And so it begins. Sad to say, but the odds of a Democrat winning a state wide election in GA without Federal voting rights legislation is now slim to none.
” GRIFFIN, Georgia, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.
But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor. Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media.
The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022.”
Inflation jumped to the highest level in nearly 40 years, fresh data released on Friday showed, as supply chain disruptions, rapid consumer demand and rising housing costs combined to fuel the strongest inflationary burst in a generation.
The rising costs spell trouble for officials at the Federal Reserve and the White House, who are trying to calibrate policy at a moment when the labor market has yet to completely heal from the pandemic, but the risk that price increases could become more lasting is increasing.
The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.8 percent in the year through November, the data showed, the fastest pace since 1982. After stripping out food and fuel, which can move around a lot from month to month, inflation climbed by 4.9 percent.
Prices were up 0.8 percent from October, according to the report. That’s slightly slower than the prior monthly increase, but still an unusually rapid pace.
The question is what happens next. Fed officials have become increasingly concerned about price increases — both because the uptick has lasted longer than expected and because it shows signs of broadening to areas less affected by the pandemic. …
Offices remain eerily empty. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights. Subways and buses are running less often. Schools sometimes call off entire days of class. Consumers waste time waiting in store lines. Annual inflation has reached its highest level in three decades.
Does this sound like a healthy economy to you?
In recent weeks, economists and pundits havebeenasking why Americans feel grouchy about the economy when many indicators — like G.D.P. growth, stock prices and the unemployment rate — look strong. …
… In an Associated Press poll, 64 percent describe their personal finances as good — and only 35 percent describe the national economy as good. …
There are plenty of reasons. Many services don’t function as well as they used to, largely because of supply-chain problems and labor shortages. Rising prices are cutting into paychecks, especially for working-class households. People spend less time socializing. The unending nature of the pandemic — the masks, Covid tests, Zoom meetings and anxiety-producing runny noses — is wearying.
While some of these disruptions are minor inconveniences, others are causing serious troubles. The increase in social isolation has harmed both physical and mental health. Americans’ blood pressure has risen. Fatal drug overdoses have soared, with a growing toll among Black Americans. A report this week from the surgeon general found that depression, anxiety, impulsive behavior and attempted suicides had all risen among children and adolescents. …
Overall, real average hourly earnings, which account for inflation, have decreased 1.2 percent over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But wage growth “dramatically accelerated” in the past six to eight months, according to a Conference Board survey released Wednesday. And it is expected to keep climbing.
Employers are expected to raise wages 3.9 percent next year, the highest rate in 14 years, the nonprofit business group reported. This jump is being driven by higher pay for new hires — especially those under the age of 25 and workers who switched jobs — and inflation, which has been increasing at the highest rate in nearly 30 years. Continued labor shortages will likely drive wage growth above 4 percent through next year, the board said. …
Several national employers have announced higher pay in recent months. Amazon is offering starting wages of $18 to $22.50 an hour — up from $15 —for warehouse and transportation workers, and Costco just went to $17 an hour, after a bump to $16 in February. Starbucks, CVS, and Walgreens are all boosting base pay to $15 an hour.
At Bank of America, the entry-level wage was $15 an hour when Ajna Angjeliu started as a teller in Boston in 2019. Since then it’s risen several times, and hit $21 in October. …
Smaller employers are also increasing pay. More than three-quarters of owners in a recent National Federation of Independent Business survey said they had either already increased compensation or were planning to soon, the highest percentage in 48 years. David Weaver, president of the Compensation & HR Group in Burlington, said pay is increasing mostly at the entry level, with quick-service restaurants, grocery stores, retail stores, and banks advertising higher hourly wages in the $17 to $21 range. …
Inside the East Boston Shaw’s supermarket, Armir Lee first chose four gala apples — his everyday breakfast. Their cost: $2.99 per pound, for a total of $7.12.
Then he picked up Olivia’s organic spring greens ($3.99), Mt. Olive pickles ($3.79), and Arnold whole grains oat nut bread ($4.69), followed by Sargento cheddar cheese ($7.99), 10 deli slices of Boar’s Head chicken ($4.19), and lastly, his condiment of choice.
“Do you see this?” asked Lee, bewildered. “Seven dollars —seven dollars— for Miracle Whip.” (Or to be exact, $6.49.) His total bill came to $43.26, which he said was considerably more than he would’ve paid for the same items last year.
The Boston Public Schools music teacher has watched his grocery bill balloon since September, when he returned from a three-month trip to Moscow and Eastern Europe. What once would’ve been a $40 weekly expense now nears $60 some weeks, he said.
It’s a testament to how dramatically inflation has affected the cost of basic necessities. Overall prices rose by 6.2 percent in the last 12 months, the fastest pace in three decades. But food and gas — among the heftiest expenses for many New Englanders — saw much larger gains. And while it’s hitting lower-income families the hardest, those with well-paying jobs have not been spared. …
(Now the grocery shopping example above may be extreme. One is not required to buy premium cold cuts & condiments, after all. But it’s not just cars and homes, although housing costs in Boston & its suburbs have been extremely high for decades. Lately natural gas – also used a fuel by electric companies – has gone up by 25%. And gasoline is through the roof also.)
Not going to pay attention to a story where a guy eats 2 1/2 lbs of apples for everyday breakfast, or a guy that actually uses Miracle Whip. Meanwhile, don’t know how large a jar he is buying, but a 30 fl ounce jar of it at Walmart is $4.36.
Prices in general are going up. We have been warned by our natural gas supplier & the electric company to expect 25% rate increases immediately. Supermarket prices are going up also. Not buying a new car anytime soon – my 12 year old Saab still runs fine. And only higher taxes will compel us to move, for now.
There are no WalMarts in Boston primarily due to their business model. Their stores are too big to wedge into cities. However, WalMart is now tinkering with their formula in order to invade the cities as they have the suburbs and rural areas. (TripAdvisor)
Indeed, there are Walmarts inconveniently far from East Boston.
And from their website, Shaw’s supermarkets charge $6.49 for a 30 oz jar of Miracle Whip. Hopefully that should last a month or more.
(If there’s not a Walmart near you, maybe there will soon be one of these.)
On Devonshire Street in the Financial District, a cryptic sign hangs outside a blacked-out storefront that used to be a Weight Watchers: “Fridge No More.” A few blocks over on Franklin Street, the windows of a former mattress store are plastered with stickers that keep passersby from peering inside.
Walk around Boston, and you’ll find storefronts that emptied during the pandemic taking on new lives. Former sleep stores or diet clinics are being converted to mini-warehouses for a wave of “instant delivery” startups aiming to dominate the “last mile” of last mile delivery, and fueled by deep pockets of cash to do so.
Promising to shuttle bananas or ice cream to your apartment in 15 minutes, these companies are renting storefronts and turning them into packing centers, then employing couriers on e-bike or scooter to make deliveries within a mile or two. They’re wildly popular in Europe, South America, and Asia. Scores have opened in New York City.
Now they’re coming to Boston, where a half-dozen of these companies — with names like Getir, BUYK (pronounced “bike”), and JOKR — have opened or announced plans to in recent months, taking storefronts in Downtown Crossing, the South End, and Cambridge. …
Inflation jumped to the highest level in nearly 40 years, fresh data released on Friday showed, as supply chain disruptions, rapid consumer demand and rising housing costs combined to fuel the strongest inflationary burst in a generation. …
As housing and other day-to-day costs rise, workers may begin to ask for raises to help offset the financial blow. Climbing wages can feed into inflation as companies pass rising labor costs on to consumers, and as bigger paychecks help households to keep spending, sustaining consumer demand.
