of State Gray's new voting rules.


Gray, who is clearly running for Governor and keeping populist heat turned up as a result, will undoubtedly reply with something shortly.

Elsewhere:

Eastern Shoshone educator Ivan Posey shares why he’s running for state House

April 13, 2024

Secretary of State Gray has an op ed in today's Trib entitled "Only Wyomingites Must Vote In Wyoming's Election".

It's a crime not to be a resident and vote in Wyoming's election, so this is a bit silly, but it's part of the Gray effort to whip up a frenzy in the populist right in part of his aim to run for Governor in 2026.  It's also more than a little ironic, as Gray is not a Wyomingite, and most of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus isn't either.  Jeanette Ward barely qualified to run for office when she ran for the seat Gray abandoned, as he tried first for the House and then for the SoS office.

Of course, "only Wyomingites" isn't what Gray means.

As always, Gray cited "radical left wing" activists as being his opponents.

Wyoming Democrats will caucus for the President today, not that it's going to matter. They'll choose Biden, and Biden will lose in Wyoming.

A Park County representative still wants all ballot counting in the county to be done by hand, but is being ignored as its a phenomenally bad idea.

Republican Dale Zwonitzer, a major House member from Cheyenne, is facing a run from Steve Johnson, Populist.  Zwonitzer has faced open hostility from the Populist right the last several years.

Colorado will have an abortion ballot initiative in the fall.

April 15, 2024

While hardly newsworthy, Joe Biden won the Wyoming Caucus Saturday.

April 16, 2024

Donald Trump's criminal trial regarded to the paying of hush money to three people, two of them pornographic personages, began yesterday in New York.

The favorite of the Evangelical right is accused of paying Stormy Daniels, a pornographic actress, and another person, a former Playboy playmate, hush money prior to the 2016 election so they'd keep their mouths shut abut his fucking them.  The third person is a doorman.  The crime is asserted to be election interference, I guess, which is frankly a little hard to grasp in this context.

A jury has not yet been selected.

April 18, 2024

Senator Barrasso announced yesterday that he's running for reelection to the Senate.

I frankly thought he'd already announced, as he was obviously running for reelection.  He has an opponent in the primary, Reid Rasner, who is running from the populist right.

I've mentioned the primary contest before, but I dismissed Rasner's campaign.  Frankly, I was in error to do so as at this point I think Rasner has a serious chance of beating Barrasso, and Barrasso obviously fears that as well.  Barrasso has been putting out hardcore populist, Trumpite, messages now for weeks. I strongly suspect that he doesn't believe in what he's tweeting, but he's taking this position, like almost every Republican political figure, in order to hang on to their jobs, even though it's killed the GOP.

Therefore, at the primary election, Wyoming will be presented with a contesnt between a genuine populist and a fake one.  Actual conservatives will vote for Barrasso, not for what he's saying, but what they suspect he actually believes.  Some populists will as well.

April 19, 2020

The GOP state convention defeated a bylaw proposal that would have provided a mechanism, probably ineffectively and illegally given the way party affiliation actually works, to kick actual Republicans out of the party.

One populists commented:

There was a group of citizens in Weston County very, very concerned about Liz Cheney and the way she tried to infiltrate and change our party,

Eh?

It's the populists who infilatrated the GOP, not the other way around.  Cheney is a real Republican.  Her opponents are largley Dixiecrats, but don't know it. 

Natrona County voters will have a ballot item on the fall to create a Senior Service District consisting of the entire county.  This will add 2 mills to people's taxes to fund senior services.

It's hugely unpopular to say so, but in an era in which Wyomingites are unhappy about all the growth they encouraged causing property values to rise (d'uh!) this will pass anyhow, and shouldn't.  The current generation of seniors has had the best breaks of any generation in history, continues to basically control the country, and is fairly wealthy overall, even if individual members of the generation are not.  A 2 mill tax effectively takes cash out of everyone's pockets to fulfill a need that people should have filled on their own, or that their families should.

Footnotes:

*Something you'll sometimes hear from Trump supporters is that "he talks like us".  I fear that might be true, which is we're beginning to sound mildly demented and addled as a society.

Last prior edition:

The 2024 Election, Part XV. The Disappointing Choices edition.

Blog Mirror: Radio at School, 1924

 

Radio at School, 1924

Blog Mirror: Biden's position in the polls is* improving against Trump — here's my theory for why

 

Biden's position in the polls is* improving against Trump — here's my theory for why

Thursday, April 18, 2024

The Impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas. Panem et circenses

 


April 17, 2024. 

 9.4 million illegal aliens have entered this country under President Biden, 1 million more than the population of New York City and more than 16x the population of Wyoming.

The unprecedented invasion is a direct result of the open borders agenda of 

@POTUS

 and Alejandro Mayorkas.

