Friday Reads
Posted: January 8, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: anthropocene, Radical Christianists, samsara, wheel of life 16 Comments
I’m rather late getting this written today. It’s due to stuff I like to refer to as samsara surfing activities. It’s the entire basic Buddhist thing on the nature of this existence. My washing machine overflowed last night in the laundry closet which has created a huge mess. Thankfully, I seemed to have fixed the machines issues for the moment but the floor is just inundated with water. Also, a friend of mine of over 35 years had a stroke on New Year’s Eve and passed on Wednesday. She was only 65 and had just retired about six months ago. Both of these items come under the heading of I’m not surprised, not shocked, expected it to happen sooner than it should but I’m still asking why now? Why now when I can least afford fixing up stuff and when I had put off talking to her because my voice was shot from the flu. Timing is everything still, I guess and mine sucks atm.
Also, I still need to mention the timing of the font bill for the blog. It’s in two days and I need to beg for donations. I don’t need anything huge but a little from some of you would get it off my plate and then we have the blog free and clear again until October.
So, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to write a very cohesive post today but I will share what’s been attracting my attention even as distracted as I am. My artwork today is the Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life or Wheel of Samsara. It reminds us that nothing lasts for ever. Everything changes and eventually reformats.
By Samsara (bhavachakra) we are talking of all existences that are conditioned by: ignorance, suffering and the unexplainable flow of time, often represented by Yama holding the wheel of life. Nirvana, on the other hand, represents the world unaffected by negative emotions, which by definition is the nature of true happiness.
The notion of a rotation or cycle, is explained by the fact that humans or beings, as I will call them for the remainder of this article, do not occupy a stable place within Samsara, but depending on their Karma will pass from one type of existence to another.
I’m pretty comfortable in the idea that we all reformat constantly. I’m even fairly resigned to being okay with reformatting to just energy and dust. But damn, it’s always difficult to live the idea that time rolls over us. Things we love never last long enough. Things we want to go away seem to stick around for ever. So, we just have to surf along knowing that’s the case.
So, here’s a new journal study from Science entitled: The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene which essentially deals with time and our existence here on earth. I quote the abstract’s background here.
Humans are altering the planet, including long-term global geologic processes, at an increasing rate. Any formal recognition of an Anthropocene epoch in the geological time scale hinges on whether humans have changed the Earth system sufficiently to produce a stratigraphic signature in sediments and ice that is distinct from that of the Holocene epoch. Proposals for marking the start of the Anthropocene include an “early Anthropocene” beginning with the spread of agriculture and deforestation; the Columbian Exchange of Old World and New World species; the Industrial Revolution at ~1800 CE; and the mid-20th century “Great Acceleration” of population growth and industrialization.
So, the bottom line is this: Human impact has pushed Earth into the Anthropocene, scientists say. New study provides one of the strongest cases yet that the planet has entered a new geological epoch. This is a scientific way of stating the Buddhist idea that we’re creating our own hell realms.
There is now compelling evidence to show that humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife has pushed the world into a new geological epoch, according to a group of scientists.
The question of whether humans’ combined environmental impact has tipped the planet into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began around 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions later this year.
The new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that from the amount of concrete mankind uses in building to the amount of plastic rubbish dumped in the oceans, Earth has entered a new geological epoch.
“We could be looking here at a stepchange from one world to another that justifies being called an epoch,” said Dr Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and an author on the study published in Science on Thursday.
“What this paper does is to say the changes are as big as those that happened at the end of the last ice age . This is a big deal.”
This has a lot of implications outside the realm of science.
Phil Gibbard, the University of Cambridge geologist who set up the working group initially, told the Guardian the Anthropocene epoch might be more effective as a cultural concept than a scientific fact.
“We fully recognize the points [in the new study’s research]: the data and science is there,” Mr. Gibbard told the Guardian. “What we question is the philosophy, and usefulness.”
Popularity for an idea that the Holocene “entirely recent” epoch is giving way to a new epoch ruled by humans has grown since the Nobel laureate atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen used it in 2000. In 2013 alone, the word appeared in 200 peer-reviewed articles, Joseph Stromberg reported for Smithsonian Magazine.
Popularity alone does not change geologic fact, however, and some of the scientists who specialize in rock layers have said the Anthropocene epoch has more pop-culture appeal than scientific validity. Agriculture made its mark on Europe’s rock layers as long ago as 900 AD, Whitney Autin, a stratigrapher at the SUNY College of Brockport told Smithsonian Magazine, so the Anthropocene epoch, “provides eye-catching jargon, but from the geologic side, I need the bare bones facts that fit the code.”
The SOTU address will be next Tuesday. We will have a live blog as usual. The President is going to be doing something unusual to call attention to the many many victims of US gun violence.
President Obama will pay tribute to victims of gun violence by leaving one seat empty in the first lady’s guest box at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
Obama told supporters Friday that the gesture is meant to send a message of Congress that they must act to make it harder for guns to fall into the wrong hands.
“We want them to be seen and understood; that their absence means something to this country,” he said on a conference call with Organizing for Action.
“We want to tell their stories, we want to honor their memory and we want to support Americans whose lives have been forever changed by gun violence and remind every single one of our representatives that it’s their responsibility to do something.”
The announcement is another indication of how the president will address the contentious debate over gun control in his final State of the Union.
President Obama on Friday vetoed legislation that would repeal much of ObamaCare, the first such measure to reach his desk since it became law in 2010.
Obama used his veto pen without fanfare on a legislative package rolling back his signature healthcare law and stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood.
