"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, April 27, 2024
If it weren’t illegal to be a Negro in Alabama, the state’s Law Enforcement Officers wouldn’t arrest Negroes for being Negro.
But, they do.
In at least 2 events in less than the same number of years, local LEOs have arrested individuals in Alabama charging them with fabricated, trumped up “crimes,” when no crime had been, nor was in the process of being, committed.
In both cases, the lowest common denominator was… that the people arrested had darker skin tone (more of the pigment melanin) than the “average” person, and more than the arresting officer(s). In other words, they were “Black.”
What is such sickness, and why does it seem so common in Alabama, and why… oh WHY do people in the state continue to put up with such outlandishly egregious behavior from public officials, particularly those sworn to uphold the law?
It may have something to do with the state’s Constitution.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 29, 2024
Feelings, whoa, oh, oh, feelings Whoa, oh, oh, feel it Whoa, oh, again
— from the 1974 song “Feelings” popularized by Morris Albert
Louis Gasté (1908-1995), a French composer, in 1988 sued Morris Albert (b.1951) claiming that the song “Feelings” was plagiarized from his 1957 song “Pour Toi.” (French, meaning “For You”) He won the case and is now listed as co-creator.
Touchy-Feely vs Facts & Science
Very nearly 1000 books on a 16-page list could possibly, “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex… whether consciously or unconsciously.”
When I read that passage quoted above — which was directly related to a recent news item about political officials banning books in public schools, and which was excerpted from a very high level government official’s letter — it struck me as being THE VERY THING that We The People had been warned about some time ago, that so-called touchy-feely nonsense, instead of genuinely thoughtful, even provocative civil discourse, would replace and substitute for education efforts, that an inordinate concern and worry for students’ FEELINGS — not facts — would lead to a substantial decline in the quality of education.
My life with Shere Hite: The forgotten feminist who changed sex for ever
photo caption: Shere Hite in 1997. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
When her books about women, men and the clitoris caused outrage, the bestselling writer was forced to flee the US. She ended up in my small ex-council flat in London – her head still full of revolution.
by Joanna Briscoe, Wednesday, 24 Jan 2024 05.00 GMT
I had known about this feminist author from my mother’s bookshelf when I was a child, read about her in Cosmopolitan as a teenager and was quite fascinated by the idea of her by the time I was 25 and went to interview her. Born in Missouri in 1942, she published The Hite Report in 1976, which has sold more than 50m copies and is by some estimates the 30th bestselling book of all time. It was a landmark that brought her wealth and fame and upended the dialogue on female sexuality, most notably by proving that most women orgasmed through clitoral stimulation rather than penetration. Her later surprising findings about male insecurity in The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (1981), and female marital dissatisfaction in Women & Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress (1987), were anathema to the increasing conservatism of the US in the 1980s. The backlash against her and her work was so extreme that eventually she renounced her American citizenship. … By the time I got to know her in 1990, she was in trouble. She had been the victim of vicious media attacks, doorstepping, public humiliation and death threats, all of which contributed to the loss of her American publishers and of her ability to make a living. Her findings on sex – now widely accepted – caused outrage, and her appearance was used by critics to detract from the seriousness of her work at a time when there were rigid expectations of what a feminist firebrand should look like. She could also be difficult, it has to be said. Most notoriously, she apparently attacked a limo driver who had called her “dear”.
—MORE—
Note the line “She had been the victim of vicious media attacks, doorstepping, public humiliation and death threats, all of which contributed to the loss of her American publishers and of her ability to make a living.”
If you’re making a recipe, or dish, use what you want — within reason, of course — because there are very few dishes, recipes, etc., that rely upon a specific ingredient to determine the outcome or character of the dish. Some exception to that general principle, or guide, would be gluten-free, sugar-free, and/or “paleo” type low-carbohydrate recipes. There are, perhaps others, but those are 3 handy-dandy examples to illustrate the case in point.
But sodium, aka plain ol’ table salt — and fat — have been long demonized by some as having deleterious effects upon our health and well-being, and are (it would seem) useless and worse. As a corollary, or a minor matter aside, formerly, the word “welfare,” defined as the condition of one’s being, was used, but Repugnicunts hijacked and then demonized that word during the Reagan administration à la so-called “welfare mothers” who were almost always Negroes — rarely ever White folks. (Is it socially acceptable, de rigueur, or passé to use that proper term to name a people group? Yes. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and countless others all used it.) However, as it turned out, White folks were the greatest recipients of such government “largess” both as a percent, and as raw numbers. Ssshhh! Don’t tell anyone. We mustn’t confuse, nor conflate, history with facts.
Yet fat and sodium are but two critically important constituents of a proper dietary regimen, being defined as one that substantially promotes homeostasis, through which the organism thrives. Fat is necessary for our bodies to utilize vitamins A,D,E, and K — all the fat-soluble vitamins — while sodium is a fundamental component of cardiac and other cellular function. Furthermore, our brains are the points at which our desire, or drive, for salt exists, and is a homeostatic mechanism.
“Sodium (Na) is frequently considered antagonistic to health, given that a high-salt (NaCl) diet is harmful. However, the appetite for NaCl appears to be an innate mechanism, and an elevated NaCl intake may serve to protect against dehydration [1,2,3]. Maintenance of this ion within appropriate levels (Na balance) is not only an adaptive process necessary for survival but also an essential component of hydromineral homeostasis (Na and fluid balances).
“Na is the primary cation in extracellular fluid (ECF) and, along with associated anions, constitutes 90% of ECF osmolality [4,5]. ECF, which contains slightly more than one-third of total body fluid, has a Na concentration of around 144 mOsm/L. Almost all the remaining body fluid is contained in intracellular fluid (ICF), which has a lower concentration of Na (10 mOsm/L) [6]. Given that the maintenance of these water and Na levels is essential for adequate cell functioning and because the cell membrane has low permeability to solutes, water moves by osmosis from areas of lower to higher solute concentration to equalize osmotic ECF and ICF concentrations [7,8]. Hence, Na is essential to maintain electrolyte and water balances (hydromineral regulation).”
What word can be (and is) an adjective -and- a verb?
If you guessed “consummate,” you would be correct.
Etymology of the word is circa mid-15th century, and 1500s, from Latin…
c. 1500, “complete, perfect, carried to the utmost extent or degree,” from Latin consummatus “perfected, complete,” past participle of consummare “sum up, complete,” from assimilated form of com “together, with” (see con-) + summa “sum, total,” from summus “highest” (see sum (n.)). Of persons, “accomplished, very qualified,” from 1640s. Related: Consummately.
Dear Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley,
America’s Civil War was about slavery.
Or as some have said, it was about so-called “states’ rights” to have slavery.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, August 17, 2023
Politico:
In Federal court, Alabama Republicans again defend not creating a 2nd majority Black district.
–//–
Alabama is ALWAYS “itching for a fight” because residents feel as if someone is forcing them to do something against their self-interest, or will, or that they’re going to suffer some kind of loss.
In order to motivate Alabamans, they must feel like they’re against something, that something, or someone, is going to take something away from them. It matters not what — it could be their household garbage — but they will no longer be in control of it, because someone is going to take it away from them, and therefore, they must oppose that oppressive, governmental edict-by-force issued from upon high by an alien enemy power, that they must “draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny.”
The astute will recognize, no doubt, the line uttered by the now-late former Governor George C. Wallace in his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” speech at Foster Auditorium in June 1963, on the campus of the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa.
Harmony and peace are “adults-only beverages” and Alabama cannot yet drink to the fullest from that wellspring, that fountain of life, a refreshingly cool, bubbling artesian well, and with all its other infantile behaviors, still suckles the teat of insecurity, demanding to be diapered and fed, to have attention given to it regardless, still incapable of sleeping through the night.
Mike Rogers-R,AL3 is restrained by Richard Hudson-R,NC8 from attacking Matt Gaetz-R,FL1 after Mike Rogers confronted Matt Gaetz because Gaetz voted “PRESENT” in the 14th round of balloting for Speaker of the House (SOTH), late Friday night, January 6, 2023. Kevin McCarthy-R,CA20 was finally elected as Speaker of the House (SOTH) on the 15th round of voting.
