The GOP has crossed the Rubicon
The GOP has crossed the Rubicon
– by New Deal democrat
In the Roman Republic, military leaders automatically lost their legal authority to command at the Rubicon River in northern Italy. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legions, it was an act of war against the Republic. With the filing of their Amicus brief in the Supreme Court this past week, the GOP as represented by their Congressional delegation similarly finally broke with the idea of American democracy itself.
For the first several weeks after Trump’s railing against the election results, the GOP simply took the position that he was entitled to pursue legal remedies if he believed he was wrong. The mask was ripped off, and that pretense abandoned, when in their brief, the GOP took the core position not just that there were allegations of errors which were entitled to be explored, but rather ***asserted as a fact*** that millions of votes in 4 swing States were invalid and should not be counted. Not because dead people voted, or people not properly registered had voted, but rather simply on the flimsiest of assertions that actions by Courts and Executive officials carrying out their respective States’ election laws rendered all of the votes cast in good faith reliance upon the law by millions of voters in those States null and void.
Here’s the “Summary of Argument” from the GOP Brief:
And here is a sample of their assertions against the 4 swing States.
Georgia
Pennsylvania:
Michigan
Wisconsin
Not a single one of these assertions indicates that any of the votes so cast were not by US citizens who were properly registered to vote, and were acting in good faith relying upon their State’s guidance.
While the Electoral College will cast their votes on Monday, it is crystal clear that on January 6, when the new Congress convenes to confirm the election, GOP Senators and Representatives will en masse object to the counting of these 4 States’ Electoral votes, and perhaps the Electoral votes by other swing States as well. Meaning that if there were a GOP majority in the House, they would refuse to confirm Biden’s election and instead declare Trump the winner.
In short, we have reached the point where the GOP as an institution has declared that if it has the power to do so, it will overturn a Presidential election vote for the Democratic candidate. They have crossed the Rubicon and no longer support democracy in America.
At long last, they haven’t.
I want the GOP: Party of Hate® to die.I will never vote for a GOPer again in my life.
@Dave Barnes,
“…I will never vote for a GOPer again…”
[Ouch. That reveals that you have voted for a Republican in the past at least once. Since I did so myself once, then I would have to say that is not an irredeemable mortal sin, although close. My only walk on that wild side was with George Allen against Mary Sue Terry for governor of VA in 1993. Allen beat Terry by 58.3% against 40.9%, so my vote was not the deciding difference in her defeat. Her defeat was far more than simple misogyny in a southern state.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue_Terry
…Early career
Terry was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1978–1986) and assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in Patrick County, Virginia 1973–1977. She successfully argued eight cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. She successfully negotiated a nationwide recall of 13,000 defective Ford ambulances and led a successful investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporations associated with Lyndon LaRouche. From 1990 to 1991 Terry was president of the National Association of Attorneys General and in 1992 she received the Wyman Award, which is the association’s highest honor. The Commonwealth of Virginia’s courts did not allow prisoners to bring new exculpatory evidence more than three weeks after sentencing. Attorney General Terry once said that “Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”[4]
Attorney general
She was elected attorney general in 1985 and reelected in 1989, becoming the first woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, the second woman to serve as attorney general of any U.S. state, and the first non-federal elected official in Virginia to garner more than one million votes in a single election.[5] In 1989, she considered running for governor, but deferred to her fellow Democrat, then-Lieutenant Governor of Virginia L. Douglas Wilder, who became the first elected African-American Governor of any U.S. state.[6] …
*
[So defeat in her run for governor of VA in 1993 was not just a matter of gender, but more a matter of her being a known quantity by then.]
Back in 1994 after George Allen was inaugurated governor of VA then buyer’s remorse set in for my vote in well less than 90 days. I swore then to never vote for another Republican. If I could not support the Democrat then I would not vote at all.
http://journal.c2er.org/
Welcome
With great pride we introduce an EXPANDED Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development.
In addition to the Commentary On Contemporary State and Local Economic Development offered Since 2012
the Journal includes a NEW Online Course: History of American State & Local ED Since 1789
[A fine site worth a read on many topics. The following link and excerpt is where I started out there.]