In a lengthy message to Congress, Obama said repealing the law would reverse improvements made in the nation’s healthcare system.“Because of the harm this bill would cause to the health and financial security of millions of Americans, it has earned my veto,” the president wrote.Obama noted that congressional Republicans have attempted to roll back the law more than 50 times, to no avail.“Rather than refighting old political battles by once again voting to repeal basic protections that provide security for the middle class, members of Congress should be working together to grow the economy, strengthen middle-class families, and create new jobs,” he wrote.The veto was the eighth of Obama’s presidency and the sixth since last year, when Republicans took over both chambers of Congress.Even though Obama long threatened to veto the measure, Republicans touted the vote as an important step toward reversing the Affordable Care Act if the party wins the White House in November.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Friday pledged that Congress would vote to override Obama’s veto. The party lacks the two-thirds majority necessary to achieve that, however.
Radical Christianists continue to plague women’s health and constitutional rights. Here’s an interesting thing going on here in New Orleans where the city’s 
street banners are displaying political speech and not the usual event ads. Our lone Republican woman/city council member is challenging the city to take them down in line with the “offensive” logic used to remove Confederate Statues on public property. Stacy is definitely her own kind of woman and has spent her terms on the city council generally doing things that unnerve a lot of groups.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu should explain why anti-abortion banners festoon the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground, since he has decided to be the arbiter of what symbols are so offensive that they must be removed from public property, City Councilwoman Stacy Head said at a recent meeting.
Head didn’t mention the monuments specifically, as she spoke at a committee meeting Wednesday (Jan. 6), but her comments were a clear reference to Landrieu’s push to have Confederate-related statues declared nuisances and removed from public property.
As a woman, Head said, she feels like the banners are a nuisance since they “negatively influence the perception of my civil liberties as a woman. I believe I’m being discriminated against.”
Head asked the administration to explain in writing the process by which the city decides what banners are allowed, and how much money they generate.
The mayor should explain at least that much since, “We are looking to the admin to decide which objects and symbols are appropriate for the city on city property. Which ones offend us. Which ones are negative,” Head said. As a woman, it offends her to have to drive by them and be reminded of the oppression, she said. Does that give her standing to call for their removal?
Head called the banners “political signage for a particular position that I perceive as a nuisance. I perceive it as offensive. I do not see it is a promoting awareness.”
A city spokesman said the city allows “community awareness banners” on city streetlights provided they are not commercial in nature and do not endorse any specific candidate or another political campaign up for a vote. The St. Charles banners did not appear to violate that standard when the application to hang them was submitted, he said.
The banners are the usual fetus porn used by the group.
So, I hope everything is going okay with you. Let us know what’s on your reading and blogging list today.
Remember, along with the SOTU, we will be live blogging both of the upcoming primary debates. The next Republican debate will be: Thursday, January 14, 2016. The next Democratic debate is scheduled for Sunday, January 17, 2016.
The first caucuses and primaries are in February and are being held in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively.
Hopefully, the Republicans will be tossing a few of their clowns to the curb and we’ll have a better look at their “best” and “brightest”.
Monday Reads: I can’t even …
Posted: January 4, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Bundy, Christian Patriot Defense League, Malheur Wldlife Refuge, militia, Posse Commitatus, Right wing militias 12 Comments
Well, it’s the first Monday of the New Year and I’m already wishing I could stay under the covers. Yes, it’s cold and yes, the to do list is full of things I simply don’t want to do.
While I had a nice quiet weekend, the usual angry white male militia suspects were inciting violent over throw of the US Government. Yes. It’s Christian Patriot Defense League time again. The Posse Commitatus crew just never sleeps but dreams those great dreams of federal government conspiracies met by their armed insurrection. You know there’s only a little time left to thwart the nation’s first black president before they have to thwart the nation’s first woman president. They have a bunch of trinkets, signs, and slogans to use before they become outdated.
So, over the weekend Clive Bundy’s spawn decided to join a protest in Oregon on the sentencing of two poachers who basically set fire to federal land to cover up their crimes. The pair received a light sentence from the original judgement so the pair were taken back to court by the federal government. Public protests over the judicial process and the criminal system have been a frequent event recently and are protected by the Constitution unless things get out of hand. So, we’re talking about a group of gun-toting militia types here so a simple protest never suffices.
The ranchers, Dwight Hammond, Jr., 73, and his son Steve, 43, were convicted of federal arson charges, stemming from a pair or fires on federal land near their ranch. The first was reportedly set in 2001 to cover up their illegal poaching of a deer on government property. It burned 139 acres. The second was reportedly set in 2006 as a defensive measure, to protect the ranch from an approaching lightning-sparked wildfire. That arson reportedly endangered volunteer firefighters camped nearby. The government would seek $1 million in damages. (For a deep dive of the backstory read this piece in The Oregonian.)
I’m quoting from a Rolling Stone article that gives a high level outline on the background of what has now become an armed occupation of “the Malheur Wildlife Refuge — a remote, marshy oasis in Oregon’s high 
desert famed for its spectacular migratory birds” to quote author Tim Dickinson. The basic reason for the protest and supposedly the armed takeover and occupation is a Clinton Era law used to extend the sentence of the poacher/arsonists.
The ranchers’ case became a cause celebre in the patriot/militia movement because the pair were sentenced for their arson crimes under a provision of a law called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. And they were oddly sentenced twice.
