Finally Friday Reads: Fight like our democracy Depends on It!
Posted: May 24, 2024 Filed under: Trump Media Coverage | Tags: 50 years ago, @repeat1968, John Buss, Memorial Day, Pew Research, Trump's Criminal Mind, Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’ 6 Comments
“Rump Rally in New York,” John Buss, @repeat1968
Bright Blessings on Memorial Day Weekend!
It’s a great time to acknowledge and understand what all the soldiers who died fighting for the U.S. were doing for our country and its form of government. I remember this weekend as the one we spent in Kansas and Missouri, picnicking in cemeteries in very small towns and trimming the peony bushes around the graves of my relatives who had died fighting for the Union and other wars. I also remember a recent history where a President of the United States said one of the most shameful things I’ve ever heard. “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’ The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic. We’ve had some questionable reasons for some of the wars our soldiers have been asked to fight, but we should never question their commitment to serving our country.
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Fifty years ago, I was graduating from high school. I was worried about my cousin John, who served in-country during the Vietnam War. He didn’t die in battle, but the drug habit he brought back with him took him early in his life. I was horrified by the entire Watergate Scandal and the resignation of Spiro Agnew, which by this time was winding down after extensive hearings and heading toward Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974. You know where we stand today, I don’t stop being horrified for a minute. The media were all over Nixon. Where are they now?
This is from The Daily Beast about three weeks ago. “Irked Nancy Pelosi Suggests MSNBC Anchor Katy Tur Is a Trump ‘Apologist.’ “That may be your role, but it ain’t mine,” the former House Speaker said. ” We probably missed it because none of us around here watch her.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared to criticize MSNBC anchor Katy Tur during a discussion Monday about job losses during the Trump administration by suggesting she was an “apologist” for the former president for mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic—a charge which Tur promptly denied.
On Katy Tur Reports, the former House Speaker began by stating that Trump hasn’t shown that he “ever valued or did anything to support a democracy.”
“I have sympathy and respect for everybody who votes. I’m just glad people vote. I know some of them will always reject those of us who might look different to them in leadership or the rest, and that’s that,” Pelosi then said.
“But there are those who have real legitimate concerns about immigration, globalization, innovation, and what that means for their job and their family’s future, and we have to address those concerns, and Joe Biden is doing that. [He] created 9 million jobs in his term in office,” Pelosi went on.
It wasn’t immediately clear where Pelosi obtained that number, but according to FactCheck.org 14 million jobs were added from when Biden took office through last December.
Pelosi then claimed that Trump “has the worst record job loss of any president.” Moments later, Tur interjected: “There was a global pandemic.”
Pelosi, who appeared surprised by the comment, took a moment before continuing on. “He had the worst record of any president. We’ve had other concerns in our country. If you want to be an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role, but it ain’t mine.”
Tur rejected that depiction.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I read BB’s Wednesday post about the absolute ignorance of the economy and other things shown by 3/5 of likely voters in a Harris poll. The Guardian article she cited showed these same people think the “U.S. economy is in a recession, and the majority blame the Biden Administration.” I’d like to ask them if the country is in such bad shape, why this? “Nearly 44 million Americans to travel for Memorial Day weekend. AAA forecasts a near-record travel weekend over the Memorial Day holiday period that is above pre-pandemic numbers.” This is from Fox Weather who appears to not get their news from Fox News. This would not happen if prices were too high, people were out of work, gas prices were outrageous, and everyone squeezed every penny just to get by. You can trust me on this; I’m an economist with a terminal degree and a bad case of teaching students to recognize what’s happening in the economy.
How can people be so stupid, and why aren’t they hearing about reality from somewhere? Could it be someone like Katy Tur? Could it be Fox News? Could it be Russian Trolls on X? I doubt it’s the New York Times because these folks can’t be actually reading newspapers, even those with a bad case of both-siderisms.
This is from The Daily Beast today. Read and wonder. “Media Matters Lays Off a Dozen Staffers Amid Elon Musk Lawsuit. The liberal media watchdog let go of a number of veteran researchers and writers on Thursday as it faces a number of legal threats from Musk and Republicans.” Justin Baragona has the lede. Do you know what your state’s attorney general is up to?
Months after edgelord billionaire Elon Musk launched a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog announced that it was laying off a dozen staffers on Thursday to remain “sustainable” amid a “legal assault on multiple fronts.”
Besides Musk’s defamation complaint, which was launched by the X owner in November after Media Matters reported his social media site placed ads next to pro-Nazi content, the outlet has also been hit with lawsuits and probes from Republican attorneys general.
“We’re confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement.
“Nobody does what Media Matters does,” he added. “So, we’re taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead.”
Laid-off staffers, some of whom have been at the left-leaning nonprofit for years, took to social media on Thursday morning to announce they were let go. Some even pointed the finger directly at Musk for causing them to lose their jobs.