A simplistic look at American 19th Century history might summarize its politics and economy as a clash between two rival, starkly opposed, political cultures and economic bases: Yankee and Deep South, industrial versus agricultural. Of all the political cultures these two were the largest and among the most mobile. In the end Yankees proved more expansionist because Deep South migration was limited by the productive capacities of the soil demanded by its agricultural economic base. In this module I introduce and outline the pre-cotton evolution of the Deep South culture. The next module mini-series on the Rise of the Cotton Belt describes its subsequent evolution, fused and driven by an cotton-export economic base, that both changed and deepened its character and content.
The Deep South culture proved to be an almost polar opposite of the northern Yankee-Puritan culture in the Early Republic–and the two have been at bitter odds to the present day. Both in 1789 were overwhelmingly rural and agricultural, but industrial and finance capitalism developed from the northern political cultures. The Deep South culture, heavily rooted in agriculture and the late-medieval value system/society persisted carried over that nexus through to the Civil War–and even after.
During the Early Republic (called the antebellum years for the South) the United States contained two distinct dominant cultural systems and economic bases. During the Early Republic that cultural and economic chasm blocked an early attempt by the Federal government to play a major role in several critical economic development strategies. There was neither a cultural/political consensus that permitted that involvement, and the reality of two quite different regional economic bases, with different perspectives/needs on such vital strategies such as internal improvements and free or protected trade lent a zero-sum veneer to that debate. And then there was, of course, slavery.
Say it another way, the first eighty years of our American S&L ED history reflected the reality that ED did not mean the same thing in the North as it did in the South. At root was the profound differences in the political cultures that, reflecting their contrasting economic bases, produced different policy systems and desired different goals from ED strategies and programs. If the ultimate winner was the North and industrial/finance capitalism, that inevitably meant the loser, the South, would evolve along time lines and would experience different historical and economic legacies. That has exerted/inserted a huge legacy into our history–and the nation’s as well.
Over the course of time, the South evolved a different economic base and policy systems that produced distinctive styles of ED/CD. Population flows–in both directions (in and out)–further cemented a distinctive southern regional dynamic that shaped our state and local ED/CD history dramatically.
Regionalism became an enduring and crucial characteristic of American ED. It remains so today….
Litigation in Wisconsin has not proven useful to Trump. But I think it is unwise to complain about court case filings since it is a manner of redress of perceived irregularities that ought to be considered consistent with decent behavior. The more serious problems may begin when court cases stop being pursued yet no convincing resolution to the existing doubts is achieved. For example, today in Wisconsin it looks like there will be no legal manner via courts to determine why the “indefinitely confined” voting population roughly tripled in the state. Yet transparency in this area is a minimum to begin getting widespread acceptance of this vote.
For those unfamiliar, this absentee mode eliminates the need for definitive ID and was intended for nursing home residents and other adults in institutions who do not have drivers licenses or other ID like passports. The law is precise and nothing about coronavirus guidance satisfies the legal requirements for this unless the voter actually is confined. The voting process for this does not reduce the exposure of anyone to coronavirus that regular absentee does not achieve. There were no stay at home orders at any time in the period where absentee applications could be made for the November vote and when they stopped being accepted. Provisioning of identification like Wisconsin drivers licenses and US Passports was not interrupted. Yet this least secure voting category not only experienced a huge increase, that increase was skewed quite heavily to counties that provided Joe Biden with his win. And yes, the numbers of such votes is well beyond the margin of victory in this state and even the incremental growth is way past what could provide the final margin. Why did the least secure method of absentee voting in Wisconsin triple when the population that could legitimately claim it probably did not increase at all? Even if you credit the increased turnout as a kind of scalar that could apply here, the increase is still inexplicable really. Does Joe Biden actually care about national unity and his acceptance as President-elect? I don’t see it at all manifest in his behavior. Joe Biden could demand steps in certain states to augment his acceptance and he does not do so, so tens of millions of Americans take it as a sign of what to believe about his election. If the Rubicon was crossed, the date that it got crossed and whose army crossed it is not at all agreed upon in the country.