Data show that pay is climbing briskly. Employers are competing for laborers at a time when job openings far exceed the number of people actively looking for jobs, and they are lifting pay to attract and retain workers. The Employment Cost Index, a measure the Fed watches closely, picked up notably in the three-month period that ended in September.
Wages are rising especially rapidly for low earners, though they have not kept up with the acceleration in prices for most workers in recent months. Still, continued government benefits — including an expanded child tax credit — may mean that families are better positioned to afford climbing expenses.
Because consumers have had the wherewithal to spend, companies have been managing to charge more, protecting and even increasing their bottom lines as input costs climb. Profit margins for nonfinancial companies have been increasing this year, including in some of the industries hardest-hit by supply problems. …
(As posted long ago on ‘Economics View’, from 2011, scientists at RPI – my alma mater – determined that a 10% minority is large enuf, will always eventually expand to a majority.
The GOP is determined to prove that this is true.)
What does it take for an idea to spread from one to many? For a minority opinion to become the majority belief? According to a new study by scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the answer is 10%. Once 10% of a population is committed to an idea, it’s inevitable that it will eventually become the prevailing opinion of the entire group. The key is to remain committed.
The research was done by scientists at RPI’s Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC), and published in the journal Physical Review E …
Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas | News & Events https://shar.es/aWkFpJ
How long will it take? That depends on the minority ‘remaining committed’ to their causes. This slightly weird ‘rule’ only works (eventually) if commitment continues. (Has to grow, clearly, and in that sense, this rule is ‘obvious’.)
(It was often said by RPI professors when putting up complex ideas on their chalkboards, without much explanation – ‘This is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.’)
sorry to hear that about RPI. reminds me of the time Clinton (Bill) and Gingrich (Newt) agreed that the answer to people living longer was “obvious”: raise the tetirement age.
of course, it wasn’t a complex idea, superficial but flashy. then we had the intellectual leader of the Republican Congress, Paul Ryan, when asked to explain one of his “ideas,” said, “you don’t want me to go all wonky on you.”
smart. it takes your breath away. meritocracy at its finest.
but they don’t want to raise employee wages. and there is someone higher in the supply chain who can make more money by raising prices and selling less.
The (obvious?) answer to ‘paying supermarket employees higher wages’ may be ‘charging more for items on the shelves’, however. And, if there are fewer items on the shelves, due to producer shortages or higher fuel prices, that also leads to ‘charging more for items on the shelves’.
well, i suspect there is more to the story than the obvious. but maybe it’s time for Americans to pay a little more for their food, and maybe a little less on their plastic toys, so farm workers and super market workers can have a living wage.
somewhere around here recently was an essay by a truck driver about the “market efficiencies” at the ports that lead to supply chain shortages. maybe the obvous solution to everything is not what works.
sure hard to write a comment when the adds won’t get out of the way.
do the advertisers think this makes me eager to buy their product?
(It was often said by RPI professors when putting up complex ideas on their chalkboards, without much explanation – ‘This is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.’)
‘sorry to hear that about RPI. ‘
(I think the ‘intuitively obvious’ remarks were intended for those students – like me – who were not quite of the caliber our professors wished to be dealing with. In such a setting, they present the material, and it’s up to the students to figure it out. RPI was a tough school. Probably still is.)
i heard it was a good school…maybe for the same reasons i heard harvard was a good school: hiring big names and recruiting smart students.
experience has taught me big names are not often good teachers, and smart is not often deep or original or even decent.
a not tough school i went to had a few teachers who had enough contempt for their students that they had a way of discouraging them unjustified by what they were being paid to do, and what reasonable expectations they should have had about students,.very very few were even slightly interested in opening up new vistas and new possibilities and nurturing reasonable expectations,
it does seem that some of the students got the message and enjoyed life anyway and probably went on to corporate lives…including corporate education…which embraced pretty much the same values as those bad teachers.
probably has something to do with the kind of world we are living in.
(Good news! Maybe this will happen all over America!)
When one of Neil Abramson’s best employees told him she was looking for a job that paid more, he knew he couldn’t afford to lose her. Her departure from his Leominster consignment store would have left him short-staffed, and her customer-service experience and can-do attitude aren’t easy to find. So Abramson bumped up her wages by $2 an hour, to $18 — a leap he wouldn’t have made in the past.
With companies desperate to hire and hold on to workers, they are increasing pay, especially at the entry level. Over the past few years, in fact, something unusual has been happening for those making the lowest wages: Their earnings are climbing at a faster rate than for those in more lucrative jobs.
Abramson is paying his ECI Stores employees roughly $3 more an hour than he was two years ago, and now offers a retirement plan. The bump is not just keeping his businesses staffed, it’s attracting better employees — including some who were burned out from stressful jobs in education and health care. “As a business surviving the pandemic,” he said, “we are more adaptable now.”
In the past year, the lowest-paid workers have seen a roughly 8 percent bump in earnings, according to a new analysis by Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While 5.5 percent of that gain was eaten up by inflation, those at the bottom third of the pay scale (adjusting for occupation and worker demographics) have seen their earnings go up, on average, while in the top 70 percent, earnings have gone down. …
Overall, real average hourly earnings, which account for inflation, have decreased 1.2 percent over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But wage growth “dramatically accelerated” in the past six to eight months, according to a Conference Board survey released Wednesday. And it is expected to keep climbing.
Employers are expected to raise wages 3.9 percent next year, the highest rate in 14 years, the nonprofit business group reported. This jump is being driven by higher pay for new hires — especially those under the age of 25 and workers who switched jobs — and inflation, which has been increasing at the highest rate in nearly 30 years. Continued labor shortages will likely drive wage growth above 4 percent through next year, the board said. …
Several national employers have announced higher pay in recent months. Amazon is offering starting wages of $18 to $22.50 an hour — up from $15 —for warehouse and transportation workers, and Costco just went to $17 an hour, after a bump to $16 in February. Starbucks, CVS, and Walgreens are all boosting base pay to $15 an hour.
At Bank of America, the entry-level wage was $15 an hour when Ajna Angjeliu started as a teller in Boston in 2019. Since then it’s risen several times, and hit $21 in October. …
Smaller employers are also increasing pay. More than three-quarters of owners in a recent National Federation of Independent Business survey said they had either already increased compensation or were planning to soon, the highest percentage in 48 years. David Weaver, president of the Compensation & HR Group in Burlington, said pay is increasing mostly at the entry level, with quick-service restaurants, grocery stores, retail stores, and banks advertising higher hourly wages in the $17 to $21 range. …
… Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November.
And legislation that state lawmakers have passed or tried to pass this year in a number of states would assert more control over election systems and results by partisan offices that Republicans already decisively control.
“This is a five-alarm fire,” said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over her state’s Trump-contested election in 2020 and may face a Trump-backed challenger next year. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.” …
In the months immediately after the election, Mr. Trump’s campaign to discredit the election’s outcome fueled a wave of lawsuits and partisan audits in closely contested states, none of which turned up evidence of more than extremely isolated instances of fraud.