The federal law in question doesn’t just deal with terrorism. It created a five-year mandatory-minimum sentence for arson on federal land: “Whoever maliciously damages or destroys… by means of fire…any…real property…owned or possessed by…the United States…shall be imprisoned for not less than 5 years…”
The first federal judge to handle the case concluded that the mandatory sentence was too stiff and gave the pair far lighter sentences, which they served. But the U.S. attorney in the case called foul; the federal government took the rare step of appealing the sentence. In October 2015, the Ninth Circuit imposed the mandatory minimum, ruling that: “given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense.” The ranchers are due back in federal prison Monday to serve out their five years each.
But this odd re-sentencing, under a statute that makes it sound like the cattlemen were being prosecuted for terrorism, inflamed the paranoid passions of the anti-government patriot and militia movements, and brought the militants to Burns for a rally on Saturday.
So, protesting is never enough for this bunch of gun-toting, cowboying, gubmint-hating, law breaking white men. The nice people of Burns and the communities surrounding the Wildlife Refuge are quite unhappy being the center of an armed insurrection. You can find two locals that are covering the siege on twitter. One is Michael Oman-Reagan, an anthropologist. (The protest sign pictures are from his feed,) The other is Amanda Peacher who is a central Oregon reporter for OPBS. (h/t to my friend Elaine Leyda for the names.) The national news was a little slow getting there and never know the area. Peacher’s been busy since the take over.
Ammon Bundy emerged from a small brick building at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge shortly after 11 a.m. Sunday.
He wouldn’t say how many protesters were present at the site of the occupied federal complex, but fewer than 20 people were visible Sunday afternoon.
The leader of the occupation spoke in cool, calm tones as he explained why he and other self-described militiamen broke into and took over the complex Saturday.
“This refuge, from its very inception has been a tool of tyranny,” said Bundy. He believes the federal government overstepped its constitutional bounds in its original purchase of the land back in 1908.
The occupiers said their mission is to put the federal lands under local control, although it’s unclear by what means. Bundy said the protesters have a plan that will take “several months at the shortest to accomplish.”
The refuge is a popular destination for spring birdwatchers, and the headquarters include a visitor’s center, museum and housing.
Yes folks, a Wildlife Refuge is a “tool of tyranny”. That’s why we now have children as human shields there. Oh, and that’s why they want to overthrow the Federal Government. Remember, these are the dudes whose father has been using Federal land to feed his cattle for years and years and years. Now. mind you, all of this was basically Indian lands when the Bundys got there. But, you know, it’s theirs and they want it back because “LIBerty”.
Despite claims by Cliven Bundy that there are 150 armed militiamen now occupying a federal building in Oregon, his son Ammon Bundy has only about 20 people. Three of Cliven Bundy’s sons reportedly broke into and took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters on Saturday. The men reportedly are heavily armed, have taken children into the occupied area, and have terrorized locals, forcing schools to be closed all this week and other nearby federal buildings to shut down out of safety concerns.
Militia movements are not new to this country. Far-right political movements usually have some aspect of gun-toting, gubmint-hating, cowboying, angry white men and have had so for years. We’ve also had run-ins with them from time to time. You may remember the entire Ruby Ridge thing. Oregon has a history with them.
Despite the talk about supporting the Hammond family in Burns, Oregon, the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters is actually part of a long-standing campaign by radical right-wingers to dismantle federal land ownership in the West. Some elected officials are working through mainstream channels to get lands transferred to state or county governments, or to allow them equal say over their use. But the Malheur takeover seems to be an attempt to spread a tactic of armed federal land takeovers. These armed groups are part of the “Patriot movement”—the successor to the 1990s militia movement—which has seen a rebirth since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Like most right wingers, these dudes love them some conspiracy theories and hate them some President Obama but they’ve been like that for some time. If you’re old like me, you’ll remember Possee Comitatus. Most of them are white supremacists so hating on a black president is just a natural by product.
Many of the tactics and talking points being used were popularized in the 1970s by the white supremacist group Posse Comitatus. This group promoted the “Christian Patriot” movement, advocated the formation of “Citizens Militias,” helped forge an idiosyncratic reading of the Constitution, said the county sheriff was the highest elected official that should be obeyed, and opposed federal environmental restrictions.
Many of these gun-toting, gubmint-hating, cowboying angry white men are now Republicans. Hence, we see a posse of very quite Republican Candidates for President with the exception of Marco Rubio.
Members of the media tour the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon January 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
Republican presidential candidates are staying mum as an armed group has taken over part of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon — even those who supported the father of at least one of the group’s leaders, who had his own standoff with the government in 2014, and have called for limits on federal control over Western land.
Some of the issues involved in the standoff — constitutional rights, allegations of federal government overreach and individual liberties — have come to the fore in the GOP primary race. And as Western states are poised to play a larger role in the contest, so has the issue of property rights in a region where the federal government controls about half of the land.
But few candidates seemed willing to wade into any of these issues Sunday as the leaders of the group said they are standing up against government overreach and are prepared to remain there for “as long as it takes.” The group said it is protesting the case of two Oregon ranchers who were convicted of arson in 2012 and are scheduled to report to federal prison Monday. The ranchers were convicted on a broad terrorism charge. Many ranchers and land users in the West lease public land.
Rubio just denounced “lawlessness” this morning but with a militia ass-kissing addendum.
Marco Rubio on Monday addressed the armed standoff at a federal building in Oregon, saying the occupiers “can’t be lawless” and should instead pursue lawful channels to change policy.
A small militia is occupying the headquarters building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon as part of a protest against the federal government and the impending imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers.