Eric,
I love the way you constantly speak like you have the facts and never actually show any facts.
Strangely enough, that was the same case with every trump election lawsuit.
@Eric377,
My take on this is that those that wanted to vote in person, during conditions of a pandemic where everyone had been reasonably advised to isolate themselves to the extent possible, were at the least committing a reckless endangerment felony if not outright treason. This is of course the reflexive reductio ad absurdum to your own. Neither case makes any sense with respect to the right to vote.
In VA voters requested absentee ballots which were mailed by the local registrars to the voter residences (which are on record of course as they are the basis of precincts). States made their own choices with respect to “absentee” voting security for all 2020 elections and are subsequently obliged to honor those choices. All Monday morning quarterbacking aside, the game was played on Sunday so Monday is a bit too late.]
In Richmond, VA we have a different Rubicon, Inc. I am sure that Republicans have crossed it several times.
Drug & Alcohol Rehab Centers In Richmond, VA
http://ww12.rubiconrehab.org/
Ron,
He is just a clueless troll spouting Newsmax bs.
“The suggestion here is that the number of indefinitely confined voters in Wisconsin grew suspiciously this year. But these numbers from Trump and Toensing are inaccurate, contradicted by the state’s official statistics. The real numbers tell a different story, and Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told us “we have seen no evidence of fraud.”
Magney said that in November 2016, the state recorded 56,978 indefinitely confined absentee voters out of 144,802 absentee-by-mail voters. (That’s 39 percent.)
For November 2020, Wisconsin’s preliminary figures show 215,713 indefinitely confined absentee voters out of approximately 1.32 million absentee-by-mail voters, or 16 percent. (Final figures will not be available until mid-December.)
In case anyone needed a reminder that Trump simply cannot be believed on the election, this is it. He is casting doubt on Wisconsin’s results, but every part of his claim is demonstrably false. Trump earns Four Pinocchios.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/25/trump-tweets-string-falsehoods-about-wisconsin-absentee-voters/
re Eric and the Rubicon
i dunno. i don’t like apparently sophisticated language in pursuit of immoral purposes.
but i do think we need to be careful about endorsing rationalizations that may come back to haunt us. how would we feel if a fully owned Republican Party adopted shortcuts or emergency procedures that resulted in their winning elections we “know” they should have lost?
i don’t have an answer to this. i think the R’s are in fact fully owned and do whatever they can get away with in pursuit of power. But i don’t think the D’s, or evn the Progressives are immune from such expediencies either.
I know I wouldn’t be.
Ron
re economic development north v south
you might like George Kennedy, “Mr Jefferson’s Lost Cause”.
Ron, actually that’s Roger Kennedy (Roger George Kennedy if you want the whole truth.)
Coberly,
Thanks.
EMike,
Logic is my thing, more so than trolling.
Coberly,
“…you might like George Kennedy, ‘Mr Jefferson’s Lost Cause’.”
[Yeah I MIGHT!]
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/roger-g-kennedy/mr-jeffersons-lost-cause/
MR. JEFFERSON’S LOST CAUSE
LAND, FARMERS, SLAVERY, AND THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
by Roger G. Kennedy ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2003
sweeping, continent-wide reinterpretation of early US history from Kennedy (Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson, 1999, etc.), who replaces individualist heroes such as Daniel Boone with economic movements, transcontinental forces, and unintended consequences.
For example, writes the former director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of yeomen, landholding farmers. What he got—what he allowed, in fact—was a corporatist country of plantation owners beholden to the hated England. When Napoleon arranged for Jefferson’s purchase of the vast Louisiana territory in 1803—a sale he was not legally authorized to make, nor Jefferson to accept—his aim was to assure American dominion over the interior of North America, thus thwarting English efforts to keep a flanking presence on the Mississippi River. What happened, though, was that Jefferson, for puzzling reasons that do not reflect well on him, allowed fellow members of the slaveholding planter class that dominated early American politics to dictate the terms of settlement in the new lands of the Louisiana Purchase, thereby rendering his vision of a land settled by smallholders and eventually absent of slavery all but impossible—and, in the bargain, sowing the seeds of civil war….