This activity — fueled by grass-roots activists, party donors, sitting Republican politicians and Mr. Trump himself — has evolved rapidly into an effort that looks forward, not backward: recruiting like-minded candidates for public offices large and small, and proposing and, in some cases, passing laws intended to give partisan actors more direct control over election systems.
At every level, opponents are operating at a steep disadvantage. The electoral battles are being fought largely in areas where Democrats have struggled to maintain a foothold for over a decade. The legislative pushes are occurring in states where Republicans dominate both legislative and executive offices, and federal responses have been blocked by unified Republican opposition and Senate rules, which a dwindling but decisive number of Senate Democrats have resisted changing. …
Throughout, there is a stark asymmetry of enthusiasm: Where Mr. Trump’s partisans see the issue of election system control as a matter of life and death, polling suggests Democratic voters broadly do not. …
not sure about decisive number of democrats..criminals that win in Democratic states because the people don’t look hard enough at what their representatives are doing, as opposed to saying.
otherwise, more honest Democrats are doing a lot of saying and not doing themselves, but worst of all, their base hates the R’s base so much they turn the m away instead of learning out to reach them.
R’s are succeeding now becuse they are (at the top) a real conspiracy to
sieze power by those who don’t give a damn about people or planet as
long as they get the money…and power. dems are not so well motivated and organized…pretty much living in a fairy tale world where the good guys win in the end if only everyone believes hard enough.
… Today’s looming crisis in Ukraine is simply the continuation of Mr. Putin’s ambitions. Statements like the one by Mr. Biden on Wednesday — thatU.S. interests end at NATO’s borders— have only emboldened Mr. Putin to ignore international norms.
This American neglect must end. After all, the United States and Ukraine share both ideology and long-term geopolitical interests. …
(The US should not get into a war with Russia over Ukraine. But also the US must honor NATO treaty obligations. What to do? Otherwise, ff this means that ‘The American Century’ is over, then so be it.)
A single top secret American strike cell launched tens of thousands of bombs and missiles against the Islamic State in Syria, but in the process of hammering a vicious enemy, the shadowy force sidestepped safeguards and repeatedly killed civilians, according to multiple current and former military and intelligence officials. …
The unit was called Talon Anvil, and it worked in three shifts around the clock between 2014 and 2019, pinpointing targets for the United States’ formidable air power to hit: convoys, car bombs, command centers and squads of enemy fighters.
But people who worked with the strike cell say in the rush to destroy enemies, it circumvented rules imposed to protect noncombatants, and alarmed its partners in the military and the C.I.A. by killing people who had no role in the conflict: farmers trying to harvest, children in the street, families fleeing fighting, and villagers sheltering in buildings.
Talon Anvil was small — at times fewer than 20 people operating from anonymous rooms cluttered with flat screens — but it played an outsize role in the 112,000 bombs and missiles launched against the Islamic State, in part because it embraced a loose interpretation of the military’s rules of engagement. …
or one could trace it all back to the snake in the Garden. but it is a little hard to watch the Beacon of Democracy, the Shining City on a Hill, the Last, Best Hope of Mankind, my Homeland, killing innocent people out of stupidity and arrogance
and then to turn around and see that yes, that’s really what we are.
i want to agree…but i am not sure the decline of the American empire is going to be good for us. the bad old days were pretty bad, and always have been for those without power.
i’d like to see somethig where America actually lives by the values the world used to think we had.
But I’m not sure those values would actually defeat the other sides bad guys. a lot of ww2 was pretty nasty even on our side…but still informed, on the ground at least, by a belief in “the good.”
In the US, there has long been a POV that ‘What’s good for America is good for the World’, and also (it seems) that ‘What we do ‘in the World’ is good because we are Americans.’
That, unfortunately, is often not the case.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The struggle between the good and the bad or even good and evil, if one chooses to characterize it that way, is eternal. The lives of human beings is short in historical terms and practically insignificant in geological terms. However, the existence of human beings as an animal species on Earth is presently of indeterminate duration. There is no telling how far that mankind may evolve socially, if and only if, it survives its own ignorance long enough. Presently though social evolution is stalled because the vast majority of humanity is disengaged from such great issues either distracted by its own creature comforts and status on the one hand or merely simple survival needs on the other hand. Government of the state similar to philosophy follows the changing trend of social evolution rather than leads it. The leader in any evolution is always existential threats which award the generation of survivors with its new world order, whatever that may be.
So, I believe in social Darwinism, just not as it is typically defined by the cannibals.
Most humans would say a lot of things, but not many of them are true.
In any case you may be missing my point. At one time Tyrannosaurus Rex was the dominant life form on Earth, but now can only be found in rock bands – actual bands of rocks rather than rock and roll bar bands.
This is not to say that we should not do what we can. My point is more to not worrying about what I cannot do and not living in despair about the reality. Life is short and precious and should not be wasted. History will go on without us when our time comes. If human history goes on long enough, then maybe wonderful things will happen for humans. No one knows what will happen. In any case, the history embedded in the rocks will continue until the Sun expands to engulf our planet.
may not be missing yournpoint. hard for me to see what either of us is saying. humans may be wrong about the significance of their lives, but that is what they feel. and while i hope something is left after we leave the scene, hhope it is more than rocks. even i, insignificant as i am feel that infinite space and infinite time may not “matter as much as one life…at least from my perspective…which is not all that different from “egyptian perspective.” or as one physics professor tried to point out to us, the fact that people at the front of the classroom were bigger than the ones at the back (and vice versa..the ones at the back were bigger than the ones at the front) is a matter of relativity…or as the journalists would all say: “it’s just the math.”
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The short version of this has been told countless times as a joke with a deeper meaning. It goes “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
All life struggles to survive. Not many life forms kill large numbers of their own kind or risk the future of life on Earth just to have a good time. This may not be the human significance that you were looking for.
but, while a lion is eating me, even though I may be the only person he has eaten for every hundred zebras, I would feel at the time as though I were more significant that the Zebras. of course I would expect any one of the Zebras to feel the same way.
i don’t know if people are naturally any more homicidal that lions, but we have these big brains, see, and we use them to find better ways to keep other humans from eating us, so naturally they have to find better ways to keep us from eating them. (and, of course, we invented politicians to give us better reasons for killing people on bigger and bigger scales.)
meanwhile there are about 8,000,000,000 of us eating the planet.
Now, that’s significance!
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Significance is always in the eyes of the beholder, but most significant to oneself is usually oneself and after that would be others that are like oneself. Rocks may be more humble. Are deplorable people deplored by their mothers?
Understand that I never wanted to be insignificant. It just happened. I am at peace with it. Rejecting reality would not have made me any more happy and content, but reality may not be for everyone.
oh, well, reality is not for me for sure. long time.
i suspect that deplorable people had deplorable mothers and fathers if any. but i don’t know anything about that, really.
we may be using “significant” differently. it seems you might be using it to mean significant to history or at least politics or the music or baseball.
i tend to use it to mean how you feel when the bad guy says “ve haf ways.”
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
[In The Economic Consequences of the Peace written by John Maynard Keynes in 1919 the author posited that the reparations required of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles would cause such hardships that Germany would eventually start another world war. It did not even take long. Essentially it was not the imperialism of the US military that lead to war, but rather the imperialism of US banks.]