“Bad News: I’ve been laid off from @mmfa, along with a dozen colleagues,” Kat Abughazaleh, who was recently featured in The New Republic’s list of political influencers to watch in 2024, tweeted. “There’s a reason far-right billionaires attack Media Matters with armies of lawyers: They know how effective our work is, and it terrifies them (him).”
Other researchers and writers who were laid off on Thursday included Brendan Karet, Bobby Lewis, Alex Paterson, Ethan Collier and Carly Evans, among others. “[J]ournalism milestone achieved (got laid off,” Lewis snarked online after he was let go.
The layoffs at Media Matters come as digital and legacy media outlets across the country are facing sweeping cuts and even extinction amid dwindling advertising revenues and dropping online traffic. In just the last few months, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vice Media, CBS News and others have slashed thousands of jobs while outlets like The Messenger have shuttered completely.
Meanwhile… at the Manhattan Criminal Court building. Birdbrain Nikki Haley makes the pilgrimage.” John Buss, @repeat1968
The Pew Research Center is reporting these new findings. “Americans have mixed views about how the news media cover Biden’s, Trump’s ages.”
It’s no surprise, then, that the ages of the candidates have been a major topic of conversation in news coverage of the 2024 presidential election. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans have mixed feelings about the way news organizations are handling the issue for each candidate, with views sharply divided by political party.
Overall, similar shares of U.S. adults believe news organizations are giving too much attention (32%) or too little attention (29%) to Biden’s age. An additional 38% think the media cover Biden’s age about the right amount.
By comparison, Americans are less likely to say the news media are overemphasizing Trump’s age (19%) and more likely to think that news organizations give it about the right amount of attention (49%).
The same survey found that a larger share of American voters express confidence that Trump has the physical and mental fitness needed to be president than say the same about Biden.
Americans’ opinions on news coverage are split along party lines. Each party’s supporters tend to say that the opposing candidate’s age is getting too little attention.
So, should their ages be getting this much focus? What about both physical and mental fitness? How does the media decide what to cover on these two candidates? This is a fascinating article from AlJazeera from last month. This Opinion article is by Waleed Salem. “Trump and the US media’s conflict of interest. “This election year, each story about Donald Trump must first pass the Lonely Planet test.”
On the last day of the Republican National Convention in July 2016, which nominated Donald Trump as the GOP’s candidate for the presidential election, CNN’s Anderson Cooper led a panel of pundits commenting on the event. Among them was cotton-haired Jeffrey Lord, who was eager to report on a call he had had with Trump.
“He has a message for you, Anderson, that he is not pleased. He feels we are not accurately representing this convention,” Lord said on air. “He [asked] me to say that your ratings, our ratings at CNN, are up here because of his presence in the convention,” he added.
“There is no doubt about Donald Trump’s impact on ratings,” Cooper responded, amiably.
Trump’s assertion was not inaccurate. The year he first ran for election was the most profitable in CNN’s history. Interest in the new, unorthodox candidate – whether it was fascination, alarm, or glee – boosted profits for media outlets left and right. Online subscriptions soared for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Fox News’s ratings reached new highs.
The boost continued throughout the Trump presidency but wore off as soon as he left office.
The real estate mogul has now returned to the centre of American politics as the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party after Nikki Hailey dropped out of the race.
The possibility of another Trump term has led to a bout of public acknowledgements among media professionals that while the former president threatens democracy with his incessant falsehoods and norm-busting practices, he is actually good for business.
“In crude material terms,” The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote in January, “Donald Trump’s presidency benefited the media, with subscriptions, ratings and clicks all soaring.”
Acknowledgement is important, but stopping at that without changing conduct seems like a shrug of resignation, a self-serving free pass for coverage and business as usual to continue. Instead of soul-searching, we are getting disclaimers.
The words that even the thoughtful voices seem reluctant to use are “conflict of interest”. It is clear that media outlets stand to benefit from their coverage of Trump. That is bad for journalism and, by extension, for democracy.
It’s interesting to read how the world’s media has been covering the Trump Trials and think about what we see and read in ours. This is from the BBC. “What the world’s media make of Trump going on trial.” BBC is basically monitoring the coverage worldwide. Here are a few examples.
‘SleepyDon’ trial presents US with unprecedented problems – China
By Tom Lam, BBC Monitoring China specialist
Chinese media have covered Mr Trump’s trial but it hasn’t featured as prominently on the news agenda as one might expect. Still, it offered the media another opportunity to show what’s seen as the chaos and polarisation of US politics.
English-language reporting focused on facts of the case. State news agency Xinhua’s English-language edition highlighted that Donald Trump was the first former president to stand a criminal trial. It also quoted the accused as describing the trial as “political persecution” and saying the country was “failing”. China Daily, the state-run English-language newspaper, focused on jury selection, during which more than 50 of the 96 first potential jurors were excused after saying that they could not be fair.
Domestic-facing state-affiliated outlet The Paper provided infographics and timelines of the trial, and cited US surveys as showing polarised views on it among US voters. It also zoomed in on conflicting reports about the possible impact on the general election in November.