*
[I skimmed several reviews of the book you recommended to me and all were positive, which is unusual for any nonfiction work. I chose to link and excerpt this one because it had the strongest opener and was brief enough I could just put it up in its entirety, but chose not to.
After a manner it will be a little redundant for me when I get around to reading it later on. Nothing in any of the reviews conflicts with what I have already learned. As a boy raised in the South then both Jefferson and Jackson were my heroes through the end of my high school years, but since then I have revised my opinion of all of our Founders and early political heroes. As a kid then George Washington was no big deal and Hamilton was despised and Aaron Burr revered. My opinion of George has since risen remarkably, Burr is a thorn in my side, and I despise Hamilton a bit less than when I was a boy. My opinion of Lincoln matured, but did not much improve. Only my affection for Thomas Paine has withstood the ravages of historical realism that displaced the romanticized pablum that I was fed in place of history as a boy.]
run
AB does not save my name (hard on me as re-entering every time requires two hands to type the @. also…and this may have nothing to do with AB… if i try to look up a name on google while i am writing a comment.. the system kicks me out of AB entirely and I cannot restore the comment i was writing. a great loss to history and civilization.
ron
i guess we are what we read. I never read anything good about Burr until I read Kennedy’s Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson. I read Dumas Malone’s bio of Jefferson and found it nearly sycophantic (if that’s the right word about praising the dead). I read enough about Washington to feel I would not have liked the man, but that he was exactly the right person to be America’s first President. As for Lincoln, try Richard Striner’s Father Abraham, a good antidote to all the “Lincoln was only a politician who didn’t really care abut slavery” revisionist histories.
Jefferson’s Lost cause might be a little redundant if all you are interested in is abstractions, but Kennedy gets right down to earth.
And Paine continues to be one of my heroes, way ahead of his times, which is why he came to a bad end in both France and America. One can read Age of Reason as an attack on “religion” which it is, and which “it” deserves, but it is not an attack on Christ or even “god,” whatever that is. But people read what they want to read.
ron
for what it’s worth
Adams hated Hamilton, for good reasons. Washington loved Hamilton, for reasons that do Washington no credit.
Coberly,
I have had the same problem. What I have learned though is that when I type the initial “R” in my Name* and Email* then an itty bitty pop-up window lets me finish by just clicking on the saved values. However when I clear browser cache then all is lost, but not when I just reboot.
My shorthand position on history, philosophy, and ideology is the contrast between the popular perception among the general population and a nuanced understanding of science. So, we all say “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” which is the basis of reciprocal materialism, but I say “Don’t bite the nipple that feeds you,” which is the basis of reciprocal human empathy. Having empathy does not necessarily make one a bleeding heart nor a pacifist. More to the contrary a clear conscience omits doubt and hesitation to make the hard choices when necessary. So, the materialists are correct that there are choices and consequences, but not much else.
more fwiw
Burr practically (long before it’s time, so not exactly “practical”) invented women’s rights in America. The establishmented hated him because he got around the property requirement for voting by selling dollar shares in property to working people. he defended negroes in court (as did Hamilton). He brought clean water to New York city, and established a rival bank to the established bank…using money from the water project. the water project “failed” due to the materials and construction of the time. But it lasted for forty years providing clean water to New Yorkers. The ultimate “failure” as well the bank were blamed on shady dealing by Burr…by the politicians of the time who may have been influenced by Jefferson’s attempt to get Burr .. the “murderer” of Hamilton (in a duel)…hanged for treason (but acquitted in three separate trials, the last with John Marshall as judge).
we report. you decide.
people think about Burr as if he was a nobody politician who took advantage of a glitch in the then electoral college to challenge the sainted Jefferson for the Presidency. they are back-thinking from current reputations (created by historians who take Jefferson for who he said he was). In 1800 Burr was probably at least as popular as Jefferson. He made Jefferson President by winning the New York vote for him.
Ron
i agree about “popular perception” but it is not only the hoi polloi who suffer from popular perception. I have read physics texts by people who don’t understand newton’s third law.
I was accused of biting the hand when as a low level public employee i objected to something my “boss” was doing. I tried to explain my boss was the State who paid me to be honest. Didn’t help.