It was US bankers that talked Wilson into demanding repayment of war debts to US banks that lent to Britain and France during WWI. Britain and France in turn demanded reparations from Germany to be required in the Treaty of Versailles so that they could repay US banks without undue hardship. Neither Britain nor France nor the US government nor US banks cared whether undue hardships were placed on the German people because Germany was defeated in WWI. To the victors go the spoils. One might also posit that Germany was the bad guys if one had any idea that it was really Germany that started WWI, but thorough research defies that interpretation of historic events. WWI was started by treaties that lead to the escalation of Ferdinand’s assassination into multi-national conflict.
i have had to learn to read history with a five pound box of salt at my elbow. certainly have read histories that blame almost everything on perfidious Albion (and the Rothchilds).
including the claim that British invented strategic bombing to police the savages in their empire. cheaper to make an example than to send in the troops. same source says Britain was the first to bomb cities in WW2. Hitler made a career out of blaming British banks. I think there may have been some basis in fact.
It is certainly clear that American politicians (or economists) don’t give a damn about people. It’s the math, you see.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
First I consider the source of the historical article and then if it is credible I will read. When Germany first bombed London in WWII their bombers were flying in a fog and had to unload their cargo to have enough fuel to return home. My source on that was The Battle of Britain by James Holland.
it takes a while to learn what sources you can trust. When I was coming up I had a very good history prof named Miles Malone. His brother Dumas Malone was THE biographer of Jefferson. Fortunately Miles taught me to read (by saying “go read, young man.” So years and years later I read another source on Jefferson, and went back to look at what Dumas had to say. Second source was far more credible to me based on what I thoght I had learned about credibility over that time.
On the other hand, I have read lots of sources on Lincoln, and while I recognize bad sources pretty quickly, I find that good sources often paint different pictures, most likely in good faith based on what they themselves have read…and being able to distinguish what a person says from time and what his core beliefs are or are becoming.
I know what eventually settles down into the silt I believe…my core beliefs, but I treat even that as provisional, and the rest as just stories.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Understood about trusting sources. My trusted list is very short and mostly old or dead, but not all are as old as us.
One of my reality checks is that reality is often less simple or comfortable than biased interpretations would attempt to lead us to believe. The demonized versions that Americans get about our enemies are rarely more than half-truths and the morally superior versions of ourselves that we are pumped up with just leave out most of American history. This is not different than the PR techniques used by other countries; i.e., us good – them bad. Lord Acton’s “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is an accurate cautionary tale.
Still without even buying into the advertising, the US is a much better place to live than Russia or China if human decency and integrity count for anything at all, but that is about the relationship of the state to power and its secondary effects. I am sure that there are some honest kind decent people living anywhere, regardless of the role of the state.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
BTW, I have never heard of an innocent banker anywhere at anytime. Even if they did not do what they were accused of doing, then they still probably did other things that were ever worse. All finance is largely the same despite the existence of some socially redeeming value, but banking and brokerage are the worst.
Also, who bombed cities first has a two part backstory. I previously mentioned that the Germans accidentally bombed London in a heavy fog before returning home just to have enough fuel to fly their payload. The British tended to build their munitions and air fields away from densely populated urban areas, but the Germans had a better idea. Why not use urban populations as shields? After all, the young men had all been conscripted into military service, so there were none left in cities except for the old, the infirm, women, and a few remaining Jews. The women could all be replaced from conquered France which would be considered an upgrade. So the British bombed cities first making every attempt to isolate the damage around strategic military targets. After the German’s London fog bombing mishap, then both sides took off their kid gloves. Hitler knew that the British would never have believed that it was an accident.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Sandston, VA (where I live) was built to support the work force for a munitions plant a few miles away during WWI. Sandston is still just a small town about 10 miles east of the City of Richmond, VA. During WWII a fake town with electricity, but no residents, was built as a decoy about five miles further east on a plot of dry ground in the midst of White Oak Swamp. It was lit up at night to attract enemy bombers away from real towns and cities, but none ever came.
reply to recent comments, not sure where this will land in the comments thread:
I agree mostly, but what’s the fun in that. I may get around to sending you a link about the Brits bombing german cities first…differs a bit from your version. you can evaluate the sources.
All over the world, people are abandoning old forms of money and adopting new ones, like cryptocurrency, faster than our brains and customs can process. …
… in the United States. The share of Americans preferring to pay with cash fell to 18 percent in 2020 from 27 percent in 2016, according to a Federal Reserve survey, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. Americans aged 25 to 34 are less than half as likely to use cash as those 65 and older. …
A former Christie’s executive has joined cryptocurrency experts to create a company that purchases art and sells the fragments as NFTs.
… a prominent former (art) auction executive teamed up with cryptocurrency experts in May to purchase the 2005 Banksy painting “Love Is in the Air” for $12.9 million and now plans to sell off 10,000 pieces of it as NFTs, or nonfungible tokens. …
The physical Banksy painting “Love Is in the Air,” which features the image of a bomb-thrower hurling a bouquet of flowers, is to be exhibited starting Dec. 3 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, during Art Basel week.
The Banksy was divided into a 100 x 100 grid, resulting in 10,000 unique squares, or Particles, which will be sold as NFTs for about $1,500 each. Every particle represents a minority ownership in the painting and will come with a collector’s card that shows the whole artwork as well as the particle’s location on the painting. …
Gotta say, I use cash so infrequently that my bank atms tend to confuse me as they change instructions between visits (*), but I do not pay using my smart phone, nor do I ‘tap’ my credit card at the checkout.
i do get tired of attempting a useful comment only to have it wiped out by an ad that turns my attempt to get it out of the way so i can see what i am writing into a no-escape link to another ad i don’t want to see while erasing my comment.
i guess that’s bad and not evil, but i don’t think it bodes well for the future of human social evolution.
don’t assume I am as smart as you, especially where computers are concerned, or at least computer programs, or at least web sites.
i am willing to put up with “too many” ads, because after all, i think, they are paying for my entertainment.
what i find hard to put up with is the stupidity of putting the ads on top of the content with no obvious way to move them. how does this benefit the advertiser?
thanks. that may well be the problem. i’ll look into it.
but just to maintain my grouch..it seems to me that programmers, or whatever they call themselves these days, should have been able to anticipate, or at least fix after the fact, the problem of user screen size. i am using an apple laptop, not an I-phone. if overlap is caused by screen size, than an honest button that shifts ad would be the easiest fix. instead the little x that used to mean “delete ad” now seems to mean “see more of this ad…on a page you can’t get back from , while it deletes your comment before you have “posted” it.
Apple Cinema and Apple Thunderbolt Display monitors are the easiest to connect, as MacBooks come build-in with ports that are compatible with any Apple monitor. All you’ll need to do is connect the Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt cable attached to the display directly to your MacBook Pro.Jul 13, 2016
(I suppose/hope this would also apply to a widescreen monitor.)
Apple monitors tend to be very expensive. Other vendors are more affordable. I was just looking at an HP wide-screen monitor on Amazon that supposedly can be plugged into a PC or a Mac. If you can get, one that will support an HDMI connection (instead of VGA) assuming your Mac can handle such a connection. (I know PCs.)