“Let me just say, first of all, you’ve got to follow the law,” the Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate said on Iowa radio station KBUR Monday morning. “You can’t be lawless. We live in a republic. There are ways to change the laws of this country and the policies. If we get frustrated with it, that’s why we have elections. That’s why we have people we can hold accountable.”
Rubio said that he did agree, however, that the federal government did control too much land in western states.
“And I agree that there is too much federal control over land especially out in the western part of the United States,” he continued. “There are states for example like Nevada that are dominated by the federal government in terms of land holding and we should fix it, but no one should be doing it in a way that’s outside the law. We are a nation laws, we should follow those laws and they should be respected.”
I guess he doesn’t get that folks that want armed insurrections of the government basically aren’t going to “pursue lawful channels to change policy”. But, as we’ve mentioned before here, Rubio isn’t exactly a Rhodes Scholar.
As an armed militia took over federal buildings and property in Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and declared their willingness to “kill or be killed” on Saturday, one of the group’s best defenses has received little media coverage — their whiteness.
Indeed, the white skin of the armed men and women who’ve taken over the federal property serves as a powerful force field protecting them from the shoot-first, ask-questions-later style of law enforcement that permeates communities of color every day.
There must be no Rhodes Scholars in the majority of news outlets these days. However, New York Daily News does have the highly observant Shaun King.
You know and I know that if a group of heavily armed Muslim Americans took over a federal building, proclaimed they were ready to kill or be killed, and made a public announcement for other armed Muslims from around the country to join them, the National Guard, State Police and FBI would’ve already shut the whole thing down with violent force. I’d be surprised if one person survived.
The FBI has taken charge of law enforcement efforts to bring a peaceful end to the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge in rural eastern Oregon.
The agency issued a statement late Sunday saying it is “working with the Harney County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon State Police and other local and state law enforcement agencies.”
The Oregon sheriff whose county is at the heart of an anti-government call-to-arms said Sunday the group occupying a national wildlife refuge came to town under false pretenses.
Sheriff David Ward said protesters came to Harney County, in southeastern Oregon, “claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers.” In reality, he said, “these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”
In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, Ward said he was working with local and federal authorities to resolve the situation as quickly and peacefully as possible.
So, this is–as they say–a developing story. I say we just put a fence around them, a group of Marines, call it a FEMA camp and treat them like the prisoners at Guantanamo who are also enemy combatants. But, hey, that’s just me.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Oh! A little blog business! The small bill of keeping up the TypeKit font for this site is due on the 9th! I could use a few donations. You don’t have to worry about a huge amount since it’s smaller than the October bill for the site itself but any bit helps. It helps us maintain our banner.
New Year’s Reads: Things Can Only Get Better!
Posted: January 1, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: and other Bullshit, Donald Trump, lies, Myth, New Year's Eve, politics, religion, Ronald Reagan 13 Comments
I’m still recovering from whatever flu virus hit me last weekend. I do have my voice back and I’m coughing a bit less so I’m beginning to catch up with reading this and that. I stayed in bed with hot tea and a marathon of “Drunk History” while trying to figure out if the noise I was hearing last night was gunfire or fireworks. I have no idea what the mix of one to the other was. That’s one of those things that keeps me indoors on NY’s Eve because I really don’t want to be the one out there gathering the data. Most folks try not to think about about it.
One of the things that always amazes me is how vulnerable people are to wishful thinking and things easily demonstrated to be complete bullshit. I suppose I suffer the hubris of the scholar on this account. I didn’t have access to the internet in my home until 1980 but you generally could find me in whichever library housed the government documents drop. Yes, the University of Nebraska libraries had huge basements dedicated to the stuff at one time and I was a basement dweller. Now it’s all on spreadsheets on my hard drive. It really doesn’t take much to figure out what is what. However, everything experiences variation and intellect and curiosity are no different.
I guess the same thing that makes folks vulnerable to religion also makes them vulnerable to political myth. My first experience with all the ploy to keep people well-behaved and hopeful was as a child when I learned my parents were deliberately lying to me about Santa Claus for my sister’s sake. I later studied 3rd and 4th century Roman history and lost religion. It’s basically the same MO but with much better data. But the Santa episode really sunk in. I went to the basement, screamed at myself for being so stupid then wondered what else they’d been lying to me about. Well, it turned out that it was about a lot of things that I could easily find out about in my handy dandy local library’s reference section. I’ve spent my professional and personal life gleaning through data looking for truths. I hate being taken in.
We’ve all been stumped about why Donald Trump could gain ground in any national level political race. He says things that are blatantly hateful and false, yet he gains ground. Polls showing his demographics illustrate his base. It’s basically the ugly underbelly of the US that shows up in our history quite frequently. These folks love being taken in.
Donald Trump holds a dominant position in national polls in the Republican race in no small part because he is extremely strong among people on the periphery of the G.O.P. coalition.
He is strongest among Republicans who are less affluent, less educated and less likely to turn out to vote. His very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats. It’s a coalition that’s concentrated in the South, Appalachia and the industrial North, according to data provided to The Upshot by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm.
Mr. Trump’s huge advantage among these groups poses a challenge for his campaign, because it may not have the turnout operation necessary to mobilize irregular voters
The Civis estimates are based on interviews with more than 11,000 Republican-leaning respondents since August. The large sample, combined with statistical modeling techniques, presents the most detailed examination yet of the contours of Mr. Trump’s unusual coalition.