State-owned China News Service (CNS) talked about “unprecedented problems” facing the US judicial system if Mr Trump were to win in November but also be convicted.
Nationalist daily Global Times cited high interest rates, inflation and the crisis in the Middle East as showcasing Mr Trump’s notion that the world had spun out of control under the Biden administration.
But the state-run tabloid did not spare the Republican either. It provided a colourful report on 16 April focusing on reports that he had fallen asleep in court, posting a meme ridiculing him as “#SleepyDon”.
It seems Congressional Republicans are also spouting Chinese Propaganda. Here’s from the monitor of Latin America.
‘Mesmerised and alarmed’ – Latin America
By Pascal Fletcher, BBC Monitoring Latin America specialist, Miami
From Mexico and Cuba to Argentina, media coverage reflected the keen interest with which political events in the US are followed south of the border. Multiple stories on the Trump trial emphasised its “historical” nature.
Most of the reports made a point of publishing striking photos of a stern-looking Trump seated in what outlets highlighted was the “accused’s bench” – this was likely to be viewed as righteous justice by many of his critics in Latin America.
The mere possibility of another Trump presidency is both mesmerising and potentially alarming for many Latin American leaders, governments and societies that vividly recall his scathing anti-migrant comments and what they saw as barely-concealed scorn for struggling developing countries during his previous term in the White House.
Argentina-based Latin American news website Infobae published an extensive story on the “Colombian judge that will have the last word in the trial against Donald Trump”, noting that Judge Juan Merchan had “not flinched in decreeing a gag order against Trump”.
Some of the Latin American reports did slip into commentary, such as Mexican left-wing daily La Jornada which said that Mr Trump was “accused not of being a saviour and defender of his country as he says, but of trying to cover up payments to a porn star which sought to silence an illicit sexual encounter”.
Top Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo adopted a clearly anti-Trump position in a 16 April editorial entitled “Trump and the unthinkable” which posed questions about a scenario in which he was jailed and then pardoned himself as president. It urged American voters to avert that scenario at the ballot box.
You can also read the monitors’ findings from Russia and various European countries.
So, my best intentions were to write about the severe issues in the last Supreme Court-issued Decision where we found out that the 6 Republican appointees are not even serious about hiding their political agenda or abusing their positions, but you know me and my tight relationship with rabbit-holes.
I hope you all have a peaceful long weekend. But after that, fight like our democracy depends on it! Respect and Remember those who died doing just that.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Memorial Day Reads
Posted: May 29, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Graveyard Picnics, Memorial Day, Russians want Lindsey Graham arrested, The Debt Ceiling Deficit Deal 2023 13 Comments
A small group picnics on ledger-style tombstones in Historic St. Luke’s Ancient Cemetery. The photo is not dated but is believed to have been taken prior to St. Luke’s 1957 Pilgrimage Service. COURTESY HISTORIC ST. LUKE’S
Good day and I hope your Holiday weekend is peaceful, Sky Dancers!
This day reminds me of my family’s picnics in small-town Missouri and Kansas graveyards, where we would clean up the family plots. I don’t even remember where they are, although I could dig my scrapbooks up if I had a ladder to get up there. We paid particular attention to the Civil War Veterans. Many had their own good size monuments. I don’t think anyone does this anymore, but I remember it clearly. “Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries. For a time, eating and relaxing among the dead was a national pastime.”
Now I would just like to do it to remind the NeoConfederates they freaking lost.
It appears this new breed of them has also lost the debt ceiling deal. I just hope they vote for it. This is from the Washington Post‘s Catherine Rampell. “With this debt limit deal, Congress has beclowned itself.” Sure, why not send in the clowns?
With apologies to Peggy Lee: Is that all there is?
Late Saturday night, the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced broad outlines of a deal to resolve the debt limit standoff. Their agreement would suspend the debt ceiling through 2025 — which means, hopefully, taking the threat of default and ensuing global financial crisis off the table at least untilafter the next presidential election.
In exchange, Congress would expand spending on defense and veterans’ programs; leave Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax rates untouched; keep most other domestic spending roughly flat; trim funding for the Internal Revenue Service; modestly amend the permitting process for energy projects; and tweak the existing work requirements in the food-stamp program.
We’re still waiting on details, of course. But from what we know so far, this much-ballyhooed “deal” doesn’t seem terribly different from whatever budget agreement would have materialized anyway later this year, during the usual annual appropriations process, under divided government. To President Biden’s credit, the most objectionable ransoms that Republicans had been demanding are all gone. For example, there are no longer sharp cuts to safety-net programs, nor measures to effectively block all agency regulations nor new work requirements for Medicaid.
Arlington Cemetery. Illustration: The Library of Congress
This is from Dean Obeidallah writing at his substack The Dean’s Report: The Debt ceiling deal was a big WIN for Biden—and a big LOSS for Trump and MAGA. MAGA is furious with the deal.”