Alabama loved George Wallace.
They loved him so very much, that they elected him as Governor an unprecedented 4 times… not counting the time he was the puppet master, pulling the strings of his wife Lurleen’s campaign and her brief time in office as Governess.
Wallace was the state’s 45th individual to have served as Governor, and was elected as Governor in 1962, 1970, 1974, and 1982.
Later in life, after suffering near death following Arthur Bremer’s assassination attempt upon him while campaigning for the Office of President, Wallace had been paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet which had lodged in his spinal cord, and claimed to have changed afteerward, to have had a Christian religious conversion experience before he won election to an unprecedented nonconsecutive 4th term in office as Governor. As part of that conversion experience, he expressed contrition for his wicked deeds towards the Negro/Black community in Alabama — which were most notably expressed as bigotry, racism and segregation — directly to the Black community in Birmingham, Montgomery, and elsewhere, from the pulpits of their churches.
They believed him.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham examined polling data, voter turnout, and other official records from the 1982 General Election, found a level of support for Wallace among the Black community so very great, so that without it, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, August 17, 2023
IN YOUR OPINION…
What are we, as a nation, a government… what HAVE we been doing WRONG, so that, in the space of the past 50, or 60 years, instead of minimizing substance abuse and associated problems, INSTEAD, we have spawned and cultivated global narcotrafficking terrorist cartels, which have proliferated exceedingly abundantly and are now a root cause of many crimes overall?
Isn’t 50, or 60 years long enough to get a clue as to EXACTLY WHAT we’re doing WRONG — AND CHANGE!?!
The LIES that’ve been peddled and foisted upon us are blatantly contradicted by the government’s own research findings (via the NSDUH, SAMHSA, et al):
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 12, 2023
Bacon is not my thing, per se, at least insofar as, once you’ve had the AUTHENTIC product, it’s difficult to return to the imposter.
By AUTHENTIC, I mean to refer to what some folks call “slab” bacon, which is smoked, and dried, so that the uncooked slab of bacon needs NO REFRIGERATION, and is often found hanging in the open in the grocer’s meat section.
This product is what some call “streaky bacon,” which is what the English call this type of American-produced bacon.
Now, remember… before refrigeration came along, the preservation of meats was done primarily by smoking, and curing — and THAT was a technique learnt from the Native Americans in the earliest days of American history, i.e., by the colonists at Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.
That is also why, when the first enduring “snap” of winter, i.e., COLD weather, came along, it was called “hog killing weather,” because the cool, even cold temperatures largely delayed (retarded), if not temporarily prevented, spoilage (as rancidness, referring to an oxidized, deteriorated state of fat), and deterioration (rotting) of the uncooked flesh. Lard would be rendered (changed in character) from fat, which is accomplished by heating it, most typically in a large cauldron suspended over an open fire, to melt it.
EVERY PART of the hog would be used, which how the phrase “everything but the squeal” originated. The fat, the jowl, the hock, the ham, the loin, the back strap, the trotters (feet), the ears, the liver, the heart, stomach, snout, skin, and even the intestines (chitlins, or chitterlings), were ALL used as some sort of food item.
Nowadays, the meat is processed wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am with numerous godforsaken chemicals, soaked in brine, injected with water and chemicals that make it soak up water (that’s bordering on fraud, to pump water into meat, or use chemicals to cause it to absorb water to increase its weight), injected with preservatives, nitrates (often as celery powder), nitrites (agents that interact with the hemoglobin naturally present in pork (blood in the flesh) that cause it to have an unnaturally red, or pink appearance and which eventually become nitrosamines, known carcinogenic compounds causative of stomach, bladder, colorectal, and breast cancers, vacuum packed, thrown in a refrigerator, and rushed to market.
Just read the labels sometimes, and look up things like sodium erythorbate (an anti-oxidant, color fixative, cure accelerator and synthetic variation of ascorbic acid, aka vitamin C), sodium phosphate — used to help meat retain moisture, and prevent development of rancid odor from the fat (which is deteriorating, or else it wouldn’t be added), HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) which is metabolized differently than sucrose (table sugar) and known to cause weight gain and Type II diabetes, sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) which is an inorganic hydrophilic (attracts & retains water) emulsifier, and is even used in detergents, etc.
When cooked or broken down in the stomach, nitrites form nitrosamines (aka N-Nitroso Compound), which are known carcinogens, particularly among young children and pregnant women.
The USDA limits addition of nitrites (as sodium nitrite) in food to 200 parts per million. The thinking, or hope, is, that by adding ascorbic acid (aka sodium erythorbate, the synthetic form of vitamin C) to the processed food, it allegedly reduces formation of nitrosamines, though there is no conclusive scientific evidence proving it.
The addition of sodium nitrate is limited, whereas the addition of celery powder is unlimited, and is considered “organic.” Neither celery powder nor celery salt is regulated by the USDA, but chemically processed sodium nitrate is.
Nitrate residue on processed foods using “natural” sources of nitrates (such as celery powder), is often at least 10 times HIGHER than that found on traditionally cured products.
Essentially, it’s a bait-and-switch shell game — a culinary con game, and the consumer is the mark.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, May 10, 2023
I LOATHE ALL CAPS.
ALWAYS HAVE.
ALL CAPS emerged in the teletype era, when ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS WERE ON THE MACHINES, which emerged in the early-to-mid 1800s, i.e., c.1835-1850.
That is now approaching 200 years ago — 188, to be exact. They’re a close relative to Morse code. It’s a modern-day dinosaur.
I’ve seen a few teletype machines. They’re ogres of monstrosity. My now-late father used ‘em in the Navy during the Korean War. I recollect seeing one being used in a small hometown FM radio station that broadcast in monoaural using a block format.
Yeah… THAT OLD.
By the way, the term “teletype” used to describe a teleprinter, first came from the Teletype Corporation in 1928, which trademarked the term, and as with xerography, now called photocopying, early copiers were Xerox brand, and people “xeroxed” papers, instead of making printed copies. Both terms, teletype, and xerox, became ubiquitously associated with both firm’s products, and in turn, became widely used generic descriptors.
The first station where I worked had one collecting dust in an unused corner near the rear entrance by the tube transmitter. Fortunately, the station’s owner had wisely transitioned to a dot-matrix printer for the AP news copy, using tractor-fed, acordion-folded paper.
The 2nd station where I worked used satellite dishes, and computers.
Digitization through the computer and Internet has changed EVERYTHING. LITERALLY, EVERY THING — including broadcast. On the whole, in my considered opinion, it’s been a blessing, but every rose has its thorn, as the saying goes (unless you buy ‘em from a florist, but then they have no fragrance, either), and that thorn in many cases is human behavior, which historically has almost always been problematic, somebodies wanting to get over on (take unfair advantage of) others, resistance to change, etc.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 5, 2023
Over the years, I’ve met, known, and been friends with several vegetarians in my lifetime, and quite frankly, all of them have been very pleasant people, kind, generous, giving, well-mannered, studious, professionals, and in most cases, religious, specifically, Seventh Day Adventist, a Christian sect that practices the Jewish custom of meeting on Saturdays (the Sabbath) for corporate worship, and resting from their labors.
They weren’t at all radicalized or “high pressure” animal rights activists, mean greenies, or other off-the-wall types — just plain ol’ nice, family, folk.
And as a tenet of their faith, they are vegetarian — some lacto-ovo, some pescatarian, some vegan. And you know you’ve made friends with them when they invite you to share a meal with them — that’s true of any people, religious, or not — and I have always considered it great honor to share a meal with them. One such time was Thanksgiving several years ago, when I was Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, March 25, 2023
Homosexual prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, wearing pink triangles on their uniforms to identify them as such, on December 19, 1938.