We’ve seen this set of nutcases before. It appears to be the return of the Reagan coalition. This turns my mind back to the Santa Claus story, and for that matter, any particular dead religious figure you can 
conjure up that people have turned into something not quite like the original narrative. Ronald Reagan was an affable fool. Any economist that has studied the time period and his policies will tell you a completely different, data-based narrative than most of the people taken in by him. BB sent me this link a few days ago. I’ve only been able to really digest it today.
Any of us that have intensely studied some aspect of his regime–in my case the economic data–know that the myth is no where close to the truth. These narratives always seem to serve the current group of rich, powerful, assholes. It doesn’t matter if you’re told to submit yourself to your husband or master or render unto Rome, it’s pretty much the same thing. These so-called populist heroes lead sheep to slaughter.
Ronald Reagan was not only intellectually ungifted, he was incurious and ignorant about the details of the day. It’s amazing to me that as historians go back and sift through their form of data on the ground, so little of it manages to take down the public id. The link to Salon takes you to an excerpt from “The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton” by WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG whose thesis on Reagan is summed up thusily: “No one ever entered the White House so grossily ill-informed”. This says a lot given he was followed relatively shortly by Dubya Bush who didn’t even appear to have a command of his primary language let alone nuanced policy. Remember, Dubya’s the guy that declared war on a lot of Muslim-majority countries without a real grasp of the difference between Sunni and Shia let alone the minority ones.
No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed. At presidential news conferences, especially in his first year, Ronald Reagan embarrassed himself. On one occasion, asked why he advocated putting missiles in vulnerable places, he responded, his face registering bewilderment, “I don’t know but what maybe you haven’t gotten into the area that I’m going to turn over to the secretary of defense.” Frequently, he knew nothing about events that had been headlined in the morning newspaper. In 1984, when asked a question he should have fielded easily, Reagan looked befuddled, and his wife had to step in to rescue him. “Doing everything we can,” she whispered. “Doing everything we can,” the president echoed. To be sure, his detractors sometimes exaggerated his ignorance. The publication of his radio addresses of the 1950s revealed a considerable command of facts, though in a narrow range. But nothing suggested profundity. “You could walk through Ronald Reagan’s deepest thoughts,” a California legislator said, “and not get your ankles wet.”
In all fields of public affairs—from diplomacy to the economy—the president stunned Washington policymakers by how little basic information he commanded. His mind, said the well-disposed Peggy Noonan, was “barren terrain.” Speaking of one far-ranging discussion on the MX missile, the Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, an authority on national defense, reported, “Reagan’s only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from War Games.” The president “cut ribbons and made speeches. He did these things beautifully,” Congressman Jim Wright of Texas acknowledged. “But he never knew frijoles from pralines about the substantive facts of issues.” Some thought him to be not only ignorant but, in the word of a former CIA director, “stupid.” Clark Clifford called the president an “amiable dunce,” and the usually restrained columnist David Broder wrote, “The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan’s ears is a challenging one for his aides.”
I actually was convinced that Reagan was so obviously ignorant and wrong about so many things that you could run any one against him and he’d never get a second term. I was obviously young and not jaded enough to grasp the demographic that supported him because they believed what they wanted to believe because he told them so in such a “nice” way. Now, this same group of yahoos is angry and they believe what Donald Trump tells them because they believe what they want to believe because he tells them in such an “angry” way. ‘Morning in America’ does sound an awful lot like ‘Make America Great Again’ doesn’t it? All of this is basically code for ‘Save White Privilege’ even if I don’t really benefit that much from it. As long you as you can make me feel superior to (fill in the blank), I’ll wishfully hope and then vote for you.
I try to tell myself that there’s no way that Donald Trump could ever be elected but then I would not be learning from my obviously wrong hypothesis that Ronald Reagan could ever get a second term. Reagan raised taxes. He ran up the deficit hugely. There’s the Reagan “recession” and there was Iran Contra which all of these folks conveniently never heard about or forgot when they voted for the affable buffoon. The same demographic could care less about Trump’s lies and the tremendous internet base of fact checking.
Donald Trump is the “King of Whoppers”.
But in this year’s presidential campaign, the fact checkers say one candidate has achieved truth-bending royalty.
“This is the first time we have named someone the ‘King of Whoppers,'” Eugene Kiely of FactCheck.org said.
Donald Trump earned that crown with the biggest whopper of 2015:
“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” he said in a Birmingham, Alabama, rally in November 21.
The fact checkers found evidence of just a few people celebrating. But that wasn’t the only tall Trump tale of the year.
“He’s certainly keeping us busy… It is the worst that we have seen in the 12 years we have been doing this,” Kiely said.
“You know, the president’s thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away,” Trump said at a South Carolina rally on October 19.
Then in New Hampshire, on September 30: “You know, it started off with 10,000. The other day I heard 200,000. We are going to take in 200,000 Syrians or wherever they come from,” Trump said.
“It’s just way over what the actual number is,” Kiely explains.
It’s not like this isn’t pointed out daily in places other than newspapers that none of Trump’s demographic appear to read. Bernie Sanders mentioned it just a few days ago.
“It appears that Donald Trump, a pathological liar, simply cannot control himself. He lies, lies and lies again. Today, he repeated his lie that I want to raise taxes to 90 percent. Totally untrue. And PolitiFact gave Trump’s same statement last October a ‘Pants-on-Fire’ rating.
Even Trumps Republican opponents point this out. Unfortunately, the most verbal are Kasich and Jeb who appear to be on their way out the door.
Bush talked to CNN on Wednesday and reinforced his point from the debate that Trump is “not a serious candidate.”
“I got to post up against Donald Trump,” Bush said. “I don’t think he’s a serious candidate.”