From a Twitter post of Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis.

Alejandro Mayorkas is not going to be removed from office.  

Moreover, everyone with any political savvy knows this.  Sen. Lummis knows this, as do the other members of Wyoming's Washington representation, one of whom will be a prosecutor in the impeachment trial, if an impeachment trial actually occurs, which I very much doubt.

Rather, the Senate Republicans will screw around with this until the Democrats dismiss it.  

The validity of the impeachment process will be tarnished even more than it has been since the ill-advised GOP effort to impeach Bill Clinton brought us into the modern political impeachment era, and the border won't get address, in no small part because Donald Trump, who is in the first of what will be several trials, would rather have it as issue than address it.

Congress, of course, could have addressed this, but for following the Trump directive to the GOP.  There's utterly no excuse for the GOP failure to act.  If the bill wasn't prefect, it was much better than any others for years, and if they take a two house and Oval Office majority in November, which I doubt they will, they could have improved it.  Indeed, their failure to act not only makes this look incredibly hypocritical, but puts them in jeopardy of losing the House.

We will see a Twitter storm of GOP tweets.  Most will be ignored. The worshiping spectrum of the GOP, the ignorant populists masses, will swoon over every word while the now purifying corpse of the GOP elephant starts to stink even more, actual Republicans and conservatives not knowing how to remove it.

Indeed, on the Twitter Storm, populist far right Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer took to twitter to demand that Mayorkas receive a full trial in the Senate as, she suggested, the Constitution demands, while at least one of her critics noted she didn't feel that way when Trump was up for impeachment.

All this while very little gets done and Americans lose faith in their government, save for a tiny sliver who somehow feel the dissolution of a 200+ year old institution is serving democracy, when in fact it's destroying it.

April 18, 2024

And the Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment, making my prediction of no trial accurate.  I thought there would be a motion to dismiss, and there was.

The motion came up immediately, and Chuck Schumer offered debate time, but Republicans, who apparently have no sense of procedure, rejected that, demanding a full trial, and thereby demonstrating the sort of hubris, ignorance and stupidity that criminal defendants sometimes do. Schumer replied and went right to the vote. 

The vote was down the party line, Republicans who know better not having the guts to vote in favor of the motion.

By this point, the dysfunctional circus that Congress has become now attracts so little attention for even extraordinary events, which this fits into as it's an extraordinary dereliction of duty and common sense by those who voted for it in the House, that it doesn't even make the primary headlines.

No doubt Wyoming's Senators went home and breathed a sigh of relief, being spared acting on this absurdity, and also being spared the pangs of acting in contravention to their conscience.  And the issue is preserved for red meat tweets, texts and speeches, so attacking the Democrats on an issue that Republicans refused to act on, when they had the chance, can still be done.

And hence this circus closed.

Tuesday, April 18, 1944. 4,000 tons v. 53.

The USS Wyoming in Chesapeake Bay, April 18, 1944. The Wyoming was a training ship during World War Two and was so frequently in Chesapeake Bay she was nicknamed "The Chesapeake Raider".

The combined Allied Air Forces achieved a new daily record, and dropped over 4,000 tons of bombs on Germany and occupied France.

On the same day, the Luftwaffe sent 125 aircraft on a raid over London, the last of the "Little Blitz" air raids.  Fourteen German aircraft were brought down. Fifty-three tons of bombs were dropped on the city, and a hospital was amongst the buildings hit.

The Red Army took Balaclava.

German and Hungarian forces counterattacked at Buchach.

The British government banned coded radio and telegraph transmissions from the UK.  Diplomats are forbidden to leave, and diplomatic bags are censored, with excepts for the US, USSR and the Polish government in exile. Incitement to strike is made a punishable offense.

The British 5th Brigade linked up with the Kohima garrison, braking the encirclement of the city.

The USS Gudgeon was sunk off of Iwo Jima by a Mitsubishi G3M.

The Vatican established the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza to provide rapid, non-bureaucratic and direct aid to needy populations, refugees, and prisoners in Europe.

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 17, 1944. The Uman–Botoșani Offensive Concludes, First Shots of the Greek Civil War, The Martyrdom of Fr. Max Josef Metzger, A Mystery Flight, Up Front in U.S. newspapers.

Blog mirror: The Party’s Over

 

The Party’s Over

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Blog Mirror: I still have 2 big questions about the Shohei Ohtani case

 

I still have 2 big questions about the Shohei Ohtani case

Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus

Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus: In most parts of the world, lawyers are formally trained in an undergraduate degree program. The Bachelor of Law (LL.B), is also an accelerated three-year curriculum. In the United States it takes over twice as long. First you need a 4-year undergraduate degree in any subject—a gratuitous requirement, as there is no such thing as […]

Thoughts?

There's something to this suggestion, particularly since law school has become essentially a trade school, as that's what the law is now, a trade.