Southern Slave States (you know the ones) where legislators have a “trifecta” control over state government — meaning that Repugnicunts control all three branches of government:
1.) Executive;
2.) Legislative, and;
3.) Judicial
— that have:
• banned books,
• enacted so-called “don’t say ‘gay’ laws,
• banned drag shows,
• forbidden teaching about slavery & institutionalized, government-enforced racial discrimination,
• outlawed abortion,
• made illegal gender-affirming healthcare, etc.,
share significant common denominators with Adolph Hitler and Nazism.
Hitler did the same things.
That is NOT exaggeration, it is NOT hyperbole.
One more time:
They’re doing the
EXACT SAME THING
that Nazi Führer Adolph Hitler did.
In this current day and era, amidst the actions of rebellious Confederate Southern Slave States, and a handful of select others led by Repugnicunts, to ban, or outlaw, anything which they:
1.) Don’t understand, or;
2.) Disagree with — including abortion, books, drag, gender affirming healthcare, etc.;
it’s vitally important to remember THAT ONE THING.
So did Hitler.
Nazi Concentration Camp Armband Identification Chart Star of David=Jew; Inverted Triangle with Bar Atop=Repeaters Pink Triangle=Homosexual Male; Black=Roma & Sinti; P=Poles, T=Czech (German word begins with ‘T’); Star of David with Pink triangle=Gay Jew; Purple=Jehovah’s Witnesses; Red=Political Enemies; Green=Habitual Criminals; Blue=Immigrants; Black Bulls-Eye=Inmates of Penal Battalions; Red Bulls-Eye=Escape Suspect; Brown Arm Band=Special Inmate;
Again, that is NOT exaggeration, it is NOT hyperbole.
IT IS HISTORY:
Hitler’s Nazis destroyed the first Gender clinic.
Together, we must ensure such atrocities never happen again.
Such actions by those states’ governments are essentially the wholesale removal of personal liberties, the repeal, an denial of personal freedoms guaranteed by our nation’s founding documents.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, March 23, 2023
But Sergeant Pepper didn’t teach the band to play, nor did he have a Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Things Not Worth Fighting For -or- One Giant Fucking Mistake Based Upon A Lie,
And How It Gave Us A Black Eye At Home And Abroad
“All of our experiences were different. It was such a long war. Every year of the war or every phase of the war was very different. We learned that it wasn’t necessarily a just war. But then, we broke it, so then we had to fix it. Navigating wartime service in the Iraq War, especially if you served more than one tour, it’s more about just doing what you are called to do and making sure that you’ve got the men and women to your left and right all home from that war. Focusing more on that than the policy or the why of why we’re there. Because that can be a dark place.”
— Allison Jaslow, former Army Lieutenant, served 2 tours of duty in Iraq during the most violently intense period, now CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
“We all felt [that], maybe there was a way to make things better, [but we] then recognized that we hadn’t made things better… it didn’t turn out as we’d hoped. A lot of my fellow Americans don’t even rank it as important. They say, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, February 8, 2023
If we forbid the preparation and serving of fried chicken and waffles, watermelon — or any other dish remotely historically associated with Black Southern culture — from being served as a dignifying celebratory moment and honorific during Black History Month, we will be unwittingly playing into the hands of racists, to help them accomplish their ultimate objective — exterminating the people they hate, and erasing the associated culture.
That MUST NOT HAPPEN.
Fried Chicken ‘n Waffles with Watermelon, a traditional Southern dish
It was with scornful disdain that I read a few news items about Nyack Middle School in Rockland County, New York, nearby NYC, where food vendor, Aramark, served fried chicken and waffles with watermelon on February 1, the first day of Black History Month. Writing for The Hill, Stephen Neukam wrote that “chicken and waffles with watermelon [are] foods stereotypically associated with Black people,” and that unidentified school administrators had said that Aramark “changed the menu items without telling the school.” The menu had earlier been posted online as being Philly cheese steak, with broccoli, and fresh fruit.
Apparently, some folks got up in arms about that substitution, even after Aramark had apparently asked students if they’d prefer those items. Student Honore Santiago said, “They were asking people if they want watermelon, and I remember being confused because it’s not in season.”
And the now-global 24/7/365 mass media, being what they are — gluttons who thrive on strife and dissention, ever searching for reportage of anything bad or controversial, including inane he-said-she-said tripe, often as so-and-so-Tweeted this, that, or the other, which has no genuine news value, while simultaneously blowing almost all things out of proportion, regardless of their, or the organization’s ideological bent — took that fumbled ball and ran with it.
It doesn’t yet appear that they scored a touchdown, however.
The school’s Principal, David A. Johnson, a Black gentleman, wrote a letter to parents, which stated in part that,
“The offering of chicken & waffles as an entree with watermelon as a dessert on the first day of Black History Month was inexcusably insensitive and reflected a lack of understanding of our district’s vision to address racial bias.
“Nyack Public Schools administrators contacted Aramark officials to insist on a mechanism to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s mistake. The vendor has agreed to plan future menu offerings to align with our values and our long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion.
“We are extremely disappointed by this regrettable situation and apologize to the entire Nyack community for the cultural insensitivity displayed by our food service provider.”
Perhaps that now means when National Heritage Week comes again for Jamaicans — who state that “heritage is one of the most crucial parts of our identity as Jamaicans. Heritage celebrations help to preserve this identity and our culture, which sets us apart from all other countries” — Jamaica Jerk Chicken with Beans and Rice cannot be served.
And when Chinese New Year arrives again, Wonton Soup, Kung Pao Chicken, Szechwan Shrimp, Spicy Crispy Beef, Sweet and Sour Pork, and Chinese Fried Rice are all out of the question.
And heaven forbid that, a few days from now, on February 11, when National Foundation Day (kenkoku kinenbi) is celebrated — which, according to the earliest Japanese historical records, was on that day in 660 BC that the first Japanese emperor was crowned — meaning that no sushi, no sashimi, no soy sauce, no chopsticks, no soba noodles, no miso soup with rice, and no sukiyaki may be served.
Which also means no kimchi for our Korean brothers and sisters… no matter how much they may protest, and regardless of the fact that it’s their national dish.
Hopping John is a simple, traditional Southern dish which is made with rice, black-eyed peas, and greens. The first known recipe of Hopping John appeared in an early cookbook entitled “The Carolina housewife, or House and home: by a lady of Charleston” was first published in 1847 and was authored by Sarah Rutledge, who was the daughter of Edward Rutledge, a fellow who signed the Declaration of Independence, though little else is known about her. While the book is widely lauded, even today, and can be downloaded from various sites free of charge, one can expect significant differences in culinary style, from then to now. Regarding the name of the dish – “Hopping John” – there’s no known etymology for the origin, or derivation of the name, although there’s no shortage of speculation, however absurd. And finally… the original recipe calls for red beans – which are NOT kidney beans. But as any cook worth their salt knows, innovation and change are the name of the game when it comes to the creative aspects of cooking, and over the years, black-eyed peas have become the preferred pea/bean for the dish.
Nope, NO ONE can have any of that.
And HELL TO THE NO for tacos, burritos, salsa, guacamole, margaritas, fajitas, Chili Rellenos, carne asada, quesadillas, Red Pork Pozole, or Enchilada Sauce on Cinco de Mayo.
Do you see how asinine that is?
None of those people groups get up in arms about their culture’s foods, though at one time, or another, they’ve all been subjected to vile racist tropes.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, December 27, 2022
If you enjoy your electrical power from TVA, and all the other associated benefits that have come along for that ride, such as regional economic development, improved health, care & quality of life, etc., you can thank a Republican.
That man would be Nebraska Republican U.S. Senator George W. Norris (1861-1944), who served 5 terms in the House (10 years), and 5 terms in the Senate (30 years), the last term of which he became an Independent, and was defeated for re-election in 1942.
George W. Norris as a newly elected U.S. Senator, 1912.
Senator Norris was also a member of a somewhat contrarian group in the House of Representatives that, in 1910, brought reform to its practices, by reducing the autocratic control which the Speaker of the House then had.
He also authored the 20th Amendment, which abolished so-called “lame duck” Congressional sessions, fought for presidential primaries, and direct election of Senators.