Check out the deal Biden got. For starters and very importantly, it raises the debt ceiling for two years—not one as the GOP wanted. That means during the 2024 presidential election the House GOP can neither hold our economy hostage in exchange for massive cuts—nor cause a default that would be horrific for our economy but could be perceived as good for the 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
In addition, the budget cuts agreed–to per a NY Times analysis Sunday–amount to only “a fraction of the cuts Republicans originally sought.” In addition, Biden’s student loan relief program and climate change policies all remain intact. The deal also meets the requests in Biden’s budget to increase spending for the military and veterans affairs in line with inflation. However, the deal will include increasing work requirements—temporarily—as demanded by the GOP for certain federal programs but at the same time it expands food stamp benefits for veterans and the homeless.
The reality is that this deal—if approved—was much more than just about raising the debt ceiling. Like many of us, I believed—as I wrote last week–that President Biden should invoke the untested, yet legally plausible approach of invoking Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to authorize the Treasury to pay bills above the debt limit. (The history behind that post-Civil War Amendment makes using it today against the same GOP responsible for the Jan 6 attack was especially fitting.)
But it became clear late last week from President Biden that these negotiations were more focused on reaching a broader budget deal. As the President stated Thursday afternoon: “I want to be clear that the negotiations were happening with Speaker McCarthy is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not about default.” He added, “It’s about competing visions for America. Speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order.”
If you want a good smile this morning, try this headline from CBS News. “Russia issues arrest warrant for Sen. Lindsey Graham.” Well alright then.
Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following his comments related to the fighting in Ukraine.
In an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that was released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, noted that “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”
While Graham appeared to have made the remarks in different parts of the conversation, the short video by Ukraine’s presidential office put them next to each other, causing outrage in Russia.
Later, Zelenskyy’s office issued video of Graham’s actual remarks showing the shorter version had been edited. The Reuters news agency made the video available.
I’m keeping it short today because I’ve been sick the last few days and the fever finally broke last night but I’m still exhausted. Hope you’re enjoying the day!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
This definitely is an open thread.
Memorial Day: A Day to Remember those who fell in Battle for our Country
Posted: May 31, 2021 Filed under: 2021 Insurrection, open thread | Tags: Decoration Day, Memorial Day, Oath Keepers Indictments 8 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Today, we remember and pay tribute to those who died in battle. This is a tradition started by freed slaves after the Civil War. It’s had some controversy because there were and still are dead-enders on the confederate side of history. This year has been filled with examples where we have been treated with an obvious need of history being rewritten or forgotten or replaced with lies.
We lost Capitol Police officers defending the halls and grounds of Congress this year. This adds to our already bloody, war-filled history. Just this last week we saw the Republicans vote to deny and continue to try to rewrite history. Republican officials are trying to rewrite history and the sacred terms of democracy in every red state in the country. This term Louisiana was treated to a diatribe by the Representative who was serving as the head of the education committee. He insisted that there were good things about slavery as he was attempting to ensure critical race theory couldn’t be taught in classes across the state. This reminds me of Mississippi and its adherence to “the confederate memorial day”. The state refused to acknowledge the federal holiday right into this century.
However, this kind of thing remains front in my mind while I honor those fallen Capitol Police officers as part of our war dead.
Fortunately, and I believe only for the moment, this battle has gone to our courts. Truthtelling Republicans believe it likely to happen again. This is from VOX: A bipartisan January 6 commission is probably dead. Democrats have a backup plan. A House committee could be less vulnerable to GOP obstruction.” Will have any chance to learn more about the insurrection?
Such a committee would differ from the proposed bipartisan commission in several key ways, but it could still take steps to ensure accountability for those involved in the insurrection. Notably, a select committee would be composed of members of Congress rather than outside experts, and the subpoena power would function differently — but, crucially, it could also be created with only a simple majority vote in the House.
At the same time, a select committee could cast an inescapable partisan shadow over the investigation — and the failure of the independent commission bill underscores the alarming depths of Republican fealty to the Big Lie.
Several Democratic members of the House have publicly voiced their support for the backup plan, which follows the defeat on Friday of the bipartisan commission bill in a 54-35 vote. The bill would have needed 60 votes to bypass the controversial Senate filibuster.
For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hasn’t publicly declared her next move. But in a statement released after Senate Republicans successfully filibustered the bipartisan commission bill on Friday, Pelosi pledged that “Democrats will proceed to find the truth.”
“Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans’ denial of the truth of the January 6th insurrection brings shame to the Senate,” she said. “Republicans’ cowardice in rejecting the truth of that dark day makes our Capitol and our country less safe.”
So, let’s check this headline out from HuffPo: “Trump’s Ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Calls For Myanmar-Type Coup In U.S.“It should happen,” Flynn declared of the violent, deadly military coup at a wild QAnon conference in Dallas for “patriots.”
Avowed QAnon disciple and confessed felon retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has called for a Myanmar-like military coup in America.
“It should happen,” Donald Trump’s former national security adviser said in an astonishing declaration at a QAnon conference Sunday.
