Read the whole thread (15 parts)
I was the judicial clerk for the judge in the original Apraio trial. I have some thoughts on the pardon. (1/15)— Andrew Case (@AClaudeCase) August 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017
Another Today's Tweet
Read the whole thread (15 parts)
OK For Me But Not For Thee
Pegged in the red.
WaPo Fact Checking - Sandy vs Harvy:
-- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), interview with NBC’s Katy Tur, Aug. 28, 2017
- snip -
Many Republicans said that the emergency spending should have been offset by cuts elsewhere. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), at the time chairman of the Budget Committee, was one arguing the money needed to be offset. “This legislative abuse is an insult to families facing real emergencies in the wake of the storm,” he declared.
Many Republicans in the House voted for an alternative bill, crafted by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), now President Trump’s budget director, that would have funded a smaller emergency bill with a 1.63 percent across-the-board reduction in spending on discretionary programs. “It’s so important to me that I think we should pay for it,” he said. But his gambit was rejected.
- snip -
So was the $50 billion bill filled with pork — two-thirds of which was unrelated to Sandy?
No.
The Congressional Research Service issued a comprehensive report on the provisions, and it’s clear that virtually all of it was related to the damage caused by Sandy. There may have been some pork in an earlier Senate version, but many of those items were removed before final passage. There were also some items that appear to have been misunderstood.
How many people in Houston were among those beating the drum right along with Cruz back then, while keeping very quiet about it now?
My guess is: a shitload of 'em.
But of course it won't matter because they've grown very comfortable with having been conditioned to forget anything from even the recent past that doesn't fit the current circumstance.
Say what you will about the near-total worthlessness of Mitt Romney's GOP, but they nailed it with that Etch-A-Sketch imagery.
Today's Tweet
Confirming my bias a little bit - but then again, I don't think it's a bad thing to confirm a bias against efforts to fog things over and shovel shit to cover up the parts of our history that make us uncomfortable.
Are you wondering why those Confederate statues crumple like cheap plastic? pic.twitter.com/5YDEyoP192— EL4C (@EL4JC) August 20, 2017
Aug 28, 2017
Today's GIF
Dogs are smart, but as with everything else, there are exceptions.
Kinda like politicians - and bloggers.
Today's Tweet
Guess who said it.
"You met with them in secret. You planned to promote our enemies' interests. That is the definition of conspiracy."— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) August 28, 2017
Robert Mueller or GoT?
More Monuments Mess
LA Times Op-Ed, Lisa Richardson:
Blacks and whites will have different perspectives on their entwined history. War victory for my white great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah H. Dial, who enlisted in the 31st Arkansas infantry regiment and was wounded in the battle of Stone River, Tenn., in December 1862, would have meant defeat for my great-great-great-grandmother Lavinia Fulton and their daughter, Mary Ellen. Instead, Lavinia died a free woman, living to play with her grandchildren and give thanks to God every Sunday in church in Birmingham, Ala. I thank God my great-great-great-grandfather lost. Every right-thinking person should be glad he lost.
Yet the monuments debate isn’t really about the past. It’s about a present-day assertion of white supremacy and whether our nation is going to stop making excuses and stare it down. Most of the statues, as has been widely discussed, were erected long after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. They were hoisted into view to assert white dominance at specific points in time when African Americans gained a measure of political influence — during Reconstruction and the civil rights era. With the bronzes came domestic terrorism, lynchings, bombings and cross burnings. The current uptick in neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity was entirely predictable. With clockwork precision it surged at the time of the nation’s first African American president.
So why do some people treat modern icons as if they were ancient relics, like marbles from the Parthenon?
Fear. History isn’t being erased, but it is being corrected. Relocating a Confederate statue to, say, a museum, is an acknowledgment that we see the naked emperor; we see through the contorted logic that it is possible to separate the Confederacy from the institution of slavery, that it’s a whites-only story and slavery is blacks-only, and that treason is the same as patriotism.
To all the bronze Confederate soldiers, in whom I see the image of my great-great-great-grandfather, I would extend this grace. Without resentment or rancor, I would move them into museums and there tell the story of their lives. I would end their utility as flashpoints for racism and division, and, once and for all, allow them to retire from their long service as sentries over a whitewashed history.
Blacks and whites will have different perspectives on their entwined history. War victory for my white great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah H. Dial, who enlisted in the 31st Arkansas infantry regiment and was wounded in the battle of Stone River, Tenn., in December 1862, would have meant defeat for my great-great-great-grandmother Lavinia Fulton and their daughter, Mary Ellen. Instead, Lavinia died a free woman, living to play with her grandchildren and give thanks to God every Sunday in church in Birmingham, Ala. I thank God my great-great-great-grandfather lost. Every right-thinking person should be glad he lost.
Yet the monuments debate isn’t really about the past. It’s about a present-day assertion of white supremacy and whether our nation is going to stop making excuses and stare it down. Most of the statues, as has been widely discussed, were erected long after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. They were hoisted into view to assert white dominance at specific points in time when African Americans gained a measure of political influence — during Reconstruction and the civil rights era. With the bronzes came domestic terrorism, lynchings, bombings and cross burnings. The current uptick in neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity was entirely predictable. With clockwork precision it surged at the time of the nation’s first African American president.
So why do some people treat modern icons as if they were ancient relics, like marbles from the Parthenon?
Fear. History isn’t being erased, but it is being corrected. Relocating a Confederate statue to, say, a museum, is an acknowledgment that we see the naked emperor; we see through the contorted logic that it is possible to separate the Confederacy from the institution of slavery, that it’s a whites-only story and slavery is blacks-only, and that treason is the same as patriotism.
- and -
The only problem is in that last graf: "once and for all". It doesn't happen that way.
This is the weirdness of politics, as practiced by very clever people who can be devious and cynically manipulative. There's no such thing as once and for all.
Not as long as we have assholes like this guy:
 |
| Richard Wilson Preston Charged with gun violation |
- because there's no expectation for a shortage of assholes under current market conditions.
Aug 27, 2017
More True History
Trying to square some people up with the truth seems futile. But there's value in writing this shit down as I go - and the value may be mostly in pointing this out to myself from time to time, if nobody else.
The Atlantic, Adam Serwer - 2 months ago:
The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.
- and -
The Atlantic, Adam Serwer - 2 months ago:
- and -
Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free, he fought for the preservation of slavery, his army kidnapped free blacks at gunpoint and made them unfree—but all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for blacks. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass’s admonition that "between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference."
Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing “that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.”
In another letter, Lee wrote “You will never prosper with blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world—on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites.”
Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and “could not vote intelligently,” and that granting them suffrage would “excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.” Lee explained that “the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power.” To the extent that Lee believed in reconciliation, it was between white people, and only on the precondition that black people would be denied political power and therefore the ability to shape their own fate.
Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing “that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.”
In another letter, Lee wrote “You will never prosper with blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world—on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites.”
Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and “could not vote intelligently,” and that granting them suffrage would “excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.” Lee explained that “the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power.” To the extent that Lee believed in reconciliation, it was between white people, and only on the precondition that black people would be denied political power and therefore the ability to shape their own fate.
Today's Tweet
If they wanted to pay off the national debt, they could raffle off who gets to watch the impeachment with @RepMaxineWaters. pic.twitter.com/TGcRUKzxos— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) August 24, 2017
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