He also saved TVA from being sold — more accurately, prevented Wilson Dam in the Muscle Shoals area of Northwest Alabama from being sold — to one of the wealthiest industrialists of his era, which POTUSes Coolidge and Hoover (especially), both GOPers, wanted to sell to private enterprise, bidding in which Alabama Power (part of Atlanta, GA HQ’d Southern Company) was a strong contender.
That man was Henry Ford.
In the May 22, 1920 edition of The Dearborn Independent, a Henry Ford publication also known as The Ford International Weekly, Henry authored a front-page article entitled “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” that was later translated into several languages and distributed widely.
Interestingly enough, Henry Ford was a rabid anti-Semite Nazi sympathizer, of whom Adolph Hitler spoke fondly in a March 1923 interview with the Chicago Tribune, who said, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Do you ever watch Saturday Night Live?
If not, don’t worry. Not many people do… any more.
Like millions of other Americans, I do NOT watch it, and rather, see but snippets of it online every now and then, and occasionally see it mentioned in various news items here, there, and yon.
The reason I ask, is because a thought occurred to me, which is that, even though it’s circling the proverbial drain, it is salvageable.
In fact, in this now seemingly not-so funny time, it could quite possibly rise beyond its highest ratings period, which was its heyday, and perhaps even surpass it. But, the writers now ALL need to be fired. Why? They’re… Just. Not. Funny.
The track the show’s been on is eventually going to land it in the graveyard, and that’s not where longtime producer Lorne Michaels would like it to end up. But, at this point, it seems all but certain. The post mortem would read: Died for lack of humor caused by bad writing.
More to the point, as I pondered the matter, a thought occurred to me:
I do not ever recall having seen any skits or jokes about,
or references to, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Losing WIN, and Feeding the Poor:
Ford, Carter & Reagan have important lessons to teach us.
Remember Gerald Ford, and his WIN — “Whip Inflation Now” — campaign?
It was a failure.
The two premises of that effort — encouraging increased individual savings, and reducing personal spending — were not merely ineffectual, they were also justifiably ridiculed because they did absolutely nothing to lower prices.
In a TRULY free market economy, not only is government allowed to compete, but prices, as others and I have continually said, are controlled by the seller, NOT the buyer. The SELLER is the one setting prices.
For example, if Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Marathon, Valero, and Phillips 66 (in the TOP 10 largest oil companies globally by revenue) were to reduce by 25% their consumer prices of gasoline & diesel fuel (and, they could), that would significantly change, at least on some level, the volume of sales/consumption.
Yet the study of economics also tells us that merely lowering prices will not always increase consumption to a certain price level. Consider bananas; if more folks ate more bananas, their prices ~might~ decline, but only modestly, and certainly not by 25%.
Though agricultural production has some similarities to industrial production, it fundamentally relies upon a renewable resource to satisfy demand (including an often-fickle, and increasingly angry and uncooperative Mother Nature), where as oil does not, because petroleum is a finite resource.
And THAT is PRECISELY WHY others and I maintain that establishing a windfall profits tax (WPT) could be used to help consumers -and- companies that rely upon petroleum for their existence, because it would return TO THE PEOPLE a ~fraction~ of the excessive portion of the rapacious profit made by Big Oil companies which are paid to their executives, overlords, and Wall Street wheeler-dealer shareholders.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, April 8, 2022
Needing an election-year straw-man punching bag, numerous Republicans, including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Josh Hawley of Missouri — who had three times previously approved Judge Jackson’s three earlier Federal judicial nominations, most recently in April last year to the D.C. Circuit — suddenly falsely accused the judge of being lenient toward child sexual abusers, in effect, not merely being an ideological moral equivalent, but much worse, as a promoter of such crime. Fact-checkers say such malicious slurs are not only fictitious, but deliberately misleading, and that Judge Jackson’s sentencing decisions were 100% in line with her peers on the Federal bench.
Hawley is Blackburn’s kennelmate, her own in-bred ideological offspring.😎🤣🧐😳
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, March 1, 2022
The global scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic is almost over and we’ve made at least 6 million holes in the ground around the world to bury the dead or distribute their ashes while we falsely lionize grocery store clerks as “frontline heroes” along with the Nurses and Physicians who for 2 years have consistently and almost helplessly watched over the almost-surreal accumulation of the deaths of deniers and vaccine refuseniks, climate change is slowly-but-surely devastating our globe, floating islands like flotsam and jetsam flotillas of plastic trash larger than the state of Texas continue killing ocean life, so-called indestructible “forever chemicals” course through the veins of the unborn and the living, the wealthy along with their corporations and minions chronically pay no income taxes thereby placing the burden of funding governmental operations on the working man, cops nationwide kill our dark-skinned brothers at liberty, insane men with massive caches of military weaponry kill worshipers along with school children and other bystanders in public while GOP politicians enact laws making purchasing such deadly firearms much easier, inflation is at a 40-year high, GOPers are doing their damnedest to deny voting and other civil rights to non-WASPs and return America to the bad old days of Jim Crow, while yet other GOPers attend White Supremacist rallies as honored guests and praise Russian thug Vladimir Putin who has invaded Ukraine to commit war crimes, Volodymyr Zelenskiy a former comedian who is Ukraine’s Jewish President is standing firm along with his people who have remained to resist and fight those terrorists, and tonight, American President Joe Biden will give his first State of the Union address to a joint session of an almost recalcitrant do-nothing Congress which deadlocked Senate remains stalemated and immobilized as if frozen stiff though still living and breathing.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 12, 2021
The late, renown musician Greg Allman, with his Southern Rock group “The Allman Brothers Band,” recorded and performed a song entitled “Angeline,” which was written by band members Dickey Betts, Mike Lawler, and John Andrew Cobb. Greg had no part in the song’s creation, other than to sing, and record it, where is appears as Track 1, Side 2 (Track 5 on CD) of the band’s first Arista Records, Inc. label release, on their August 1980 album “Reach for the Sky.”
The song’s chorus contains the partial lyric “I never seen a woman who could look so good, and be so doggone mean. Yeah.”
I had forgotten the song’s title was Angeline, rather than Evangeline, but the point is, that the name “Evangeline” is a feminine one, and in a couple places in the New Testament, and in modernity, the “church” is frequently referred to as a feminine subject, a “virgin bride” which will “marry” Jesus Christ. And, I had not forgotten the song’s lyric “I never seen a woman who could look so good, and be so doggone mean.”
That is a sadly perfect picture of the church today: Alleged to be beautiful (“a woman who could look so good,”) but whose attractiveness is marred to the point of repulsion, i.e., “be so doggone mean.”
The song’s final verse is:
Whoa, just a game that she loves to play,
leavin’ broken hearts all along the way.
She’s got friends that she ain’t never used.
She’s winnin’ now but she’s bound to lose.
Oh, Angeline.
Again, a picture perfect illustration of a very sad situation: Selfish use and abuse, then, abandonment, and ultimately, loss.
What many folks don’t realize (and, by “folks,” I specifically mean to refer to those who name Christ, or claim to be Christian), that many of the researchers and historical figures of importance in the history of healthcare and immunology were Christians.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823), considered widely as the “father,” or discoverer of vaccination, was himself a son of a Christian vicar, the 4th son, and 8th of 9 children, whose both parents died in 1754. But what is equally ironic, is that in his era, when he was actively developing a treatment and cure for smallpox, “Jenner was widely ridiculed. Critics, especially the clergy, claimed it was repulsive and ungodly to inoculate someone with material from a diseased animal. A satirical cartoon of 1802 showed people who had been vaccinated sprouting cow’s heads. But the obvious advantages of vaccination and the protection it provided won out, and vaccination soon became widespread. Jenner became famous and now spent much of his time researching and advising on developments in his vaccine.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, December 4, 2021
Perhaps you’d be surprised at the MANY “knock-off,” el-cheapo, wanna-be, so-called “recipes” for AIOLI.