He added, “And I don’t know why others don’t feel compelled to point that out, but I did. And I think I got a chance to express my views and compare them to someone who talks a big game but really hasn’t thought it through.”
But, again, the only candidates gaining traction in the Republican field are the “know nothings”. This includes Marco Rubio who has to be as intellectually ungifted as the gipper and is taken somewhat seriously despite the stupid and despite a very shady history of deal making for shady people.
Didn’t we say all this about a gawky rogue presidential candidate named Barack Obama? Sure. But Obama had the advantage of not looking and sounding like a complete fucking idiot. Obama was on the Harvard Law Review, not the Santa Fe Community College football team. Then again, that’s not really fair to community collegians and football players: Plenty of each are smart enough to run the country. It just so happens that Rubio isn’t one of them.
For proof, simply look to Rubio’s campaign message, a bizarre simulacrum of “hope and change” focus-grouped by Red Stripe-swilling blue blazers who are slightly scared of hope and change because they’ve witnessed its power but never fully understood its appeal, like those crouched simians sizing up the galactic monolith in 2001.
This scares me. It should scare you. 
I will also admit that I didn’t think Obama was going to be as good of a President as he has turned out to be. I really thought he’d continue to let the Republicans play him like a violin, but he learned, and learned well. His last few years defy the lame duck theory.
So, I’m doing a mea culpa on the two failed hypotheses today just because I do not want to be lulled into a third one. We clearly have one great candidate that is experienced, flawed, and capable. Then, we have a set of figures that look religiously mythical, are supported by people who have a lot to gain from populist ignorance, and appear to be impossibly unqualified for making national policy on all levels. They may have one area upon which they are knowledgeable but most have absolutely nothing but being able to say blatantly wrong things because they have no clue how wrong they actually are.
Work in the right campaigns and vote in 2016. Don’t make me write another mea culpa in 2017. Please.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And, have a great NEW YEAR!!! I love you all!!!
Thirty years ago from 1985 and deep from Reagan d0o d0o land.
Monday Afternoon Ledes
Posted: December 28, 2015 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Flint MIchigan lead poisoning, Meadowlark Lemon, Ramadi, Tamir Rice shooting, Texas weather 8 Comments
The weather here has finally done me in. We set a record high of 82 and the humidity has been gruesome! Now, it’s turned chilly! I’ve got a flu like you wouldn’t believe so I’m going to just get us caught up on some of the headlines because they’re actually quite a few today. Hopefully, this will go away because the last two days have kept me in bed with hot tea and meds constantly coughing, sneezing and shivering.
Americans again name Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama the woman and man living anywhere in the world they admire most. Both win by wide margins over the next-closest finishers, Malala Yousafzai for women and Pope Francis and Donald Trump for men.
You may want to check out her history as a Civil Rights worker. It’s interesting and important.
One of the most interesting holiday surprises was the revelation by Amy Chozick in The New York Times about Hillary Rodham, Covert Operative.
Playing down her flat Chicago accent, she told the school’s guidance counselor that her husband had just taken a job in Dothan, that they were a churchgoing family and that they were looking for a school for their son. The future Mrs. Clinton, then a 24-year-old law student, was working for Marian Wright Edelman, the civil rights activist and prominent advocate for children. Mrs. Edelman had sent her to Alabama to help prove that the Nixon administration was not enforcing the legal ban on granting tax-exempt status to so-called segregation academies, the estimated 200 private academies that sprang up in the South to cater to white families after a 1969 Supreme Court decision forced public schools to integrate. Her mission was simple: Establish whether the Dothan school was discriminating based on race.
Make no mistake. Even in 1972, this took considerable guts. The segregated academies were the outward sign of the vicious backlash against the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement that only would intensify over the following decade as the Republican party, and the conservative movement that would come to be its essential life-force, discovered that, in many important ways,the whole country was Southern. The backlash was even more virulent at the local level. If Undercover Hillz blew her cover, very bad things could have happened to her.
After filing a FOIA request, a Virginia Tech professor recently discovered Michigan state officials knew the city of Flint’s water supply was giving children lead poisoning while falsely assuring residents that the water was safe. Although the government had been aware of the increased levels of lead poisoning since July, they continued to lie to the public until a Flint pediatrician published a study in September that found lead exposure in children had doubled citywide and nearly tripled in high-risk areas.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty announced in a press conference Monday that the Cleveland police officers who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year will not face charges. Surveillance video captured officer Timothy Loehmann shooting Rice, who was carrying a toy gun, almost immediately after he and his partner, Frank Garmback, arrived at a public park. The officers believed the boy was armed with a real gun.
Ben Carson may be the next republican to bail on the presidential primary process. I’ve always felt that he was in it to get on the Right Wing Talk and book circuit, but that’s just one woman’s opinion.
Two days before Christmas, with his presidential campaign fading fast, Ben Carson sought to take control at his manse in the countryside west of Baltimore.
A video crew was in the front living room preparing to film a campaign ad. A photo shoot was being prepped in the basement. The Associated Press had come calling, and more members of the media would show up after The Washington Post had its turn. In a matter of hours, Carson’s children and grandchildren were expected to arrive for the holiday.
Amid all that commotion stood Carson, both completely surrounded and almost entirely alone — the sole staffer on hand was a financial adviser, and the two spoke only glancingly.
Unless something in his campaign changed fast, Carson was in danger of going the way of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain — fad candidates who wilted before a single vote had been cast. This was the day he had marked to stop the fade.
The Atlantic has a story on the disappearing Republican presidential candidates.