(The monitor on my aging HP PC is a year-old HP widescreen with an HDMI connection, which I am very happy with.)
again Thanks. I did not keep up with the evolution of computers since the IBM pc running on early DOS. Keeping up seemed to take too much time and money, and bad experience with both Apple Store and Office Max selling me “fixes” that turned out to be non-compatible…I just got grouchy and made do with what I had until it refused to work at all with the newer products.
since humans are planned obsolescence too, i don’t guess i have much to complain about. I’ll try to follow up on your suggestions.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I don’t have the problem that you are having either, but I only have a fifteen inch wide laptop screen. My guess is that an iPhone or iPad (like my wife uses for everything except work) might get different results. I get lots of ads that are easily closed with no problem. Most of the ad content is either stock brokerage or Medicare Advantage, which is ironic (and clearly not because of my user tracking in Google). My browser is Firefox. I used Edge for a few months earlier this year, but did not like it as much.
(We will probably learn that what the Court permits for abortion law is quite different than what it will accept for gun-control legislation.)
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California accused Texas of insulating its abortion law from the courts, and then called on lawmakers to use a similar strategy to go after the gun industry.
Angered by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to continue allowing private citizens to sue Texas abortion providers, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Saturday called for a similar law giving ordinary residents legal standing to file lawsuits against purveyors of restricted firearms.
“SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, tweeted. “If that’s the precedent, then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets. If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.” …
I wish we had politicians who were smarter than thinking justice requires that if you do something stupid to me, I have to do something stupid to you.
the “to me” and “to you” here are enen imprecise. most often it is just one random stupidity vs another random stupidity. or, even, “he killed my jew, so I killed his jew.”
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll.
Seventy-five percent of people who have died of the virus in the United States — or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far — have been 65 or older. One in 100 older Americans has died from the virus. For people younger than 65, that ratio is closer to 1 in 1,400. …
By now, Covid-19 has become the third leading cause of death among Americans 65 and older, after heart disease and cancer. It is responsible for about 13 percent of all deaths in that age group since the beginning of 2020, more than diabetes, accidents, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. …
When Pop History Bombs: A Response to Malcolm Gladwell’s …
if this only helps you find the google entry it will have worked. i read gladwell’s book. had mixed feelings. knowing little, i accepted the book pretty much on its own terms. i did have my doubts though, not least because he reported bombers difficulty taking off from guam with insufficient tailwind. everything i know about airplanes suggests taking off with tail wind is bad practice and i suspected Gladwell of being one of those journalists that tells a story without knowing what he is talking about. he also reported that facing, for the first time, the jet stream over Tokyo, pilots reported negative 3 mile per hour progress toward target (land speed). since the planes were capable of 300 m/h and jet stream does not (?) exceed 200 mph, i suspect Gladwell was reporting pilot joke as actual experienced fact.
Still looking for the british story. did find reference to “policing” british afghanistan with bombers between the Wars to save the cost of armies in Wiki History of RAF
WWI had its chemical warfare and gas masks. The end of WWI was broadly unsatisfying. So, maybe WWII at least began with a veneer of increased civility. The Pearl Harbor attack, POW treatment, and skin color of Japanese all served to really piss off the US. Since Germans were placing the burden of suppressed Aryans on the shoulders of Jews, then initially they were trying to act paternally towards their fellow ethnic Europeans. As war wears on then morality wears down, all the more so if the antagonist finds themselves likely on the wrong side of history with nothing more to lose.
There is nothing more contradictory in human nature than one group of people attempting to find happiness by killing another group of people.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
BTW, if it helps or hurts, as the case may be, then I was too hasty in attributing my account of bombing during the Battle of Britain to James Holland. He did write the authoritative account of the Battle of Britain, but not until 2010. I read the account that I referenced while I was still in high school. The Battle of Britain that I recall was in bold print at the top of the page that I was reading thereby likely just a chapter heading. Try as I might recalling the actual book title and author has been beyond my recollection. Names and dates always gave me a hard time whereas I recall narratives and timelines quite accurately. I hated history as a subject except for teachers that asked discussion questions and never got good grades in history until a real hard-ass teacher failed me in the first six weeks just for not doing homework. Once I was forced to do homework just in order to pass, then I always got B or better in history – that one year. My parents were very strict about me not failing in any class except when I took typing in my senior year.
I don’t know about contradictory, but it seems to hve been pretty common. may even have worked…for the winners…when wars were small.
of course, if your country starts a war with another country and you get killed “fighting for your country”, that seems pretty stupid (but hard to avoid, given conscription (slavery). on the other hand if you get killed fighting for your country when it is invaded by another country, you are a hero (no irony intended). but after a while it’s hard to tell ‘oo killed ‘oo, or who started it anyway. and there you have it.
your history of history (101) sounds familiar, i always thought school was invented to discourage kids from thinking they could ever amout to something, so stand in line, shut up, and sit down.
i think at some point names and dates become important. but they are a lot easier to remember if they come in the context of a story. the original sin of school is that they don’t have time to tell the story (if they even know it), so they give you the names and dates…and perhaps a framework for understanding the story if you are interested enough to read it later on your own…which you won’t be because you were forced to memorize the names and dates so the teacher could give you a test to see if you were paying attention. some people good at names and dates grow up to be the “smartest kid in the eighth grade”, go to Harvard, and spend the rest of their lives being successful and shallow.
And so it begins. Sad to say, but the odds of a Democrat winning a state wide election in GA without Federal voting rights legislation is now slim to none.
” GRIFFIN, Georgia, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.
But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor. Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on
social media.
The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022.”
https://www.reuters.com/wor…
Consumer prices rose 6.8% in November, the fastest pace since 1982
Why Americans feel grouchy about the economy
(Covid Malaise)
Earnings rising faster for lower-wage workers
(Here’s some good news, and not just in Massachusetts. The article text was posted, but has not appeared yet.)
Wonder how much of that inflation can be traced to cars and houses?
Inflation is at a 31-year high. Here’s how it’s hitting New Englanders.
(Now the grocery shopping example above may be extreme. One is not required to buy premium cold cuts & condiments, after all. But it’s not just cars and homes, although housing costs in Boston & its suburbs have been extremely high for decades. Lately natural gas – also used a fuel by electric companies – has gone up by 25%. And gasoline is through the roof also.)
Not going to pay attention to a story where a guy eats 2 1/2 lbs of apples for everyday breakfast, or a guy that actually uses Miracle Whip. Meanwhile, don’t know how large a jar he is buying, but a 30 fl ounce jar of it at Walmart is $4.36.
Prices in general are going up. We have been warned by our natural gas supplier & the electric company to expect 25% rate increases immediately. Supermarket prices are going up also. Not buying a new car anytime soon – my 12 year old Saab still runs fine. And only higher taxes will compel us to move, for now.
There are no WalMarts in Boston primarily due to their business model. Their stores are too big to wedge into cities. However, WalMart is now tinkering with their formula in order to invade the cities as they have the suburbs and rural areas. (TripAdvisor)
Indeed, there are Walmarts inconveniently far from East Boston.
And from their website, Shaw’s supermarkets charge $6.49 for a 30 oz jar of Miracle Whip. Hopefully that should last a month or more.
The headline now reads
Inflation Rising at Fastest Pace in Nearly 40 Years, New Data Shows
A downtown full of ‘Dark stores’ delivery warehouses?
(If there’s not a Walmart near you, maybe there will soon be one of these.)
Consumer prices rose at the fastest pace since 1982.