Myanmar’s military violently seized control of the country from its civilian government in late January, detained democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and top party members, and killed more than 700 protesters as of early this month. The military justified its action by claiming unproven “election fraud.”
Flynn presented his dark vision of a military coup and dictatorship in the U.S. in response to a question from the audience at the conference.
″I wanna know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?” an unidentified member of the audience asked Flynn, though he pronounced the nation as “Minnimar.”
“No reason,” Flynn responded to wild screams of approval. “It should happen.”
This should give us all pause. It also means the best way of remembering and honoring our war dead is to ensure our folks in uniform do not have to face another group of insurrectionists. Everyone needs to call out the “Big Lie” including republicans. Everyone needs to ensure Liberty and Justice is for all including Republicans. Everyone needs to fight to protect the myriad of civil rights protected by the right to privacy to include Republicans.
Today is a good day to consider what duties we all have as citizens as well as remembering those who died to fight for them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
I actually have this sheet music as well as the 78. My grandfather was in charge of the War Bond programs for the Kansas City Federal Reserve District so we also have the same for “Any Bonds Today?” which was popular during World War 2. Today was the day my family picnicked in some very small cemeteries in some very small towns in Kansas and Missouri and cleaned the family plots and memorials. We took Decoration Day seriously having had family serve in every war since the Revolutionary War and all of them on the right side of the Civil War itself. We have a lot to be thankful for to include those freed slaves who started the entire day of memory.
Memorial Day Reads
Posted: May 27, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Decoration Day, Memorial Day 27 Comments
Today is Memorial Day Holiday where we remember those who died in service to our country during a time of War. Memorial Day began as Decoration Day when families and survivors of Civil War Dead took time to picnic and decorate their family cemeteries with special attention to those who fell in battle. It is thought to have been originated by slaves directly after the Civil War to celebrate emancipation and to remember those who had died fighting for it.
It’s the day when I remember learning that states like Mississippi still refuse to fully honor its intent. That is one of the reasons why I’ve been paying close attention to the goings on today and wondering why it is that the current Potted Plant in the White House is always out of the country instead of laying wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown solider which tends to be what actual Presidents do instead of searching for reasons for more ways to get the members of our Armed Forces killed in action.
The veterans’ group known as the Grand Army of the Republic issued the call to honor those who had made the ultimate sacrifice in the recently concluded Civil War, “Let us at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flower of Spring time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor” and pledge to assist their widows and orphans. Since it came from the GAR, a disciplined organization of Union veterans with many local posts, the suggestion for May 30, 1868 was widely observed.
This ancient practice of floral decoration of burial places seemed to take hold spontaneously as the Civil War battlefields and prison camps yielded their massive casualties in many areas of the United States. Communities in Carbondale, Illinois, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, Columbus, Mississippi, Columbus, Georgia, Belle Isle in Richmond, Virginia, and Waterloo, New York all make legitimate claims to have begun the tradition a few years before 1868. We don’t attempt to weigh the various claims of origin here, but common in many of the early observances was the role of women in taking the initiative, gathering the flowers, and honoring both the Confederate and Federal war dead in their graveside tributes. Most recent research by Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware credibly trace the holiday’s origins to the “Confederate Memorial Day” observed in Columbus, Georgia beginning in April 1866. It is a suitable practice, the New York Telegram remarked in April 1869, “though it did originate in the South during the late war, and is one of the few of the rebel ideas that engrafted itself upon our blunted affections.”
The reporters present at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that day in May 1868 reminded us that the graves occupied the grounds of Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s manor. Several Union generals attended to hear one of their own, future President James A. Garfield, give the featured address. Ulysses Grant was there with his daughter, the newspapers noted, but, in keeping with the avoidance of partisanship, no mention was made that he had been nominated for president some ten days earlier. Unity was stressed, as the New York Tribune stated, “so Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, joined hand and hand [sic] above the mounds, and laid sweet offerings upon a common altar. All over the land from Maine to Florida, tears and flowers fell on the graves of heroes and martyrs.”
Meanwhile, we get this kind of leadership on Memorial Day Weekend. I’m old enough to remember over 54,000 Americans died during something called the Korean War and that North Korea is still a rogue state under murderous and cruel Dictatorship.
Only KKKremlin Caligula good make me feel some sympathy for Joe Biden. I’m sure it will pass quickly. I also remember a time when we all agreed that Fascists were bad.
But, now we see they walk among us …
Nolan Brewer, 21, said he and his wife were in contact with a white nationalist over Discord, read Breitbart and Nazi propaganda site Stormfront, and became members of Identity Evropa.’
In July 2018, Brewer and his then-17-year-old wife, Kiyomi Brewer, drove 50 miles from their home to the synagogue, spray painted a Nazi flag and iron crosses on a Dumpster enclosure, and lit a fire on the ground. Prosecutors said they originally planned to break into the synagogue and destroy it with homemade bombs and napalm they brought along, but they got scared.