I am not much of a believer in materialism, but there do seem to be practical realities that need to be taken into consideration while we pursue spiritual realities. And I run away in fear of people who have a clear conscience.
Coberly,
I got to go to dentist soon, so I will limit my response to more substantive differences.
“i guess we are what we read.”
[Well then there is not much to me as I have read very little. It has been many years since the last time I read a book. I have a pile of them that various people have given me to read. I read some articles online and watch an occasional non-fiction show on TV, usually PBS and preferably Ken Burns. I read books last when I lived in an apartment, but that was over 40 years ago. From 2004 through 2010, I watched CSpan BookTV every weekend. OTOH, I believe we are what we do, not what we read, and not what we think either. Still, I search for information in my own way and generally avoid the opinions of others.]
[Otherwise, Kennedy seems interesting enough, but reading is not so much my thing as it is yours. Washington preferred Hamilton to Benedict Arnold, hardly a failure in judgement. Burr could not pass the same loyalty test as he had separatist ambitions if power could not be his within the union. Hamilton had the good sense to ignore Adam Smith’s argument defending British superiority against the US protectionist nurturing of domestic industry. Hamilton also understood the shrinking world would be a dangerous place for a union divided or incapable of making its own stuff. Lincoln could not prevent the Civil War, which was both in the short run and in the long run not a very good trade of cruelties. There were better ways to end slavery than war even after the Founding Failures screwed the pooch.
Moral judgements of dead people are better left to God or god or mom’s ghost. Like my dad, I really do not hate people, just what they do. Like Willie Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony said “The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones.”
One big failure in judgement that we have in the US is that residents here attribute far too much good to their political establishment and far too little of our power and success to the incredibly good real estate that European settlers stole from stone-age inhabitants, many of which were conveniently displaced by smallpox and other imported devices. Our freedoms are indeed terrific, but it was less the power-seeking architects than their mutual distrust (which you have mentioned before) along with British military brutality under old George the German and the big cornucopia of American plenty that provided more than enough to share.]
Coberly,
Sorry to scare you with clear conscience, but hedonism is just not something that I am prone to feel guilty about, my wasted youth after Vietnam as it were. Otherwise, classics like envy and covetousness would require me to have more esteem for the accomplishments and possessions of others than I am capable of having.
ron
nothing wrong with a little hedonism. but there are people like Trump who have clear consciences. and mine is by no means clear. it’s not the hedonism but … well, that’s that which is to be proved. famous person gave hints in parables. eeven more famous person before him gave suggestions.. nor ao much for your conscience sake but for something like mental health.
ron
i agree with you wholeheartedly about “we are what we do” unfortunately for a lot of us what we do is read, even if we don’t read much.
otherwise i think a lot of the opinions expressed in the rest of your comments came from things you read.
Burr may not have had separatist ambitions. He was accused of separatist ambitions. Acquitted. But that didn’t stop Jefferson from accusing, or historians from writing. Or two hundred years of peole reading.
As for Mark Anthony’s funeral oration, you understand that was a speech designed to inflame the people against Brutus, who thought Caesar had big eyes.
Coberly,
Good for Burr that he is beyond the point that false allegations matter. All I know of any dead people is what I get from various historians, which I must admit are as susceptible to agendas and assumptions as anyone else.
Good for us that we agree about Thomas Paine. Also good to realize that ancestor worship is even more dubious than sky daddy worship. God probably does not exist, but at least he is of decent character. The same cannot be said of men of power or even men that seek power. I will stand by Lord Acton on that.
BTW, have a kool yule and a frantic first.
ron
“what i get from various historians”
what i said.
“God probably does not exist.” I agree; did you get this from historians or statisticians?
what are the probabilities that I exist?
Coberly,
“… historians or statisticians?…”
[Both. I am less sure myself. Most of the interest in string theory was because it sounded less like an act of God than the Big Bang. Hawking wanted no part of a God that would allow him to be stricken by ALS. I believe that shows profound insight into the thought process of elites, intellectual as well as economic and political. There is something about being special that fogs self perspective. My parents gave me the greatest gift of all – low expectations. If I can buy more than one pair of shoes per year then I am a success.]