But it shouldn't be, which might be why law school shouldn't be either. 

Blog Mirror: Friday, April 17, 1964: Shea Stadium Opens & Ford Introduces the Mustang

 

April 17, 1964: Shea Stadium Opens & Ford Introduces the Mustang


Last prior edition:

Monday, April 17, 1944. The Uman–Botoșani Offensive Concludes, First Shots of the Greek Civil War, The Martyrdom of Fr. Max Josef Metzger, A Mystery Flight, Up Front in U.S. newspapers.

Soviet soldiers in Ukraine examining a destroyed Panther tank. By Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113828084

The Uman–Botoșani Offensive concluded in a wide-ranging Soviet victory.  The Soviets had advanced 190 miles in one month, cleared southwestern Ukraine and entered Romania and Moldova.   The offensive had been, moreover, carried out during spring mud season, the rasputitsa.  It was one of the most successful Soviet advances of the war.

The Take-Ichi sendan (竹一船団, "Bamboo No. One" convoy) left Shanghai with two infantry divisions to reinforce the Philippines and western New Guinea.  Its story was to be fateful and strategically important.


Following an attack on his unit by Greek Communists on Orthodox Easter Monday, Greek army officer and partisan, Col. Dimitrios Psarros (Δημήτριος Ψαρρός), founder of the partisan National and Social Liberation organization was executed in an early indication of how things were going to go as the Axis control of Greece loosened.  Greece would be in a civil war before the end of World War Two.

Fr. Max Josef Metzger, German Catholic Priest and founder of the German Catholic Peace Association, was executed by the Nazi German state.  He is regarded as a Catholic martyr.

The U-342 was sunk in the North Atlantic by a RCAF PBY.

Civilian airliner Deutsche Lufthansa D-AOCA, a Junkers Ju-52/3m was shot down on scheduled service E.17 from Vienna to Athens with stops in Belgrade, Sofia, and Thessaloniki. An Allied fighter sweep of Belgrade mistook it for a military aircraft.  Five of its seven occupants were killed.

A Royal Air Force Warwick passenger plane went down over the UK, creating a mystery.  As the recovery of its doomed passengers occured, large amounts of cash were found with them.

United Features Syndicate began to run Bill Mauldin's Up Front in U.S. newspapers.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.

Thursday, April 17, 1924. Japanese reaction.

Political cartoonists were making fun of it, but the Japanese were both measured and enraged by the passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act.  On this day, Japanese businesses in Japan began cancelling orders from the US in reaction.

Regarding the Chicago Tribune cartoon from above, one of the most remarkable things about it is that the cartoonist included five political parties.  One wouldn't do that today.

Wyoming's Senator F. E. Warrren was already urging reconsideration of the act, and urging meetings to consider its impact.

The All-India Yadav Mahasabha was formed to promote equal treatment of and rights for Yadav people, the poorest people in India's caste system.

Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures were merged by Marcus Loew to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In baseball:

April 17, 1924: Baby Doll Jacobson hits for the cycle, but Browns lose to White Sox

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things authentic and important.



Why there?

On Saturday, March 30, Pro Hamas protestors interrupted the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

Why St. Patrick's?

For the same reason, most likely, that LGBTQ+ figures had a protesting funeral there recently. People are drawn to Catholic places, as they're real, and therefore attention is paid to them.

Why her?

Courtney Love, in an interview with Standard, stated; "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."

This followed Billie Eilish criticizing, sort of anonymously, "wasteful artists" who put out multiple vinyl editions, an apparent softball for sustainability.  She later said her comments weren't directed at Swift.

Hmmm. . . 

Why are these chanteuses dissing Taylor?  

I don't really know, but I will note that Love commenting on who is important and interesting in laughable.  Is Love "important" or "interesting"?  If she is, she might be interesting as she's the late wife of the tragic Curt Cobane, whom I don't find to have been particularly important, but certainly tragic.  And for Eilish, she's sort of a teenage train wreck who probably needs to get over her weird diet and flipping between hiding her form and flaunting it.

Taylor is interesting because she's a musical success.  I don't like her music, which I find to be juvenile, but I will note that appearance wise she's a throwback almost to the 1940s, and appears to have gained success while being basically normal in every fashion.  

Culturally, therefore, she might be sort of important in a way.

Love, and Eilish, on the other hand, might be fairly unimportant in every sense.  Musically, right now, it's hard to see what actually is important.  Whoever they are, they aren't in pop music.  

Indeed, much of society seems to be grasping for the authentic and important right now, without much out there in the culture offering it.

Appearances

Back in November, I posted this item:

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

Since that time, this trend locally has noticeably increased.  It's really remarkable.