Hey, remember Scott Walker? That corn-fed, Kohls-shopping, union-busting, unintimidated governor of a blue state who had a real shot at next July’s nominating convention?
He’s probably sitting in his Madison, Wisconsin, office right now reading the same stories about Donald Trump that you are.
Walker was one of several casualties in the 2015 leg of the presidential-primary contest, a brutal stretch that saw candidates who were expected to make their mark gone from the race or gasping for air. As Trumpmentum and Clintoninevitability rage on, some contenders who looked like they’d fill a void in the field haven’t seen much success, while others haven’t lived up to their early, favorable reviews.
The charismatic basketball player Meadowlark Lemon has died. The Harlem Globetrotter’s were a big fixture in my childhood and he was my favorite. He was 83 years young.
George “Meadowlark” Lemon, the basketball star who entertained millions of fans around the world with his antics as a longtime member of the Harlem Globetrotters, died Sunday in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 83.
Lemon played 24 seasons and by his own estimate more than 16,000 games with the Globetrotters, the touring exhibition basketball team known for its slick ball-handling, practical jokes, red-white-and-blue uniforms and multiyear winning streaks against overmatched opponents.
He also was one of a handful of Globetrotters whose fame transcended sports, especially among children during the team’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Lemon was immortalized in a Harlem Globetrotters cartoon series and appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” episodes of “Scooby Doo” and many national TV commercials.
Ramadi has been liberated from Daesh (ISIL) by the Iraqi army but the fight isn’t over. No surprises there.
Iraqi forces claimed victory over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Ramadi as clearing operations were under way to flush out the armed group’s remaining fighters in the key city.
“Yes, the city of Ramadi has been liberated,” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said in a televised statement on Monday, a day after the army took control of the key government compound in Ramadi’s Al Huz neighbourhood.
“The Iraqi counterterrorism forces have raised the Iraqi flag over the government complex in Anbar,” Rasool added, saying the fighting will continue until the whole city is liberated.
Bet Texas doesn’t want to secede today. Horrible tornadoes have wrecked havoc on the state. Bet they’ll be happy to see FEMA for the New Year.
At least 19 people were killed in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama between Wednesday and Saturday in wicked weather that made the Christmas holiday hellish for many, according to The Associated Press.
Over the weekend, tornadoes in Texas claimed another 11 lives, and floods that washed over roadways and into homes led to 13 deaths in Missouri and Illinois.
At least 43 people have been killed in a five-day span. And the dangerous weather is not over yet.
I totally have to go crawl back into bed with my hot tea and kleenix box. So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Full Cold Moon Reads
Posted: December 25, 2015 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Christmas Eve Bonfires, Full Cold Moon, Lutcher Louisiana 6 Comments
2015 continues to wind down and it can’t happen soon enough for me!
There’s a “Full Cold Moon” today which is an infrequent event. This is when a full moon happens on the day designated for Christmas. We also have an unearthly visitor whizzing by us in the form of a space rock. The pictures for today are from the Lutcher Bonfires made to signal a path into the bayou for Père Noël. I’m going to give you a little background on both since it’s probably a day that you’d prefer to avoid reality for awhile, like me.
Most parts of the U.S. won’t see a white Christmas this year, but they will see a bright one, as a full moon coincides with the holiday for the first time in 38 years.
The final full moon of the year each December is known as the Full Cold Moon, and it hasn’t fallen on Christmas since 1977. Astronomers say it won’t happen again until 2034.
If you want to catch a glimpse, NASA says the moon will reach its peak at 6:11 a.m. EST on Christmas morning.
Moonrise and moonset times vary slightly depending on your location, even within time zones. In New York, the moon rises at 4:28 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve and sets at 7:03 a.m. EST Christmas Day, while the times are a few minutes earlier in Boston to the northeast, and about 20 minutes later in Atlanta to the southwest. Times are similar in other cities across the country, but if you want to be precise about it, you can look up the moonrise and moonset times for your city here.
If clouds interfere with your view, the Slooh Community Observatory is hosting a free webcast beginning at 7 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve. As a bonus, their telescopes will also be tracking Comet Catalina, a recently discovered comet that should be visible for the next few weeks. You can watch the webcast here until midnight EST.
It has been an unusually busy holiday for stargazers, with an asteroid buzzing by Earth this morning. The space rock, about 1.24 miles wide, stayed a safe distance away, passing about 6.6 million miles from our planet.
Full Cold Moons had special meaning to Native Americans long before we brought our European myths and ways to North America. As usual, the solstice is really the reason for the entire season every where!
In Native American cultures which tracked the calendar by the Moons, December’s Full Moon was known as the Full Cold Moon. It is the month when the winter cold fastens its grip and the nights become long and dark.
This full Moon is also called the Long Nights Moon by some Native American tribes because it’s near the winter solstice—the night with the least amount of daylight.
So, the tradition of the Lutcher Bonfires on the Mississippi River Levees is an interesting and fun one. The traditional ones are teepee shaped. They are a Cajun tradition here in Louisiana for Christmas Eve. They happen in St. James Parish which we call one of the River Parishes down here.
Many of the bonfires are built in the traditional “teepee” style with a center pole that anchors the structure. Others come in different shapes and color schemes.
“There’s one constructed in the form of a fish with scales, one in the form of an old sailboat with oars,” Keller said. “Then some of the more traditional ones are painted different colors: red white and blue, black and gold, purple and gold.”
There’s some history involved with the tradition, of course. They are actually based on Celtic traditions where Druids would conduct ceremonies to honor the Sun. The idea was to ensure that the days would get longer after the Winter Solstice.