Fmr. Reagan official warns of threats to abortion — and to democracyFormer U.S. Solicitor General Charles Fried and writer Katie Roiphe discuss democracy in the United States and the Mississippi abortion case before the Supreme Court.https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/12/08/amanpour-supreme-court-abortion-roe-vs-wade-charles-fried-katie-roiphe.cnn
It’s a done deal, and beyond a tragedy for the women in this country on many different levels.
Have a nice day, Susan Sarandon.
Minority Rules: Why 10 Percent is All You Need
(As posted long ago on ‘Economics View’, from 2011, scientists at RPI – my alma mater – determined that a 10% minority is large enuf, will always eventually expand to a majority.
The GOP is determined to prove that this is true.)
that’s great. now that we are ten percent, how long will it take before we become the majority?
How long will it take? That depends on the minority ‘remaining committed’ to their causes. This slightly weird ‘rule’ only works (eventually) if commitment continues. (Has to grow, clearly, and in that sense, this rule is ‘obvious’.)
(It was often said by RPI professors when putting up complex ideas on their chalkboards, without much explanation – ‘This is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.’)
sorry to hear that about RPI. reminds me of the time Clinton (Bill) and Gingrich (Newt) agreed that the answer to people living longer was “obvious”: raise the tetirement age.
of course, it wasn’t a complex idea, superficial but flashy. then we had the intellectual leader of the Republican Congress, Paul Ryan, when asked to explain one of his “ideas,” said, “you don’t want me to go all wonky on you.”
smart. it takes your breath away. meritocracy at its finest.
Put more items on sale – increase sales volume!
Raise more revenue by cutting prices and selling more items, so as to pay higher employee wages?
There is always that approach, but tougher to do when shelves are bare because replenishment is hard to achieve on many items.
but they don’t want to raise employee wages. and there is someone higher in the supply chain who can make more money by raising prices and selling less.
The (obvious?) answer to ‘paying supermarket employees higher wages’ may be ‘charging more for items on the shelves’, however. And, if there are fewer items on the shelves, due to producer shortages or higher fuel prices, that also leads to ‘charging more for items on the shelves’.
well, i suspect there is more to the story than the obvious. but maybe it’s time for Americans to pay a little more for their food, and maybe a little less on their plastic toys, so farm workers and super market workers can have a living wage.
somewhere around here recently was an essay by a truck driver about the “market efficiencies” at the ports that lead to supply chain shortages. maybe the obvous solution to everything is not what works.
sure hard to write a comment when the adds won’t get out of the way.
do the advertisers think this makes me eager to buy their product?
(It was often said by RPI professors when putting up complex ideas on their chalkboards, without much explanation – ‘This is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.’)
‘sorry to hear that about RPI. ‘
(I think the ‘intuitively obvious’ remarks were intended for those students – like me – who were not quite of the caliber our professors wished to be dealing with. In such a setting, they present the material, and it’s up to the students to figure it out. RPI was a tough school. Probably still is.)
i heard it was a good school…maybe for the same reasons i heard harvard was a good school: hiring big names and recruiting smart students.
experience has taught me big names are not often good teachers, and smart is not often deep or original or even decent.
a not tough school i went to had a few teachers who had enough contempt for their students that they had a way of discouraging them unjustified by what they were being paid to do, and what reasonable expectations they should have had about students,.very very few were even slightly interested in opening up new vistas and new possibilities and nurturing reasonable expectations,
it does seem that some of the students got the message and enjoyed life anyway and probably went on to corporate lives…including corporate education…which embraced pretty much the same values as those bad teachers.
probably has something to do with the kind of world we are living in.
Earnings rising faster for lower-wage workers
(Good news! Maybe this will happen all over America!)
In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few Obstacles
not sure about decisive number of democrats..criminals that win in Democratic states because the people don’t look hard enough at what their representatives are doing, as opposed to saying.
otherwise, more honest Democrats are doing a lot of saying and not doing themselves, but worst of all, their base hates the R’s base so much they turn the m away instead of learning out to reach them.
R’s are succeeding now becuse they are (at the top) a real conspiracy to
sieze power by those who don’t give a damn about people or planet as
long as they get the money…and power. dems are not so well motivated and organized…pretty much living in a fairy tale world where the good guys win in the end if only everyone believes hard enough.
How the United States Can Break Putin’s Hold on Ukraine
NY Times – Alexander Vindman – Dec 10
(The US should not get into a war with Russia over Ukraine. But also the US must honor NATO treaty obligations. What to do? Otherwise, ff this means that ‘The American Century’ is over, then so be it.)
(One reason why the ‘American Century’ should be over.)
Civilian Deaths Mounted as Secret Unit Pounded ISIS
If one just sticks to 21st century history, you can suppose that
the events of 9/11/2001 are the root of much of the evil in this
century so far. Before there were drones and drone-strikes from
far, far away, followed by vengeful invasions by US (and allies),
with asymmetric ‘improvised explosive devices’ in return,
modern high technology made exotic drones and
smart missiles & bombs possible, without
doing much useful to improve target selection.
But why start with 9/11/2001, when you can blame
the US for various foreign policies, including
assisting Israel, or preferring Sunni governments
over Shia ones.
or one could trace it all back to the snake in the Garden. but it is a little hard to watch the Beacon of Democracy, the Shining City on a Hill, the Last, Best Hope of Mankind, my Homeland, killing innocent people out of stupidity and arrogance
and then to turn around and see that yes, that’s really what we are.
i want to agree…but i am not sure the decline of the American empire is going to be good for us. the bad old days were pretty bad, and always have been for those without power.
i’d like to see somethig where America actually lives by the values the world used to think we had.
But I’m not sure those values would actually defeat the other sides bad guys. a lot of ww2 was pretty nasty even on our side…but still informed, on the ground at least, by a belief in “the good.”
In the US, there has long been a POV that ‘What’s good for America is good for the World’, and also (it seems) that ‘What we do ‘in the World’ is good because we are Americans.’
That, unfortunately, is often not the case.
Coberly,
The struggle between the good and the bad or even good and evil, if one chooses to characterize it that way, is eternal. The lives of human beings is short in historical terms and practically insignificant in geological terms. However, the existence of human beings as an animal species on Earth is presently of indeterminate duration. There is no telling how far that mankind may evolve socially, if and only if, it survives its own ignorance long enough. Presently though social evolution is stalled because the vast majority of humanity is disengaged from such great issues either distracted by its own creature comforts and status on the one hand or merely simple survival needs on the other hand. Government of the state similar to philosophy follows the changing trend of social evolution rather than leads it. The leader in any evolution is always existential threats which award the generation of survivors with its new world order, whatever that may be.
So, I believe in social Darwinism, just not as it is typically defined by the cannibals.
I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted that i think most
humans wouldsay that their own pathetically short lives are more
significant that the lives of all the rocks in geological time.
but that is obviously short sighted of them.
Coberly,
Most humans would say a lot of things, but not many of them are true.
In any case you may be missing my point. At one time Tyrannosaurus Rex was the dominant life form on Earth, but now can only be found in rock bands – actual bands of rocks rather than rock and roll bar bands.