For whatever reason, I'm a student of people, so I take notice of what they wear.  I'm probably in a minority of sorts that way.  What people wear at Mass is a common topic in Cyber Catholic circles, but the recent turn towards the conservative amongst young, white, female Catholic parishioners is really remarkable.  It's a real rejection of the cultural norm of our era.

Indeed, very recently, even amongst those young women who were part of this group, there's suddenly a change.  One young woman who is routinely at Mass with her family on Sundays, and who typically showed a lot of shoulder (no, there's no problem with that) is now covering up hugely.  Something's changed.  It doesn't, however, carry over to Hispanic or Native American young women, both of whom continue to dress the way they have.  Hispanics have always dressed very conservatively at Mass, but not in a trad fashion. They're keeping on keeping on with that.

News, real news but in a rumor fashion, leaked out recently that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Byzantine Church is looking at putting in a mission in Casper, which would be a mission of a mission.  I don't know how many Ukrainian Catholics there may be in town, but I'll bet it's a tiny number.  I also bet that the mission church that's thinking of establishing a mission here, which is out of Cody, serves a mostly non-Eastern Rite community.  

Something is going on there too.  At a time at which some in the Latin Rite seem focused on a topic that's frankly jumped the shark, by and large, and which is really a matter of European culture, not biology, the young and rank and file in the pews seem to be moving on.  

Becoming a parody of yourself

One of the risks of taking the long reach for something is that you can end up actually becoming unauthentic in your quest for authenticity.

I'm reminded of Courtney Love again.

On her Wikipedia page, there's a picture of Love wearing a kokoshnik, a stiff hat associated with Russian women.  Russian women don't wear them anymore, and I'm sure they haven't for eons.  She's wearing it with a miniskirt.  It looked absurd, but was probably meant to make a statement.  Or here's another example:

The kind of dumb stuff you say when you actually really care about "your 'basic' fashion sense".

I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:

Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion sense

Oh, bull.  That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.

M'eh.

Exactly.  

I note this as in the pews are a young couple, they're not married but perhaps engaged, whose family I somewhat know.  From a very conservative background, they're trying to affect the disaffected but conservative look to the max.  Unwashed hair and, for the young man, probably third or fourth hand overcoats from the 1970s with huge hounds tooth pattern. The young woman wears, of course, a chapel veil but also is affecting plain to the maximum extent possible, which is detracting a bit from her appearance.  I do love her very round, plain glasses, however.

Anyhow, when going for something crosses over into sort of a parody, you've gone too far.

Lost

Anyhow, I think this trend has been going on for a while.  It explains the entire Hipster look that's still with us, and was much in force several years ago.

Some days, when I leave the office, there's a young woman coming in.  She's either a Native American or a Hispanic from somewhere south of the border.  She's always dressed very conservatively, with dresses that remind me of what Latin American women traditionally wear.  She always has a big smile when you see and acknowledge her.

She's authentic.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.

Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.

The RAF hit Romania for the first time. On the same day, the Soviet Air Forces hit Galatz. 

The Germans began to gather Hungarian Jews, some 800,000 in number, into ghettos.  Prior to this phase of the war, Hungarian Jews had been oppressed by their own nation, but not subject to deportation to the death camps.

The Red Army took Yalta.  The Germans attempted to push the Red Army back over the Dnestr.

A large air raid was staged on Hollandia, Indonesia.  The mission was successful with no losses, but the aircraft ran into a severe weather front on the return and 46 of the 170 aircraft in the raid went down.  The day acquired the name "Black Sunday" as a result.

The attacking force was made up of  B-24s, B-25s and A-20s, escorted by P-38s

862 Poles were killed by Ukrainian SS troops of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division. (1st Galician) in Chodaczków Wielki, part of pre war Poland which is now Velykyi Khodachkiv, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine.

The Parczew partisans helped take over that town in Poland on this day.

The U-550 was sunk off of Nantucket.  It was found in 2012:

Search team finds U-boat off Nantucket

African American artillerymen were in action on Bougainville.

155 Long Tom of B Btry, 49th Coastal Artillery, being loaded for firing.  Bougainville, April 16, 1944.  Section 1 of this unit, which had not been deployed overseas, would be disbanded the following month as the need for coast artillery faded.  Section 2, depicted, here, had obviously been converted to heavy field artillery.

1st section gun crew, Btry. A, 593rd F.A. Bn, load 105mm howitzer, preparatory to firing. Bougainville. 16 April, 1944.

USO events were going on in the UK.


In the US, General Robert E. Wood, former head of the America First Committee, stated that there was no connection between the pre-Pearl Harbor organization and the current party which was then led by the Reverend Gerald Smith, its presidential candidate that year.  Smith would receive 1,780, votes for the Oval Office, most of those from Texas and Michigan.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from the air, Teenagers lose at Tarnopol, Politics in Minnesota, Hydro-Québec