Like most mornings I woke up and watched the first half-hour of Morning Joe. Before the thirty minutes had passed, however, I had to witch channels and watch a rerun of Texas Iron. The two lead stories dealt with the insanity and incompetence that currently resides in the White House.
First was a recap of yesterday’s press conference in which Trump defended some quack doctor and her claims about alien DNA being the enemy of religion in America. This woman made the most outlandish claims and Trump supported her on grounds akin to, well she must be correct, she has all her own teeth. Now, put that together with his already telling us to stick light bulbs in our orifices and bleach in our veins and tell me the inmates aren’t in charge of the asylum.
It’s been a little teary-eyed around here lately. I’ve noticed that as a part of aging I find myself experiencing periods of sadness more frequently and I’m sure it’s attributable to witnessing the normalcy or familiarity of life fading away. I don’t know who the popular entertainers are, I couldn’t tell you the name of a professional baseball player, I don’t know what a “Karen” is, and I’ll never understand why anyone would give up beer in favor of flavored seltzer water.
Sunday I watched a PBS documentary about Jewish-Americans who fought in the American military during World War II. So many were first-generation immigrants whose families had escaped the horrors of Hitler’s Europe only to find themselves fighting to free the very places their families had fled from.
One of the most important days in the annual calendar of African Americans is June 19, 1865, or what has become known as Juneteenth (also known as Freedom Day). Even though the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery was declared in 1863 it wasn’t until after the war had officially ended that word of the proclamation reached the far corners of the Confederacy, such as Texas where the Union General in charge announced it on June 19, 1865.
For decades defenders of the Confederacy have argued that the secession of the South had little to nothing to do with slavery. It was all about protecting a way of life, a history, a culture, the purity of Southern ladies, or the political idea of states versus national rights.
It is generally claimed that the beginning of the American Civil War began with the bombardment of the Union Fort Sumner in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. This occurred on April 12, 1861, but the succession of Southern states from the United States began when South Carolina seceded in December of 1860. When the war began depends on which action you choose.
Donald Trump and those he brought to his White House are possibly the most historically ignorant group of people ever assembled. There have been many events the Trumps have announced but later were informed their date conflicted with some historical event and that going ahead could harm their campaign. Just this week Trump announced he was jumpstarting his campaign with a rally in Tulsa, OK on June 19. Then he rescheduled the GOP’s national convention for Jacksonville, Fl in late August.
I laid down for a short nap this afternoon and when I awoke the news was on my TV and they were reporting a bit about National Guard units being removed from WDC. The report included a tweet from Trump claiming that he had ordered the action because “everything was under perfect control.”
I got a brief chuckle from it because it reminded me of Iraq’s famous Minister in Information, Baghdad Bob, who insisted his nation had
You know it’s been charged that Donald Trump took to refuge in a secret bunker deep beneath the WH when the protestors in Franklin Park got too close. While we don’t really know if that happened we do now that it took a sizable miliartyesque force and a serious threat to unleash the 82nd Airborne onto we the people to clear the
The first time I saw the White House was probably in the late 1950s or early 60s and I would have been in the Navy. I don’t remember if the White House grounds were enclosed by a fence but if so, it would have been relatively weak and low. In the 1970s we took some kids to DC for a field trip and I remember being able to drive within a couple of hundred feet of the WH front door on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There was a fence around the ground but it was only one layer deep and visitors could get right up to it. Over the years I have been to DC a number of times and each time the security around all government buildings becomes more reinforced.
When I retired in 1996 I spent a couple of days in the city with a cousin of mine who has lived there for decades. While she conducted some business downtown I got a cup of coffee and sat in Lafayette Park, across from the WH, and watched the world go by. By that time the street had been closed to traffic and large concrete barriers were erected at each end of the block. At noon workers from various offices came out, put on their blade skates, and played a lunchtime game of hockey.
The United States Attorney General was recently criticized for justifying his actions with a supposed quote from Winston Churchill, ” History is written by the victors.” In fact, Churchill didn’t say that and the identity of who did isn’t known.
In the movie, The Report, the main character attributed the statement to Nazi Germany’s leader of the air force, Hermann Göring, but that has never been proven.
I just find it ironic that our right-wing conservative AG would possibly borrow from a right-wing historical villain.
On May 1st I wrote a blogclaiming it was time to reset the COVID-19 clocks. Trump was claiming that America would experience 50-60 thousand virus deaths by August (and he would consider that a win) and on May 1st we’d already reached 63,000 deaths. So, it made sense that we pay close attention to what the number does between May 1st and August 1st, just to see how wrong he turns out being.
As we age we keep amassing dates we’re supposed to remember and events were not supposed to forget where we were.
May 4, 1970, is one such date. Fifty years ago today was the day Ohio’s Kent State University forever became a permanent chapter in the nation’s anti-Vietnam War history book.
It was the day when Ohio governor James Rhoades unleashed the Ohio National Guard and permitted it to use lethal military force to quell student anti-war activities on the campus of Kent State
I watched Rachel Maddow last night (April 10, 202) and nearly screamed out loud. She did several segments in which she just permitted exhausted medical personal to speak uninterrupted about their day, worries, fears, frustrations, etc. Most all mentioned the frustration and fearfulness of working without the proper equipment and protective clothing.
Here’s what angers me so much. Since 1950 every American president has had at their call the Defense Production Act that gives them the power to order companies to manufacture goods or provide services necessary for the national defense and protection of the American people.
Donald Trump didn’t bring the first Coronavirus patient to America’s shores, he didn’t start this pandemic. But what he did was make light of it, called it a hoax, declared it would be over in no time, blamed it on others, and so much more. He ignored his intelligence services and his closest advisors about the seriousness of it and took zero actions to begin preparing for what the experts told him was coming.
It wasn’t too long after the 1970s 10-speed bicycle craze got going strong before a number of Americans decided they wanted to beat the gasoline lines with a motorized vehicle rather than something that was leg powered. Well, along came the moped.
Mopeds were already popular in Europe and Asia but were somewhat new to America. The simplest of them weren’t much more than a bicycle with a small 2-cycle motor. Back in the 1950 kids played around with a motorized bike called a Whizzer. Well, mopeds weren’t much more than a slicked up Whizzer.
If you know me you know that I love blues music and blues history. Thumbing through YouTube recently I came across a wonderful documentary about the birth and growth of British blues and thought I’d share it with you fellow blues lovers.
When the original 13 colonies declared their independence from England the Continental Congress decided it needed a document of governance. So in 1777, they approved our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation After several years of debate the Articles were ratified and became the law of the land on March 1, 1781.
The new nation was called the United States of America but there wasn’t much united about it. The national government has almost zero power because the individual states reserved power for themselves. What America really was was a very loose association of independent nation-states. If you remember anything from government or civics you may recall that each state coined its own money, formed its own militia, and discounted the problems of other states unless those problems threatened them somehow.