In an interview with FBI agents, Brewer said they wanted to send a message to Jews as a race. He cited bogus statistics, aiming to back up the racist conspiracy theory that Jews have undue political influence.
“I guess it’s just …. back down or something like that,” Brewer told the FBI, describing the message of the vandalism. He also said he wanted to make news headlines, and was proud word of the attack reached Vice President Mike Pence, who condemned it.
Brewer told FBI agents he wanted to “scare the hell out of them,” prosecutors said, and send “a message of like, get out I guess.”
His defense attorneys acknowledged that Brewer had latched onto pseudointellectual arguments for white supremacy. Evidence submitted to the court included racist memes he had shared and selfies in which he wore the iron cross associated with Nazi Germany. His phone wallpaper was an image of a swastika.
“It is clear that he has adopted beliefs based on ‘alt-right’ or white nationalist propaganda,” the defense attorneys said.
The details were first reported by data scientist Emily Gorcenski, who does extensive research on the far-right.
As his attorneys sought a lighter sentence, they outlined how a young man from a small town, who’d recently graduated from community college, and had no history of criminal or behavioral issues became radicalized.
They blamed his teenage wife, who they said had a troubled upbringing and would spend hours chatting on Discord, an app that had become popular among white supremacists. She then shared articles with her husband.
“According to Nolan, she began with rightwing yet mainstream views such as those presented on Fox News. She then moved on to writing by Ben Shapiro and articles on Breitbart News which bridged the gap to the notorious white supremacist and anti-Semititc propaganda site Stormfront.”
It sounds like they should be blaming Fox News and not a gullible young woman. And, btw, where is Steve Bannon today?
Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans has revived the genre of Memorial Day orations. In his widely read and re-played speech of May 19, 2017, defending his leadership of the removal of four prominent public monuments, one to Reconstruction era white supremacist violence, and the other three to Confederate leaders, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P. G. T. Beauregard, Landrieu eloquently tried to pull the Confederacy once and for all – at least in New Orleans – down from its pedestals. He beautifully labeled his city “a bubbling cauldron of many cultures,” expressing its ancient roots in many Native American peoples; in at least two European empires; in African, Irish, Italian, French, and many other ethnic lineages; and of course in cuisine, jazz and “second lines.” New Orleans, he said, is a city made by all the nations of the world, but one great “gumbo” made from many.The speech was as deeply patriotic as it was also deeply political—“e pluribus unum” carries a weight right now in Trump’s America that makes most politicians shy from such fulsome embraces of pluralism and brutally honest historical consciousness. Indeed, any historical consciousness, save for toxic forms of nostalgia, is out of style among Trump’s supporters as well as his cowed, silent enablers in the Republican Party.Delivered a week and a half before Memorial Day, but during the stunning dismantling of the huge Lee monument in the heart of the city, Landrieu’s speech should be read against the grain of the 152 years of Decoration Day rhetoric. Wittingly or not, the mayor gave the whole country a serious lesson in how Americans should contemplate their war dead, indeed their broader past, in this divided and quarrelsome nation.He suggested they learn some good history first, face its most troubling parts however painful, and separate “remembrance of history and reverence for it.” It is an extraordinary act for a Southern white politician to ask his fellow citizens to seriously separate heritage from history, to look down the dark tunnel of slavery and New Orleans’s infamous “slave markets,” and the “misery, rape, and torture” that followed for so many unnamed individual Africans, Creoles, and African Americans sold as property into the Mississippi River valley. Landrieu argued that ignorance or denial of this past for so long had been collective “historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.” He called New Orleanians, and thereby all Americans, to an alternative kind of remembrance for this Memorial Day. He asked his auditors to learn a more complex past and to grow some historical and moral backbone as they think about memorialization.
Today, our city has a woman of color–LaToya Cantrell–as its mayor.
But in 1894, when Douglass spoke at Rochester, New York’s Decoration Day ceremonies, the Jim Crow era had taken root. 1 It had been over twenty years since racist conservative legislatures had been re-established all across the South – complete with former Confederates taking back their former seats of power. It had been over a decade since the Supreme Court had overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875, deeming it unconstitutional.Mississippi, in 1890, had rewritten its own constitution, legally disfranchising black voters, and many other states were about to follow suit. By 1894, lynchings of black Americans were skyrocketing – there would be 134 the year Douglass spoke in Rochester. 2The Lost Cause had been firmly implanted in the South for a full generation. Its mythos was now seeping northward, infecting and changing the memory of the war and its causes. This naturally led to a false reconciliation, with Blue & Gray gatherings happening more frequently. The focus shifted from the reasons the Civil War was fought to simply leaving the past in the past. The shared experience between soldiers of both sides was the bonding agent, and while this is understandable, the black soldiers were largely left out. 3He saw, of course, the importance of holidays such as Decoration Days, and wished for it to not become a “heartless unthinking custom.” This was why he thought it of utmost importance to remember not only the soldiers who fought in the Civil War, but also the causes for which they fought. After all, he warned, “What has happened once may happen again.”Douglass allowed that this Decoration Day “shall share the fate of other great days,” and be slowly forgotten, replaced by “some other day more nearly allied with the wants and events” of some uncertain future. However, he was certain that the sentiments that brought them together annually “will live, flourish and bear similar fruit, forever.”He noted the two opposing views on how the war should be remembered. The first, he said, was to treat the Southern people as if they were “always loyal and true to the government.” They had, in the estimation of many honorable men, “repented their folly, and have accepted in good faith the results of the war, and that now we should forget and forgive the past, and turn our attention entirely to the future.”