For some, it’s a Johnny-come-lately to the faux phood scene, a veritable “flash-in-the pan” — here today, gone tomorrow — and something, some trick of “the new and kewl” to attract, and FOOL, or DECEIVE, folks into believing that a great amount of effort, or love, went into making a food item.
Pretty pictures adorn all kinds of websites, magazines, and newspapers — online, and in print — that depict food as an artistic creation… and to be certain, there’s little doubt that some of it is. Certain cakes come to mind, for example.
The finished product… GENUINE, AUTHENTIC aioli.
But most food is not “art,” though it can, and should be, presented attractively. And the reason for that, the reason why food should be presented attractively, is that we FIRST ‘eat’ with our eyes. That is to say, that, what we see whets our appetite. However, for food made in a restaurant, the olfactory sensation is largely missing, because almost no one goes into any restaurant and smells the food cooking. It’s not like your grandma’s, or mama’s kitchen, wherein the savory aromas of food waft throughout the house, eagerly increasing your expectations as mealtime approaches.
But, back to the aioli.
At its essence, aioli is almost pure garlic in a spreadable form. I write ‘almost’ because it has olive oil in it, and cannot be made without it. And, there’s some salt, as well. But the amount, volume, quantity, etc., of salt is up to the maker. And though salt may not be 100% absolutely required, or a mandatory item like garlic or olive oil, it is HIGHLY recommended to be a constituent part of aioli. In other words, just put some in. Don’t neglect it.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, September 23, 2021
In a small Tennessee town with a population of 83,454 — comparatively, Huntsville, AL has 100,000 more — where, in the public square, in front of the county courthouse, from which numerous lynchings occurred, on the site of a former slave trading market, stands a statue known by locals as “Chip,” so nicknamed for the chip in his hat.
“Chip” has been around since 1899, and, in a sense, could be thought of as a relative “newcomer” to the community, per se — which was founded 1799 — though an enduringly stalwart one, at that.
“Chip” is made of the finest Italian marble, and, according to the United States Geological Survey, which measured, calculated, and installed a marker upon its base in 1931, stands 648.82 linear feet above sea level. Nearby Nashville is only slightly more elevated at 1160 feet above sea level.
While “Chip’s” maker is largely unknown (though it is thought to be one of many such replicas installed), what is known about him is who commissioned him — the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
You see, “Chip” is homage to the Confederacy, and to Confederate soldiers.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Recently, renown Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss posted a tweet of some relatively minor historical significance, which included an image of the “new” and apparently not-so-improved White House Rose Garden, which was markedly revised during the previous administration.
Evisceration of White House Rose Garden was completed a year ago this month, and here was the grim result—decades of American history made to disappear: @dougmillsnytpic.twitter.com/78OqjkoOPt
Image accompanying Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss’ tweet of the White House Rose Garden after Malaria’s macabre makeover of it, August 2020.
His observation created an uproar.
It’s the same type syndrome seen in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 moralistic tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”; no one says anything at the time, and then, when the king goes bonkers, everybody still oohs and aaahs about how beautiful, lovely, and perfect his new garments are… even though he’s wearing none.
But when the lone voice of a child points out the truth, suddenly, everyone loses their head.
Apparently, the last time the garden revision was “re-introduced” — shortly before the Republican National Convention — the announcement of changes made to it didn’t cause as much a stir as this reminder of last year’s event.
Malaria’s macabre “makeover” mockery couldn’t have been less well received… again.
Tens of thousands of people flew off their handles on Twitter — the Twitterverse was all a twaddle — and many, if not most, of them didn’t have nice things to say. Of course, nowadays, that is an expected par for the SoMe (Social Media) course.
And, as is similarly par for the modern course, “journalists” find themselves writing about what worthless things were posted about some inanely foolish event mentioned on Facebook, or in this case, Twitter. It’s amazing what passes for “journalism” these days.
And frankly, while there’s evidence both ways, there is at least ONE thing we are absolutely certain of, which is that education cures and eliminates ignorance. So, score one for the “Nurture” column.
And, if you’ll recall, there were at least two (and, perhaps more) hit comedy motion pictures which played upon that theme: One in 1983 called “Trading Places,” starring the inimitable clown-men Eddie Murphy, and Dan Akroyd, supported by Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy, and the ever-lovely and talented Jamie Lee Curtis; then in 1985 a motion picture with an obliquely similar theme entitled “Brewster’s Millions,” starring late funnyman Richard Pyor, and John Candy, supported by Hume Cronyn, Jerry Orbach, and Yakov Smirnoff; and yet another, although somewhat-lesser-known — though certainly with no less star power — in the 2014 title “Breaking the Bank,” staring Kelsey Grammer, supported by Susan Fordham, Richard Cordery, and Pearce Quigley.
In all three motion pictures, the protagonist is placed in an unexpected predicament by either the sudden presence, or lack of, abundant wealth. What they do with their lives in those stories, is comedic – though no less authentic examples of – nurture, combined with a healthy dose of nature.
And we can certainly see real-life examples of such stories in those who win phenomenal sums in lottery. Late West Virginia businessman Andrew “Jack” Whittaker, Jr. (1947-2020) is perhaps the most notable real-life example of a tragic, everything-goes-wrong-after-winning-the-lottery life story. A self-made construction business millionaire worth at least $17 million, on Christmas night 2002, then-aged 55, he purchased a winning Powerball lottery ticket which at the time was the single-largest lump-sum payout in U.S. lottery history — $315 million, which after taxes was valued at $113.4 million. In later years, he was very public about his sorrow at winning, and in a 2007 interview, stated that he wished that he’d torn up the ticket, saying,
“I’m only going to be remembered as the lunatic who won the lottery. I’m not proud of that. I wanted to be remembered as someone who helped a lot of people. I’ve had to work for everything in my life. This is the first thing that’s ever been given to me. Since I won the lottery, I think there is no control for greed. I think if you have something, there’s always someone else that wants it. I wish I’d torn that ticket up.”
But more to the point — the point being, stupidity on very public display.
In an emailed communique recently, Tennessee Banana Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote the following, and shared YouTube video of her ignorant remarks which she made from the U.S. Senate floor about the House, no less.
From an email communique from Republican Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Senator for Tennessee:
MASK MANDATES ARE ABOUT POWER
Washington elitists are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the American people under their control. The new guidance from the CDC doesn’t follow the science and puts the wellbeing of children in K-12 schools at risk. There is no valid reason to require a vaccinated person to wear a mask. Mask mandates and lockdowns are all about power.
What she DELIBERATELY does is couch “freedom” as being able to do any damned old thing that you want, WITHOUT regard for anyone else.
That is NOT “freedom.”
That is selfishness and stupidity.
Musician/singer/song-writer Eric Johnson, in his song “Sad Legacy” from his 2005 album entitled “Bloom,” wrote in part that,
“There’s no such thing as freedom Without some responsibility. All this shock and surprise… But we’ve been throwing out a mean boomerang, And now it’s coming back at us.”
As has oft been stated, “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.”
Furthermore, in her remarks, she deliberately DENIES the scientific facts.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, July 5, 2021
NOTE TO THE READER: It’s almost impossible to discuss food and its preparation these days without getting into history, and business ethics practices. But before you go off half-cocked, know for a certainty that in NO WAY am I opposed to the consumption of pork, nor of bacon, neither of the flesh of any animal. Presumably, because you’re now more curious, you must read further to more precisely determine what is meant by the headline — especially, and particularly if you enjoy bacon.
Earlier, I had replied to a friend who complained about having eaten “a cheeseburger for lunch and was tired and sleepy for most of the afternoon.”
My initial thought and response was “carbohydrate-induced somnolence,” and I wrote that “the meat patty was the only source of protein in the meal – if all you had was a cheeseburger. If you had fries with them, [that was] more simple carbs.”
Giving a rather simple analogous explanation, I stated that, “the (most likely highly-processed white) bread: Simple carbs – they burn quickly – like a bottle rocket. Up quick, burns out just as quickly.”
And from there, I wrote further about the addition of cheese on the burger, by writing “Cheese: Most likely “American” which is not genuinely cheese.”