Ron:
I can remember having the one pair used for Grammar School and Church (after polished) too. Today, I have my Merrells for hiking, two sets of Hubbards for dressing up, another Hubbards for casual and walking, couple sets of walking shoes (now). Used to be one long sleeve and one short sleeve white shirt. Now there are multiple dress shirts. We came a long way from our parents of lesser means. My dad taught me how to work with my hands and other things which I still use today. I know how to do things others do not expect me to know.
Coberly,
The probability is rising that neither of us will exist much longer. Too bad that wisdom comes at the price of old age and infirmity, but if it were otherwise then we might be special too.
I am just waiting now for the ice to thaw on highways before setting out to buy our frozen Christmas turkey. Wrapped up in cooler bag in the frig it will slowly defrost by Christmas. Also getting pork chops for tonight and tomorrow. Wrapping presents this afternoon. These are the real important things in life. What we do here is an amusing pass-time, but not to be taken too seriously just as taking oneself too seriously runs cross purpose with a leading a happy and healthy life.
Well, that is enough time killed for now. The sky is bright enough now that at least I will be able to see the road some. Have a great day. Stay healthy. Be happy if you can.
Ron,
glad you are not taking me seriously.
also glad to see you are such a hedonist. god, if you’ll pardon the expression, made the world with many things to delight us. no reason not to enjoy them.
on the other hand there are people who have so poisoned their appetites that nothing pleases them without a heavy seasoning of evil.
as for being special, i have noticed that great minds do no better than the rest of us when it comes to the ordinary important things of life. turns out there is science to support that observation.
i don’t know much about wisdom myself. but i have seen how a few tings work out that i try to tell my children about. they don’t listen, just as i did not listen.
be safe on the road if you can.
Ron
I had only one pair of shoes, but they fit, today i have many pair because none of them fit. ’tis a mystery.
i think (almost) that even at the level of one pair of shoes “poverty” is not so important as people make it. I’d expand that, but very carefully: it is not good that “the poor” should want to be like “the rich.” [the problem is that the rich grind the face of the poor into hopeless misery. i have a plan for that, but as long as the poor want to be rich it won’t work. Roosevelt had a similar plan and it worked for awhile.]
Ron
and yes, since i retired i have been enjoying doing things with my hands, which often seem smarter than my so-called brain.
i didn’t learn much about this kind of work when young because the people who might have taught me thought i was too stupid to learn and sent me to college instead. talk about “a great gulf affixed.”
Coberly,
Got home safe. The time I killed this AM was well worth it.
Kroger was out of frozen turkey breast, which is in high demand now with smaller gatherings for the holiday. They did have fresh Butterball turkey breast with a 12/27 sell by date, so got that instead. Dave’s bagels were sold out as well. Some other stuff was expired. Thanksgiving had full up to date stock on everything that I buy. Covid-19 is dragging on the supply chain now and we can expect a lot more of that over the next two or three months.
Merry Christmas.
By next week I will be able to get back outside to work again. Presently my yard is like a swamp from all the rain we had this week in particular but also ongoing for weeks now since mid-November. The glowing glaze of ice over it all in the early morning sun did lend an oddly picturesque touch to it. Amazingly enough and a blessing that my basement floor is still dry. Basements in the low country are especially prone to flooding. It has taken some work to get mine to stay dry under such conditions as we are now experiencing. Hurricanes still thwart my best efforts.
merry christmas, ron.
around here the earth will support foot traffic only from about the middle of june to the middle of october.
so i gotta play inside, counting my money.
Run,
I got my first pair of Merrell boots this spring. I just use them for cleaning the pool in summer. I liked them so much that I bought my wife a pair for hiking, but that has not produced much use yet. I will get myself another pair for hiking when my wife retires. Until then my all leather upper Red Wing work boots work best for my yard, which is full of ruts, mud, tree roots, and almost totally absent level ground. I also bought a pair of Vasque this spring that I use for cleaning the pool, but they are too stiff to buy any more. When I was young and still backpacked then I always wanted a pair of Vasque boots, but now that I can afford them I do not have any application for a boot with that much support.