I think today it’s important we that we look at the states that are blocking the votes of People of Color and limiting the rights of women as well as finding obscene ways to cage the children of asylum seekers and deport people whose only crime is to come to a country with extremely broken immigration laws to become part of its economy and future.
Did we fight these wars against slavery and fascism sacrificing the lives of so many to go turn the clock back to oppression?
Today is the day we honor the people that fought to make us a more perfect union. Our fallen include folks of all faiths, colors, birthplaces, and gender identifications. I want a country that truly honors their supreme sacrifice by recognizing that civil and constitutional rights are everyone’s heritage. I want us to stay on the path to the more Perfect Union by respecting our rule of law and its inclusiveness.
Let us truly remember the reason for this day.
“I am not indifferent to the claims of a generous forgetfulness, but whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery; between those who fought to save the Republic and those who fought to destroy it.”
Douglass’ entire speech can be read here.
Memorial Day Reads
Posted: May 28, 2018 Filed under: just because | Tags: China, History, Memorial Day, trade wars 17 Comments
It’s the Memorial Day Holiday!
Sewell Chan writes for the NYT about the ‘unofficial’ history of Memorial Day. It is something we discovered and shared before but it bears repeating because it explains why the holiday still gets short shrift in here in the Deep South. It also explains why some Southern States still have a separate Confederate Memorial Day. I still remain shocked that Mississippi refused to recognize it as a holiday until recently.
David W. Blight, a historian at Yale, has a different account. He traces the holiday to a series of commemorations that freed black Americans held in the spring of 1865, after Union soldiers, including members of the 21st United States Colored Infantry, liberated the port city of Charleston, S.C.
Digging through an archive at Harvard, Dr. Blight found that the largest of these commemorations took place on May 1, 1865, at an old racecourse and jockey club where hundreds of captive Union prisoners had died of disease and been buried in a mass grave. The black residents exhumed the bodies and gave them proper burials, erected a fence around the cemetery, and built an archway over it with the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Some 10,000 black people then staged a procession of mourning, led by thousands of schoolchildren carrying roses and singing the Union anthem “John Brown’s Body.” Hundreds of black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Black men, including Union infantrymen, also marched. A children’s choir sang spirituals and patriotic songs, including “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration,” Dr. Blight wrotein a 2011 essay for The New York Times. “The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots.”
The African-American origins of the holiday were later suppressed, Dr. Blight found, by white Southerners who reclaimed power after the end of Reconstruction and interpreted Memorial Day as a holiday of reconciliation, marking sacrifices — by white Americans — on both sides. Black Americans were largely marginalized in this narrative.
“In the struggle over memory and meaning in any society, some stories just get lost while others attain mainstream recognition,” Dr. Blight wrote.
His claim is not universally accepted; the fact-checking website Snopes says of the 1865 remembrance: “Whether it was truly the first such ceremony, and what influence (if any) it might have had on later observances, are still matters of contention.”
Here is BostonBoomer’s blog from 2014 and Mink’s from 2012. We remember the role of slaves freed by the sacrifice of Union Soldiers in our Civil War in celebrating that sacrifice.
I always remember Decoration Day because when I was very young we would do what my parents did as children. We went to small cemeteries in Kansas and Missouri to make certain the family grave sites were attended and clean. We picnicked and trimmed bushes then put peonies in jars on the graves of greats and cousins who died in war. For some reason, all of our family grave plots were resplendent with huge peony bushes. My mother always beat them back and would announce loudly how much she hated them. Peony bushes were not allowed any where near home. They were left to the dead in my family and they bloomed profusely each Memorial Day.
In Caney Kansas, where my own grandparents are now buried, lays my Great Uncle Jack along side his mother, my Great Grandmother Anna. He didn’t die in the battlefields of Europe during World War 1 but came home with complications from Mustard Gas. He died quite young on the family farm but it was of his wounds brought home as a dough boy fighting in a trench. Many soldiers come home with wounds seen and unseen that eventually catch up to them. I never understood why I was told Dad’s Uncle Jack wasn’t quite included in the same way as those whose graves got the peonies properly but we gave him peonies because my Dad and Nana adored him and it felt right to me. Some times our country has a short memory with a narrow focus. It doesn’t really remember all of the sacrifices of those who came before us including every single slave who died unfree.