From Cheese.com:
“American cheese is processed cheese made from a blend of milk, milk fats and solids, with other fats and whey protein concentrate. At first, it was made from a mixture of cheeses, more often than not Colby and Cheddar. Since blended cheeses are no longer used, it cannot be legally called “cheese” and has to be labelled as “processed cheese,” “cheese product,” etc. Sometimes, instead of the word cheese, it is called “American slices” or “American singles.” Under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, American cheese is a type of pasteurised processed cheese.”
From TasteOfHome.com:
“… it’s not actually cheese—at least, not legally. The FDA calls it “pasteurized processed American cheese product.” In order for a food product to be a true “cheese,” it has to be more than half cheese, which is technically pressed curds of milk. Each slice of American contains less than 51% curds, which means it doesn’t meet the FDA’s standard.”
Subpart B – Requirements for Specific Standardized Cheese and Related Products
Sec. 133.169 Pasteurized process cheese.
Food — it’s production, variety, growing, farming, harvesting, preparation, etc. — is an interest of mine, and like many others, I enjoy not only a good meal, but also have an interest in some understanding about the whys and wherefores of a particular dish’s origins — its history — which also give greater, and a more full understanding to us in numerous ways.
Nitrite-free, dry cured, air dried, pork bellies which will become bacon. Image by The Elliott Homestead.
For example, the simple, almost ubiquitous dish of beans and rice is a fully complemented dish, meaning that it has a full and complete range of proteins. Beans, by themselves have very little protein, and are primarily carbohydrates, and the same holds true for rice – very little protein, and is primarily a carbohydrate. And the proteins that each separate food has – the rice and the beans – are not “complete” proteins, meaning that individually, they do not contain the 9 essential amino acids which are found in “complete” proteins, and which are necessary in order to build and repair protein tissues (muscles) in the body.
Without exception, ALL animal-based food — regardless of the origin/source — contain complete proteins, and that includes eggs, as well as muscle and organ tissue, though it does not include fat. Fat, however, is never found outside the presence of protein. Fats and proteins could be thought of as “kissing cousins,” because they’re ALWAYS found in combination with each other. They are NEVER apart. Where there’s fat, there’s protein. As an example, consider natural peanut butter — that is, peanut butter which only added ingredient is salt. Peanuts and salt SHOULD BE the ONLY ingredients in peanut butter, and technically, as well as legally, they are, but so many other products are mistakenly called “peanut butter” when they’re actually “peanut butter spread” or something else entirely different.
A simple, even cursory, examination of the labels of Jif®, Skippy®, Peter Pan®, and other brands – including their websites – demonstrates that in the exceeding majority of cases, their most well-known, and most widely-sold products are NOT authentically genuine peanut butter. Each of those, and others’, products labels and websites state that their products are “peanut butter spreads,” rather than being “peanut butter.”
Peter Pan® brand is manufactured and distributed by Conagra Brands, while Jif® is owned by The J.M. Smucker Company, and Skippy® is owned by Hormel Foods, LLC.
The previous citations were necessary in order to understand what follows, to demonstrate that just because people call a thing by some name, the name by which they call it is not necessarily the proper term. A four-legged animal with hooves and horns could be a bull, a boar, a ram, or a buck, and are all males of the species of cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and deer. But they’re not females.
And while we’re continuing on the topic of food…
I have come to loathe most commercially-available “bacon.”
Why?
Not only does it taste retched, but also because in the classic, traditional sense, it is NOT bacon.
Yes, it comes from a hog – and not always pork bellies – but the method in which it’s made (“processed,” would be a much more accurate term) bears little resemblance to traditional bacon. Modern “bacon” is flash-smoked, pressure-processed with nitrites, salt-cured, and hustled out the factory door just as quickly as possible in order to continue reaping corporate profits for their Wall$treet masters.
Traditional, original “Old Skool” bacon was/is often smoked in a smokehouse, which not only imparts unique flavor and aroma, but is an important part the preservative curing process – the main intent of which was/is to retard the spoiling process – or turned rancid, the term applied to fats and oils which have spoiled – “spoilage” being oxidation, including discouraging growth of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, June 12, 2021
Joe orders a Black Russian, Kyrsten orders a White Russian, and John C. Calhoun orders a filibuster.
Nobody got any drinks.
West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat in his 2nd term has an illustrious history as a public servant which began with election to the state’s House of Delegates, then to the State Senate, and from there to statewide office as WV Secretary of State, and then as Governor.
Among other things, the bill would unify election law throughout the 50 United States by establishing uniform standards for federal elections, establish non-partisan independent state redistricting commissions in all 50 states, establish a Federal Judicial Code of Conduct, outlaw any action that would “corruptly hinder, interfere with, or prevent another person from registering to vote” or assisting another to register to vote, mandate “motor voter” registration when applying for a driver license, prohibit partisan voting registration “dirty tricks” to cull voters without their knowledge, require voter-verified permanent paper ballots, mandate early voting, as well as numerous other significantly beneficial improvements to national security and election law.
Relatedly, Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, a Democrat two years into her first term, has announced her opposition to eliminating the filibuster – a procedural tool most often used by the minority to thwart legislation, by requiring at least 60 votes to proceed, thereby preventing it from even being discussed, in order to effectively kill the prospective measure.
The Senate’s 2 Independents – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Angus King of Maine – caucus with the Democrats, and in the case of now-rare tie votes, the Vice President Kamala Harris would cast any tie-breaking vote… if it weren’t for the filibuster – which has now degenerated into a mere threat, with no real “action” required to “activate” it, per se. It has become the quintessential model, and most public example of, pathological passive-aggressive behavior – doing nothing (the passive behavior) to control, or manipulate others (the aggressive behavior).
Back To The Future
At one time, or another, Republicans and Democrats have separately expressed desire to eliminate the obstructionist tactic of the filibuster, which was not supported by the Founders, but rather, was a response to Vice President Aaron Burr’s criticism (shortly after his indictment for the murder of Alexander Hamilton) that the Senate’s rules were a mess, with numerous rules that duplicated each other, and in particular, singled out the “previous question” motion. So, when the Senate met the next year in 1806, they eliminated the “previous question” motion of parliamentary procedure, which functionally ceased debate using a simple majority vote… because Aaron Burr told them to.
Deleting that rule did not immediately cause filibusters to break out all over, but merely made it possible for them to happen — because there was no longer a Senate rule that could have enabled a simple majority to cut off debate. It was only several decades later in 1837 that the minority exploited the insufficient limits on rules of debate, and had the first filibuster.
There were three essential reasons why the filibuster was so rare, and infrequently used before the Civil War, because:
1.) The Senate operated by majority rule, and Senators expected that matters would be brought to a vote;
2.) The Senate had little work to do in that era, and there was plenty of time to wait out any opposition, and;
3.) Voting coalitions in the Senate were not as polarized as they later became.
Catch-22
As our nation grew, and added states, so did the Senate add more members. With growth, came increased work. And by 1880, every Congress had at least one episode of filibustered obstructionism, most of which were unconcerned with important matters of the day, and instead were focused upon trivial, inconsequential matters.
So, when filibusters did occur, Senate leaders tried to ban them. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries Senate leaders tried to reinstate the “previous question” motion – but they failed repeatedly – and ever since, have long sought a procedure to end debate on any given matter.
More often than not, senators gave up any hope for reform when they became aware that opponents to the elimination of the filibuster would kill any such effort at changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster — ironically, by filibustering — thereby putting the majority’s other priorities at risk. Because they were unable to reform the Senate’s rules, leaders developed other innovations such as unanimous consent agreements, which measures were an option of second resort for managing a chamber which by then, was prone to filibusters.
In response, the Senate changed… but not by much.