It is going to take pool use twice a day for a few months to reverse my wife’s leg strength atrophy. Fortunately we live only a block from the local YMCA. While she is still working the corporate chains prevent her from using the pool during the lower demand hours and then there was Covid-19. Vanity will not allow her to join in with the younger people before or after work. Northrop Grumman saved my life when they laid me off in 2015. After five years of retirement then i am about ten years younger in terms of fitness.
Merry Christmas and say a prayer for good old Joe.
OK, not everyone prays anymore. My bad. We pray here twice a day. My wife is the real Christian in our house, but faith, tradition, and religious ritual work for me far better than feeding at the corporate establishment trough.
ron
totally unexpected from you. saves me what i was going to try to say.
i am not a church goer and not sure what it means to pray. i think i have been to a church service only about four times in my life and am officially intolerant of “ritual.” but on about two of those occasions I was caught up in a feeling of “this is real.” i am not quite so stupid as to dismiss that feeling as something like “mob psychosis” or even the power of theater.
some other experiences …. when entirely alone… left me with a conviction that this is more real than what we call science [note: “what we call”] and certainly healthier than what we call success. after that it would seem to me disloyal if not dishonest to deny it.
but i am still very much an outsider.
i have never found a pair of boots that was comfortable or waterproof, including two “custom made.”
thinking i should get a pair of Otzi’s.
Coberly,
I don’t know Otzi’s, but I wanted Vasque for over 40 years and now that I have a pair then I will never buy another pair. Back then Vasque were a lot more expensive and I was a lot cheaper. Now that I can afford them I don’t want them. IF I still backpacked in the mountains that would be different. Comfortable has nothing to do with carrying a heavy pack over rocky terrain.
My work boots are all Red Wing, but for everyday work then I stick with Red Wing Work – Style 435 King Toe® Men’s 6-inch Waterproof Soft Toe Boot. These boots are very comfortable and are also suitable for light hiking over sand or less challenging terrain than White Oak Canyon Trail in Shenandoah National Park. For spade digging I have taller Red Wing boots with steel shank and plain toe. For crazy stuff with pick, axe, or sledge hammer then I have tall Red Wings with steel toe and steel shank.
For light to medium hiking, but not over large rocks, then I would go with
MerrellMoab 2 Mid Waterproof Hiking Boots.
ron
thanks, i’ll look into the boots.
from my experience comfort has a lot to do with the last. apparently my feet are not “normal” (american standard. Clark’s used to work for me, but then they shipped manufacture to cambodia or somewhere and used cheap materials.
here the ground is mud eight months and the ceramic result of mud-heave the other four. very uneven, throws your foot against the side of the boot at every step. and i have dogs that pull hard. like walking downhill… throws foot forward inside boot (or running shoe) crushing toes. waterproof is a mystery, but i think five miles of walking through wet grass is wetter than fording a shallow stream.
precise lacing and proper socks help. (more mysteries i never suspected when i was young. don’t know if it’s time changes in manufacturing or me.
custom fit i had made turned out to be pretty much of a fraud both times.
Coberly,
Lasts are not generally made for feet like mine. I should be 11.5W, but buy 12W to insure room for Scholl’s CF440 inserts. The Scholl’s custom fit machine and inserts work well enough for my purposes and the net result is far more cost effective than custom arch supports from the Good Feet Store. Besides being EEE wide I have high instep and the remnants of high arches that need arch supports now to prevent severe pain in the heel from tight Achilles tendon. For pull-on rubber boots I need size 13 and still no room for arch supports, so I never wear them longer than necessary.
I grew up in a family where a man’s work/hunting boots, rifle, and shotgun were his prized possessions. A young man might have his hot rod, but for a mature man then vehicles were just utilitarian necessities. Boots and guns made a statement about one’s manhood :<)
I have my dad's hair, still dark into old age, and big wide feet. These must be from dominant Cherokee genes passed over through three generations of interbreeding with white men.
google Ötzi’s shoes.
How do you know Joe Biden is a neoliberal? He’s always talking about his one black friend.