Today, we also remember the sacrifice of every gold star family too. I hope Cadet Bonespurs plays golf and that his selfish, hateful face stays away from the one holiday he can truly sully with just his presence. Unfortunately, he left long enough to give a lofty speech at Arlington that should have been given by any better person. But, take heart, he still had a way of making it all about him!
I read this article last night and even reviewed the variables and methodology of the original study. It’s amazing to actually review the panel data and see which attributes are significant to the question at hand but the findings are not surprising. NBC shares “The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism.”
A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy.” Their study finds a correlation between white American’s intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.
Miller and Davis used information from the World Values Survey, a research project organized by a worldwide network of social scientists which polls individuals in numerous countries on a wide range of beliefs and values. Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive Iof the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.
The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump’s 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump’s bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans “rapists,” and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.
The Chinese Trade Wars are showing winners and losers already. Winners include Trump himself–and now, Ivanka– plus Chinese Companies including ones that threaten US National Security. The losers are US companies. We seem completely unable to stop this.
Ivanka Trump’s brand continues to win foreign trademarks in China and the Philippines, adding to questions about conflicts of interest at the White House, The Associated Press has found.
On Sunday, China granted the first daughter’s company final approval for its 13th trademark in the last three months, trademark office records show. Over the same period, the Chinese government has granted Ivanka Trump’s company provisional approval for another eight trademark s, which can be finalized if no objections are raised during a three-month comment period.
Taken together, the trademarks could allow her brand to market a lifetime’s worth of products in China, from baby blankets to coffins, and a host of things in between, including perfume, make-up, bowls, mirrors, furniture, books, coffee, chocolate and honey. Ivanka Trump stepped back from management of her brand and placed its assets in a family-run trust, but she continues to profit from the business.
“Ivanka Trump’s refusal to divest from her business is especially troubling as the Ivanka brand continues to expand its business in foreign countries,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in an email Monday. “It raises significant questions about corruption, as it invites the possibility that she could be benefiting financially from her position and her father’s presidency or that she could be influenced in her policy work by countries’ treatment of her business.”
As Ivanka Trump and her father have built their global brands, largely through licensing deals, they have pursued trademarks in dozens of countries. Those global trademarks have drawn the attention of ethics lawyers because they are granted by foreign governments and can confer enormous value. Concerns about political influence have been especially sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.
Chinese officials have emphasized that all trademark applications are handled in accordance with the law.
More approvals are likely to come. Online records from China’s trademark office indicate that Ivanka Trump’s company last applied for trademarks — 17 of them — on March 28, 2017, the day before she took on a formal role at the White House. Those records on Monday showed at least 25 Ivanka Trump trademarks pending review, 36 active marks and eight with provisional approval.
Don’t forget! Trump’s Indonesia project has been financial enhanced by the Chinese Government after he announced he would help with ZTE. China is definitely on the winning side with the Trumps. However, what about US Businesses?
As Washington and Beijing try to resolve their trade disputes, several big companies are caught in the middle.
One is Qualcomm (QCOM), an American chipmaker whose $44 billion purchase of NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), a Dutch company, has been waiting for Chinese regulators’ approval.
Far more controversial is the case of ZTE (ZTCOF), the Chinese phone and telecom equipment maker that was crippled by a US export ban issued last monthin punishment for what the US said were violations of its sanctions against North Korea and Iran.
Easing penalties on ZTE is a key priority for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Trump has indicated he’s willing to yield in order to move ahead with further trade discussions.
But members of Congress from both parties, many increasingly wary of China’s trade practices, believe such leniency would be a mistake. A growing number of senatorshave drawn a red line on ZTE, and have been vocal in recent days about their opposition to restoring the company.
Are we winning yet?
Meanwhile, TrumpsterFires continue to break out as white men go after our national “enemies” like young men from China attending school here. This must be an additional feature to calling the police because black people are going about their lives in clear view!
California police say they thwarted a vigilante deportation attempt last week – in which a pilot allegedly kidnapped a foreign student, took him to an airport and tried to send him “back to China.”
Jonathan McConkey, a pilot and certified flight instructor, is accused of orchestrating the kidnapping with his assistant, Kelsi Hoser, a ground instructor. Both reportedly worked at the IASCO flight training school in Redding, California.
Among IASCO’s students were dozens of Chinese nationals with student visas, according to court records. KRCR News 7 reported that the school contracted with China’s civil aviation authority to train its new pilots, one of whom was apparently Tianshu Shi.
Shi told reporters that he had been in the United States for about seven months – living with several other IASCO trainees at an apartment in Redding. It was there, police said, that McConkey and Hoser came for the student.
Some interesting stats from Axios you can review. Which part of our country has lost the most on the battlefield since 9/11?
Today is the 17th Memorial Day since 9/11. Since then, 6,940 U.S. military service members have died for America.
Why it matters: Every part of the country has lost soldiers to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All were Americans — someone’s neighbor, child, parent, mentor, buddy. Their average age was between 26 and 27 years old.
Have a great day and be safe if you’re in the path of all that weather on the East coast and the panhandle of Florida!.
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