“Unanimous Consent” agreements emerged like mushrooms after a springtime rain shower. And then, cloture was created in 1917 during the waning days of World War I. Not “simple majority” cloture, but “supermajority” cloture. The Senate filibustered for 23 days following President Woodrow Wilson’s proposal to arm merchant marine ships during WWI. It also ground to a halt all other work in the Senate. The President criticized the Senate by saying it was
“the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
In response to President Wilson’s withering criticism, a bipartisan Senate committee was formed to negotiate the form of the rule. Five of the six Democrats supported a simple majority rule; one Republican supported a supermajority rule; and one Republican preferred no rule. Negotiators then struck a compromise:
1.) Cloture would require two-thirds of senators voting;
2.) Opponents promised not to block or weaken the proposal, and;
3.) Supporters promised to drop their own proposal for simple majority cloture — a proposal which was supported by at least 40 senators.
Rule 22 – the cloture rule, to cease filibuster by a two-thirds majority vote – was adopted 76-3, on March 8, 1917.
Just Say No
Without Senators Manchin and Sinema’s support on vital bills forwarded from the narrow Democratic majority House, it’s practically assured that Republicans – who control 50 Senate seats – will once again, control movements of all legislation, despite the fact that when they were in control as the majority, they “circled their wagons” and got things done, even with Democratic opposition.
And, at a recent press event in his home state on May 5, 2021, Senate Minority Leader Kentucky Republican “Moscow” Mitch McConnell said,
“One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”
So, it very much looks like the Senate’s legislative “Grim Reaper” is back to his old manipulative tricks, despite being in the minority – just because he can.
Prophecy Fulfilled
As many political scientists, politicians, and analysts have observed, increasingly, the formerly Grand Old Party is losing grassroots support on a broad basis. But, it’s not as if such problems weren’t predictable. On February 1, 1993 Washington Post Reporter Michael Weisskopf wrote that:
“The gospel lobby evolved with the explosion of satellite and cable television, hitting its national political peak in the presidential election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
“Unlike other powerful interests, it does not lavish campaign funds on candidates for Congress nor does it entertain them. The strength of fundamentalist leaders lies in their flocks. Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.
““The thing that makes them powerful, is they’re mobilizable. You can activate them to vote, and that’s particularly important in congressional primaries where the turnout is usually low. Some studies put the number of evangelical Americans as high as 40 million, with the vast majority considered politically conservative,” said Seymour Martin Lipset (d.2006), professor of public policy at George Mason University.”
It’s always easier to ask forgiveness, than permission.
But, what Weisskopf wrote about the predominately Rural, Republican-voting, White Protestant Evangelicals – that “Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command” – was true then, and it’s even more true now.
Folks don’t get mad because of falsehoods, or scurrilous accusations.
They get mad because of truth.
While campaigning for the Republican party’s nomination, after winning Nevada’s Republican caucuses on February 23, 2016, the later-45th President exclaimed, “I love the poorly-educated!”
Of course he does — because they’re too stupid to know when they’re being played for a fool. And he played them like a fiddle – like Nero, while Rome burned.
The once-Grand Old Party has demonstrably become the Party of Poorly-Educated, Low-Skilled, Poorly-Paid and Often-Impoverished, Rural Working Class Whites who watch and believe Fox News like religion – especially men – who twice voted for Trump, still believe his Big Lie, earn well under $50K annually, and increasingly vote Republican – against their own best self-interest.
They support candidates whose exclusive guiding political philosophy is to refuse endorsing higher wages, healthcare, education, and other matters of direct concern to them and their families, and magically believe that a privatized, laissez-faire free market everything will solve all problems. They are becoming, or have become, a minority voting bloc whose interests are not represented by the political party for which they increasingly vote.
They are, in essence, deluded.
We’re Going Down
In the few days before the January 6 insurrectionist attack upon Congress at the Capitol, led by far right-wing extremist Kentucky Republican Representative Read the rest of this entry »
On that court were Chief Justice William Howard Taft; Associate Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; Willis Van Devanter; James C. McReynolds; Louis Brandeis; George Sutherland; Pierce Butler; Edward T. Sanford, and; Harlan F. Stone.
Holmes, Brandeis, and Taft are the only names many remember from that group.
Then-POTUS Warren G. Harding, a Republican, nominated Taft, also a Republican, to become Chief Justice (1921–1930) following the death of CJ Edward Douglass White, a Democrat, whom Taft had appointed as CJ in December 1910, while Taft was serving as President (1909–1913). Taft is, to-date, the only individual to have ever served in both positions – President, and SCOTUS Chief Justice.
But, here are a couple interesting facts:
1.) From July 4, 1901 until December 23, 1903, Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines, having been appointed by POTUS William McKinley. Having held that office previously, he should have recused himself from the 1927 case “Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue.” But, he did not.
2.) Edward Douglass White served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, was a strident segregationist, and upheld racist laws which came before the court, including the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson case which gave rise to the “separate but equal” doctrine, and reinforced racist practices in the United States.
Today, such obvious conflicts of interest would not be tolerated. And I note this with a mark of appreciation: Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently recused himself (did not participate in) from a recent case before the court, because his father held some stock in one company being represented to the court.
Technically, “involvement” at that level exclusively doesn’t violate ethics rules, but having erred on the side of caution – exercised jurisprudential reservation – is commendable. That is because it demonstrates Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, June 4, 2021
Make no mistake, I openly advocate for the wholesale legalization, taxation, and regulation of cannabis similarly as is done for beverage alcohol — though I have not always. And yet, as a licensed healthcare professional, I am under no misguided notion that there are genuine scientific considerations to be had.
Like many others, this is not a simple matter, per se — it is as complex as we human beings, with myriad matters which “Just Say ‘NO!’” has never, nor will ever, satisfy. Science and understanding is not advanced by the word “NO!”
Similarly as well, there is practically no disagreement that historic American jurisprudence on the matter not only had its genesis with deep roots in racism – which remains to this day – but has almost single-handedly created the global criminal cabal of narcotrafficking enterprises that have now become international terrorist organizations. It has now become a matter of national security, and not just for the United States. Global security is predicated upon addressing these concerns.
Jesus Malverde is a mythical figure, allegedly born as Jesús Juárez Mazo on December 24, 1870, just outside Culiacán, the state capital of Sinaloa, whom is said to be the “patron saint” of “narcotraficantes” (drug traffickers), and is known by his devotees as “el ángel de los pobres” (the angel of the poor). According to legend, he was a lifetime resident of Sinaloa, an historically poverty-stricken area which is now recognized as the de facto headquarters location for a bloodthirsty global narcotrafficking cartel bearing the state’s name, which is infamous for their nefarious misdeeds, cold-blooded murders, and other heinous acts. The legends, which vary widely, typically assert that Malverde was a “Robinhood” type character, who stole from the wealthy and distributed to the poor. In reality, narco-money has significantly revitalized Sinaloa, and to a large extent, reinforced ancient customs, including the veneration of folk saints as Jesus Malverde.
It is, in fact, fueling the civil sociopolitical upheaval in Central American nations such as Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 21, 2021
“Take It Off” – track 1 on his 1987 album “High Priest” – is a song sung by a White man (Alex Chilton) praising the beauty of a natural Black woman.
If you’ve given any attention to some of recent videos by Black female artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, Armani Caesar, Bbymutha, et al, you’ll notice that (obviously fake) long, pointy fingernails are all the rage, as are fake eyelashes, and all the stuff Alex Chilton sings about in his 1987 version of the song… including Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, May 1, 2021
Donna Brazile, publicity photo
There are probably plenty of reasons to dislike Donna Brazile, the twice-former interim DNC Chair – not the least of which was the discovery that, following a WikiLeaks email dump, she’d been sharing debate questions with Hillary, and subsequent to a second release of the tranche, she resigned in shame from her position at CNN as a political commentator/pundit.
Perhaps she was trying to redeem herself, or, maybe she was trying to hold a light illuminating the damning evidence of HRC’s unethical behavior and corruption (though not illegal), or maybe she was hoping to drive another nail into Hillary’s political coffin, or “throw some others under the bus,” and even if it was a cathartic political “kiss and tell,” her motivation for what she wrote is not the question.
It is ~what~ she wrote in her book “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House” that tells the story.