The area of Louisiana now known as the River Parishes (St. James, St. John and St. Charles) was settled in the early 1700’s by the Old World French and Germans. These early colonists brought with them the knowledge of both summer and winter bonfire customs and traditions which they had known in their native lands. By sharing this knowledge with their many descendants, they provided the inspiration for a practice which has evolved into one giant celebration—the present-day Christmas Eve levee bonfires!
Of necessity, survival and the establishment of a new colony were the principal concerns of the French and Germans who first settled along the lover Mississippi River. These early colonists undoubtedly built a few celebration fires, but early history of the area has failed to record any information about this. As a result, as the bonfire custom increased in recent generations, so has speculation about the origin and development of tradition.
For example, one of the more recent and increasingly popular explanations is that the bonfires were a “Cajun tradition”, first used to light the way for “Papa Noel”, the Cajun version of Santa Claus. This charming version, although improbable, has been depicted annually in front of a Paulina, LA business establishment where a levee scene shows “Papa Noel” with his pirogue drawn by alligators named Gaston, Ninette, “Te-Boy”, Celeste, Suzette, etc.
Some Acadian exiles from Nova Scotia settled in St. James Parish as early as 1765, with many more arriving in the 1780’s, but “Papa Noel” was not yet known to them. It was on New Year’s Eve that the little French children received their gifts.
In South Louisiana of old, Christmas was a strictly religious observance, and it was New Year’s Eve that was marked by the exchange of gifts and the “reveille” to see the old year out and to greet the new year. In Cabanocey: The History, Customs and Folklore of St. James Parish, published in 1957, the author, Lillian Bourgeois, tells of this custom of celebrating New Year’s Eve with a gathering of family and friends who enjoyed a gumbo supper, eggnog and the burning of huge cone-shaped bonfires on the batture, the land area between the base of the levee and the water’s edge. With the passage of time, these activities gradually moved to Christmas Eve.
Some have also offered the theory that the bonfires served as navigational signals to guide ships along the river, or were used to light the way for the faithful to attend Midnight Mass.
Through 1865 letters still in existence, it has been established that the summer feast of St. John the Baptist was then celebrated in neighboring St. John Parish (known as the Second German Coast) with the lighting of fires and the homecoming of relatives who lived away.
A recently discovered 1871 picture shows members of the Lacoul and de Lobel Mahy families gathered around two bonfires built on the levee in front of Laura Plantation in West St. James Parish. The men pictured are wearing coats and the women are wearing hats, but the time of the year is not specified.
In 1989, I participated in a local study on the development of Christmas Eve bonfires in the River Parishes. Many older residents or their descendants were interviewed to learn their knowledge of the history and traditions of the custom.
In a personal interview with H. D’Aquin Bourgeois, son of George Bourgeois, a St. James Parish native born in 1855, I learned that the elder Mr. Bourgeois, an enterprising merchant, had built Christmas Eve levee bonfires in front of his New Camellia Plantation store as early as 1884. Throughout the year, he collected wooden shipping crates, some as large as 3’x5’, in which merchandise for his store had been shipped. These crates, along with old lumber, were used to construct a Christmas Eve bonfire for the pleasure of local residents and the children of his store patrons. The blazing bonfire, the sound of exploding fireworks provided by the store owner, and the gleeful sounds of the children attracted riverboat crews who interrupted their travel to join in the celebration. Bonfires at this location continued until 1930, and in later years grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original builder resumed bonfire construction at the same site.
Another 1989 interview with Mrs. Hilda Gabb Cambre, a St. James native born in 1901, revealed that she had known Christmas Eve yard bonfires during childhood days spent on her grandfather’s Magnolia Plantation in West St. James Parish. The bonfires, built with any type wood available, were part of a festive occasion where lanterns were placed in the trees and eggnog was served to guests. In later Christmas seasons, kerosene-soaked cotton balls were lit and rolled down the levee. (Could this be a counterpart of the German wheel-rolling down the hillside?)
You can read more about the history of the bonfires and the memories of the River Parish Elders at the link I provided. The one really wonderful thing about Louisiana is its unique heritage that is directly 
attributable to its French roots as well as the many cultures that eventually settled here or were brought here through the institution of slavery. The bonfires went off without a hitch last night even though it’s near 80 here, foggy and quite drizzly. The foghorns were blaring on the Mississippi River last night. The kathouse is just a few blocks away from it and the Poland Avenue Wharf. It’s home to the best seat to see the New Year’s fireworks too!! So happy to be ending the year and looking to the start of the Carnival Season on 12th night!!
I do have a bit of sad/bad news. A morning fire has damaged the Clinton Birthplace in Hope Arkansas. The Birthplaces of US Presidents are generally historic sites and are used to illustrate the various backgrounds and childhoods of our premier elected leaders. This is a site maintained by the National Park Service. Arson is suspected.
Hope officials suspect arson in a fire that broke out about 3:20 a.m. today at the house in Hope where Bill Clinton spent the first four years of his life. It is now a historic site maintained by the National Park Service.
Damage was reported to the back wall on the east side of the house and the fire spread to the second floor. Smoke and water damage was reported inside. Officials didn’t specify what evidence led them to believe the fire was set. But a report by KSLA also said graffiti was found on the property.
So, I’ll make this short today since I’m sure you’re all using the time off today happily or productively! Whatever way you spend your day, please have a great one and remember that you always have friends that love you completely here at Sky Dancing!!!
What’s on your mind today?
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