This is not to say that we should not do what we can. My point is more to not worrying about what I cannot do and not living in despair about the reality. Life is short and precious and should not be wasted. History will go on without us when our time comes. If human history goes on long enough, then maybe wonderful things will happen for humans. No one knows what will happen. In any case, the history embedded in the rocks will continue until the Sun expands to engulf our planet.
ron
may not be missing yournpoint. hard for me to see what either of us is saying. humans may be wrong about the significance of their lives, but that is what they feel. and while i hope something is left after we leave the scene, hhope it is more than rocks. even i, insignificant as i am feel that infinite space and infinite time may not “matter as much as one life…at least from my perspective…which is not all that different from “egyptian perspective.” or as one physics professor tried to point out to us, the fact that people at the front of the classroom were bigger than the ones at the back (and vice versa..the ones at the back were bigger than the ones at the front) is a matter of relativity…or as the journalists would all say: “it’s just the math.”
Coberly,
The short version of this has been told countless times as a joke with a deeper meaning. It goes “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
All life struggles to survive. Not many life forms kill large numbers of their own kind or risk the future of life on Earth just to have a good time. This may not be the human significance that you were looking for.
Ron @ 4:19
no, not that significance at all.
but, while a lion is eating me, even though I may be the only person he has eaten for every hundred zebras, I would feel at the time as though I were more significant that the Zebras. of course I would expect any one of the Zebras to feel the same way.
i don’t know if people are naturally any more homicidal that lions, but we have these big brains, see, and we use them to find better ways to keep other humans from eating us, so naturally they have to find better ways to keep us from eating them. (and, of course, we invented politicians to give us better reasons for killing people on bigger and bigger scales.)
meanwhile there are about 8,000,000,000 of us eating the planet.
Now, that’s significance!
Coberly,
Significance is always in the eyes of the beholder, but most significant to oneself is usually oneself and after that would be others that are like oneself. Rocks may be more humble. Are deplorable people deplored by their mothers?
Understand that I never wanted to be insignificant. It just happened. I am at peace with it. Rejecting reality would not have made me any more happy and content, but reality may not be for everyone.
oh, well, reality is not for me for sure. long time.
i suspect that deplorable people had deplorable mothers and fathers if any. but i don’t know anything about that, really.
we may be using “significant” differently. it seems you might be using it to mean significant to history or at least politics or the music or baseball.
i tend to use it to mean how you feel when the bad guy says “ve haf ways.”
https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/keynes/pdf%26filename%3Dpeace3.pdf
[In The Economic Consequences of the Peace written by John Maynard Keynes in 1919 the author posited that the reparations required of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles would cause such hardships that Germany would eventually start another world war. It did not even take long. Essentially it was not the imperialism of the US military that lead to war, but rather the imperialism of US banks.]
Ron
British banks?
Coberly,
It was US bankers that talked Wilson into demanding repayment of war debts to US banks that lent to Britain and France during WWI. Britain and France in turn demanded reparations from Germany to be required in the Treaty of Versailles so that they could repay US banks without undue hardship. Neither Britain nor France nor the US government nor US banks cared whether undue hardships were placed on the German people because Germany was defeated in WWI. To the victors go the spoils. One might also posit that Germany was the bad guys if one had any idea that it was really Germany that started WWI, but thorough research defies that interpretation of historic events. WWI was started by treaties that lead to the escalation of Ferdinand’s assassination into multi-national conflict.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/whp-origins/era-7-the-great-convergence-and-divergence-1880-ce-to-the-future/71-world-war-1-betaa/a/read-what-caused-the-first-world-war-beta?utm_account=Grant&utm_campaignname=DSA_www_US_lowincomestates&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgsa3x5Tf9AIVyp6zCh32YAcIEAAYAiAAEgLKVfD_BwE
READ: What Caused the First World War
i have had to learn to read history with a five pound box of salt at my elbow. certainly have read histories that blame almost everything on perfidious Albion (and the Rothchilds).
including the claim that British invented strategic bombing to police the savages in their empire. cheaper to make an example than to send in the troops. same source says Britain was the first to bomb cities in WW2. Hitler made a career out of blaming British banks. I think there may have been some basis in fact.
It is certainly clear that American politicians (or economists) don’t give a damn about people. It’s the math, you see.
Coberly,
First I consider the source of the historical article and then if it is credible I will read. When Germany first bombed London in WWII their bombers were flying in a fog and had to unload their cargo to have enough fuel to return home. My source on that was The Battle of Britain by James Holland.
Ron
it takes a while to learn what sources you can trust. When I was coming up I had a very good history prof named Miles Malone. His brother Dumas Malone was THE biographer of Jefferson. Fortunately Miles taught me to read (by saying “go read, young man.” So years and years later I read another source on Jefferson, and went back to look at what Dumas had to say. Second source was far more credible to me based on what I thoght I had learned about credibility over that time.
On the other hand, I have read lots of sources on Lincoln, and while I recognize bad sources pretty quickly, I find that good sources often paint different pictures, most likely in good faith based on what they themselves have read…and being able to distinguish what a person says from time and what his core beliefs are or are becoming.
I know what eventually settles down into the silt I believe…my core beliefs, but I treat even that as provisional, and the rest as just stories.
Coberly,
Understood about trusting sources. My trusted list is very short and mostly old or dead, but not all are as old as us.
One of my reality checks is that reality is often less simple or comfortable than biased interpretations would attempt to lead us to believe. The demonized versions that Americans get about our enemies are rarely more than half-truths and the morally superior versions of ourselves that we are pumped up with just leave out most of American history. This is not different than the PR techniques used by other countries; i.e., us good – them bad. Lord Acton’s “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is an accurate cautionary tale.
Still without even buying into the advertising, the US is a much better place to live than Russia or China if human decency and integrity count for anything at all, but that is about the relationship of the state to power and its secondary effects. I am sure that there are some honest kind decent people living anywhere, regardless of the role of the state.
Coberly,
BTW, I have never heard of an innocent banker anywhere at anytime. Even if they did not do what they were accused of doing, then they still probably did other things that were ever worse. All finance is largely the same despite the existence of some socially redeeming value, but banking and brokerage are the worst.
Also, who bombed cities first has a two part backstory. I previously mentioned that the Germans accidentally bombed London in a heavy fog before returning home just to have enough fuel to fly their payload. The British tended to build their munitions and air fields away from densely populated urban areas, but the Germans had a better idea. Why not use urban populations as shields? After all, the young men had all been conscripted into military service, so there were none left in cities except for the old, the infirm, women, and a few remaining Jews. The women could all be replaced from conquered France which would be considered an upgrade. So the British bombed cities first making every attempt to isolate the damage around strategic military targets. After the German’s London fog bombing mishap, then both sides took off their kid gloves. Hitler knew that the British would never have believed that it was an accident.
Coberly,
Sandston, VA (where I live) was built to support the work force for a munitions plant a few miles away during WWI. Sandston is still just a small town about 10 miles east of the City of Richmond, VA. During WWII a fake town with electricity, but no residents, was built as a decoy about five miles further east on a plot of dry ground in the midst of White Oak Swamp. It was lit up at night to attract enemy bombers away from real towns and cities, but none ever came.
Ron
reply to recent comments, not sure where this will land in the comments thread:
I agree mostly, but what’s the fun in that. I may get around to sending you a link about the Brits bombing german cities first…differs a bit from your version. you can evaluate the sources.
Can we trust what’s happening to money?
Cutting a Banksy Into 10,000 (Digital) Pieces
Gotta say, I use cash so infrequently that my bank atms tend to confuse me as they change instructions between visits (*), but I do not pay using my smart phone, nor do I ‘tap’ my credit card at the checkout.
(* or, could be, it’s just senior’s brain-fog.)
could be. but senior brain fog is all that stands between us and youthful chaos.
us conservatives need to stick together.
i do get tired of attempting a useful comment only to have it wiped out by an ad that turns my attempt to get it out of the way so i can see what i am writing into a no-escape link to another ad i don’t want to see while erasing my comment.
i guess that’s bad and not evil, but i don’t think it bodes well for the future of human social evolution.
There are indeed somewhere between ‘a whole lot’ and ‘way too many’ ads on this board, but if I can get around them, you can too. Still, a nuisance.
Dobbs
don’t assume I am as smart as you, especially where computers are concerned, or at least computer programs, or at least web sites.
i am willing to put up with “too many” ads, because after all, i think, they are paying for my entertainment.
what i find hard to put up with is the stupidity of putting the ads on top of the content with no obvious way to move them. how does this benefit the advertiser?
Do you by chance have a wide-screen monitor?
If not, get one. It may help your ad-placement problem somewhat.
Dobbs
thanks. that may well be the problem. i’ll look into it.
but just to maintain my grouch..it seems to me that programmers, or whatever they call themselves these days, should have been able to anticipate, or at least fix after the fact, the problem of user screen size. i am using an apple laptop, not an I-phone. if overlap is caused by screen size, than an honest button that shifts ad would be the easiest fix. instead the little x that used to mean “delete ad” now seems to mean “see more of this ad…on a page you can’t get back from , while it deletes your comment before you have “posted” it.
From out on the web…
Can you plug a monitor into an Apple laptop?
Apple Cinema and Apple Thunderbolt Display monitors are the easiest to connect, as MacBooks come build-in with ports that are compatible with any Apple monitor. All you’ll need to do is connect the Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt cable attached to the display directly to your MacBook Pro.Jul 13, 2016
(I suppose/hope this would also apply to a widescreen monitor.)
Apple monitors tend to be very expensive. Other vendors are more affordable. I was just looking at an HP wide-screen monitor on Amazon that supposedly can be plugged into a PC or a Mac. If you can get, one that will support an HDMI connection (instead of VGA) assuming your Mac can handle such a connection. (I know PCs.)
(The monitor on my aging HP PC is a year-old HP widescreen with an HDMI connection, which I am very happy with.)
Dobbs
again Thanks. I did not keep up with the evolution of computers since the IBM pc running on early DOS. Keeping up seemed to take too much time and money, and bad experience with both Apple Store and Office Max selling me “fixes” that turned out to be non-compatible…I just got grouchy and made do with what I had until it refused to work at all with the newer products.
since humans are planned obsolescence too, i don’t guess i have much to complain about. I’ll try to follow up on your suggestions.
Coberly,
I don’t have the problem that you are having either, but I only have a fifteen inch wide laptop screen. My guess is that an iPhone or iPad (like my wife uses for everything except work) might get different results. I get lots of ads that are easily closed with no problem. Most of the ad content is either stock brokerage or Medicare Advantage, which is ironic (and clearly not because of my user tracking in Google). My browser is Firefox. I used Edge for a few months earlier this year, but did not like it as much.
ron
thanks. see reply to Dobbs above on the same subject. Ihave 11 inch screen. browser is safari.
Newsom Calls for Gun Legislation Modeled on the Texas Abortion Law
(We will probably learn that what the Court permits for abortion law is quite different than what it will accept for gun-control legislation.)
I wish we had politicians who were smarter than thinking justice requires that if you do something stupid to me, I have to do something stupid to you.
the “to me” and “to you” here are enen imprecise. most often it is just one random stupidity vs another random stupidity. or, even, “he killed my jew, so I killed his jew.”
Politicians are not immune to the ‘average IQ has got to be 100’ problem, and may be in that demographic themselves.
The end-times, at least for some of us, may be around the corner.
As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
Ron
first stab at link to bombing in ww2 :
When Pop History Bombs: A Response to Malcolm Gladwell’s …
if this only helps you find the google entry it will have worked. i read gladwell’s book. had mixed feelings. knowing little, i accepted the book pretty much on its own terms. i did have my doubts though, not least because he reported bombers difficulty taking off from guam with insufficient tailwind. everything i know about airplanes suggests taking off with tail wind is bad practice and i suspected Gladwell of being one of those journalists that tells a story without knowing what he is talking about. he also reported that facing, for the first time, the jet stream over Tokyo, pilots reported negative 3 mile per hour progress toward target (land speed). since the planes were capable of 300 m/h and jet stream does not (?) exceed 200 mph, i suspect Gladwell was reporting pilot joke as actual experienced fact.
Still looking for the british story. did find reference to “policing” british afghanistan with bombers between the Wars to save the cost of armies in Wiki History of RAF
https://lareviewofbooks.org › article › when-pop-histor…
Ron
maybe better link
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/when-pop-history-bombs-a-response-to-malcolm-gladwells-love-letter-to-american-air-power/
getting closer to ww2
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29441383
Coberly,
WWI had its chemical warfare and gas masks. The end of WWI was broadly unsatisfying. So, maybe WWII at least began with a veneer of increased civility. The Pearl Harbor attack, POW treatment, and skin color of Japanese all served to really piss off the US. Since Germans were placing the burden of suppressed Aryans on the shoulders of Jews, then initially they were trying to act paternally towards their fellow ethnic Europeans. As war wears on then morality wears down, all the more so if the antagonist finds themselves likely on the wrong side of history with nothing more to lose.
There is nothing more contradictory in human nature than one group of people attempting to find happiness by killing another group of people.
Coberly,
BTW, if it helps or hurts, as the case may be, then I was too hasty in attributing my account of bombing during the Battle of Britain to James Holland. He did write the authoritative account of the Battle of Britain, but not until 2010. I read the account that I referenced while I was still in high school. The Battle of Britain that I recall was in bold print at the top of the page that I was reading thereby likely just a chapter heading. Try as I might recalling the actual book title and author has been beyond my recollection. Names and dates always gave me a hard time whereas I recall narratives and timelines quite accurately. I hated history as a subject except for teachers that asked discussion questions and never got good grades in history until a real hard-ass teacher failed me in the first six weeks just for not doing homework. Once I was forced to do homework just in order to pass, then I always got B or better in history – that one year. My parents were very strict about me not failing in any class except when I took typing in my senior year.
Ron
I don’t know about contradictory, but it seems to hve been pretty common. may even have worked…for the winners…when wars were small.
of course, if your country starts a war with another country and you get killed “fighting for your country”, that seems pretty stupid (but hard to avoid, given conscription (slavery). on the other hand if you get killed fighting for your country when it is invaded by another country, you are a hero (no irony intended). but after a while it’s hard to tell ‘oo killed ‘oo, or who started it anyway. and there you have it.
your history of history (101) sounds familiar, i always thought school was invented to discourage kids from thinking they could ever amout to something, so stand in line, shut up, and sit down.
i think at some point names and dates become important. but they are a lot easier to remember if they come in the context of a story. the original sin of school is that they don’t have time to tell the story (if they even know it), so they give you the names and dates…and perhaps a framework for understanding the story if you are interested enough to read it later on your own…which you won’t be because you were forced to memorize the names and dates so the teacher could give you a test to see if you were paying attention. some people good at names and dates grow up to be the “smartest kid in the eighth grade”, go to Harvard, and spend the rest of their lives being successful and shallow.