She discovered that because of the party’s fiscal indebtedness, a backroom deal had been struck with Hillary and the DNC in August 2015, just Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 26, 2021
In America, you can get arrested for drinking a beer in public.
In Germany, one can legally walk around in public while drinking a beer. To do so is neither illegal, immoral, or unethical.
Of course, illegality, immorality, and unethical behavior are three entirely separate, and unique things. Suffice to say, they’re not the same.
In America, one cannot walk around in public while drinking a beer, or any other alcohol-containing beverage. In many, if not most, places, it’s illegal to do so – save, perhaps, for a few specially-designated areas, or upon certain occasions in those areas.
For example, it’s not uncommon to see pictures, or read news stories of college-aged students who can otherwise legally consume alcoholic beverages (being aged 21, or older), and even adults, who while enjoying almost any public beach in America, are accosted by local law enforcement authorities who either confiscate, or demand that the beer owner(s) destroy those ice-cold beverages by pouring them out, and sometimes, even arrest them, haul them off to jail, where they’re fingerprinted, photographed, and incarcerated, however briefly, as if they’re genuine threats to society, or had committed some grievously atrocious felony.
Of course, it almost goes without saying, that if anyone, anywhere in America was walking around in their local Wal-Mart, shopping while drinking a beer, the police would be called to the scene, and doubtlessly, the shopper/drinker would be arrested, and the story of it published on the worldwide web of the Internet for all the world to see.
Typically, in most all such instances, those individuals would be violating so-called “open container” laws, which forbid the public consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Yet interestingly enough, morbidly obese people can walk around in public eating hot dogs, doughnuts, and junk foods of seemingly innumerable variety and type, wash it all down with gallons of soda pop, and it’s not illegal to watch them commit their slow suicide in public, and no one dares think about calling the cops on them.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 19, 2021
Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, photographed at his Mill District condo on April 30, 2019, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In 2007, former-Vice President Walter “Fritz” Mondale (1928-2021) was asked to describe his proudest accomplishment in President Jimmy Carter’s administration.
He said, “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace. It may not sound like much, but if you’ve got that, you can handle the rest.”
Fritz Mondale died peacefully in his sleep, April 19, 2021, of natural causes, surrounded by family, at his Minneapolis, Minnesota home, aged 93.
“Through his work as a Senator, he showed me what was possible. He may have been modest and unassuming in manner, but he was unwavering in his pursuit of progress; instrumental in passing laws like the Fair Housing Act to prevent racial discrimination in housing, Title IX to provide more opportunities for women, and laws to protect our environment. There have been few senators, before or since, who commanded such universal respect.
“He not only created a path for himself, he helped others do the same. Walter Mondale was the first presidential nominee of either party to select a woman as his running mate, and I know how pleased he was to be able to see Kamala Harris become Vice President.
“In accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, he described the values he was taught to live by: “to play by the rules; to tell the truth; to obey the law; to care for others; to love our country; to cherish our faith.”
“As a Senator, an Ambassador, a Vice President, and a candidate for President, he lived and spread those values.”
Then-former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, LEFT, and Vice Presidential running mate Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale celebrate Democratic primary victories at Mondale campaign headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on March 13, 1984.
Walter Mondale made history by being the first candidate of any party to name a female as a Vice Presidential running mate.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, March 25, 2021
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
That statement is almost always misattributed to Abraham Lincoln, but there is NO EVIDENCE to support any claim that he ever said such a thing.
President Abraham Lincoln, albumen silver print photograph made February 1865 by Alexander Gardner
Think of it as “fake history.”
It is perhaps the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks which are widely misattributed to the late, former President.
Despite the various citations as being from:
Lincoln’s “Lost Speech” as a Republican candidate for the party’s Presidential nomination at the Bloomington Convention in Bloomington, Illinois on May 29, 1856, or;
On September 8, 1858 in Clinton, Illinois, an account of which was published in “Report in the Bloomington “Pantograph,” September 9, 1858, which is also extant as ‘Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1858’ in ‘The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, v. 3,’ or;
As being from the 4th Lincoln/Douglas debate September 18, 1858 in Charleston, Illinois – there are NO contemporary accounts or records that substantiate any claim that he ever made any such remark.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, March 19, 2021
This is some of the first proven and confirmed evidence that what we have been told by the experts is 100% accurate and true.
“Typhoid Mary” Mallon (1869-1938), was an impoverished, illiterate Irish emigrant to the United States who worked primarily as a cook, and who became infamous for spreading typhoid fever, which at the time was an incurable, easily-spread, often deadly disease, for which no vaccination existed.
People who DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE INFECTED ARE SPREADING THE DISEASE BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE SYMPTOMS.
It is a REPEAT of the classic example first shown by “Typhoid Mary” Mallon (1869-1938), an Irish emigrant to the United States who worked as a cook (one of the highest paying jobs at the time), and was actively infected with typhoid fever, yet NEVER – NOT EVEN ONCE – showed any signs of infection.
Tragically, however, as was common in the era in which she lived, she had low education and was practically illiterate, and her refusal to heed the advice of experts, and her insistence upon working in kitchens, resulted in the deaths of many people whom she thereby infected with typhoid fever because of her deliberately wanton disregard of advice, and disobedience to the order of law. She, however, claimed that she was being persecuted for being Irish and poor.
And throughout the remainder of her life, and up to the time she died, she never – not even once – ever showed signs of typhoid fever infection. And she did not die of typhoid fever. She died of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Which one’s which?
Find the M-16 and the AR-15.
And, did you know?
ALL parts are interchangeable on the M-16 and the AR-15.
Every single one of them.
Why is that?
When Eugene Stoner (1922-1997) of the Armalite corporation originally designed the weapon, it was at the behest of the United States Department of Defense which sought a firearm that was lightweight (under 6 pounds) had a high-capacity magazine (30 rounds), and could penetrate BOTH sides of a steel helmet at 500 yards. It was called the AR15, for Armalite Rifle version 15. There had been several previous iterations to the rifle, all of which were intended exclusively for military use.
The .223 caliber round (the bullet, not the shell/casing) had been introduced to market and made available to the civilian market by Remington, which commercially introduced the .222 Remington as a varmint cartridge in 1950 – a round intended for pest control.
Bullets are measured in size, which is called “caliber,” and refers to its diameter/circumference, and weight, which is measured in “grains.” So, a 60 grain bullet would weigh 3.887935 grams.
Sometimes also called “ball ammo,” bullets so described are lead bullets completely covered with metal, also known as FMJ, or Full Metal Jacket. Unlike hollow point bullets – bullets which have a hollowed-out center – ball ammo/FMJ bullets do not expand upon impact. Instead, they penetrate a target and quite possibly even penetrate the object behind the target.
There are also numerous varieties and shapes of ball ammunition which range from “boat tails,” flat nose (sometimes called dum-dum bullets), and ones with truncated cones. Each shape has a specific use, but all are made for one purpose in mind: Penetration.
Though the years, the development of the .223 caliber round, and the Armalite Rifle proceeded. The military was increasingly interested in both.
In 1957, events began to accelerate with development of both. Eugene Stoner had developed a rifle called the AR-10 in response to the Army’s request for a “small-caliber, high-velocity” (SCHV) cartridge – the entire shell casing and round, filled with gunpowder, a primer, and bullet. And that year, the Infantry Board had agreed upon the preliminary specifications, which called for a 6 pound, select-fire .22″ rifle with a conventional stock and a 20 round magazine. The proposed chambering had to penetrate the standard issue steel helmet, body armor, and a .135″ steel plate at 500 yards, while maintaining the trajectory and accuracy of M2 ball from a M1 Garand, and equaling or exceeding the “wounding” ability of the .30 Carbine.
In January 1963, just as the Vietnam “conflict” was simmering slightly below a boil, U.S. Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara ordered the AR-15 adopted to replace the M14 which had been the standard issue infantry rifle, and standard issue for all branches of service for several years. His decision was based upon Read the rest of this entry »
Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina joined Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and all 50 Democrats in voting GUILTY to convict. But, 57 votes was 10 shy of the 2/3 required by the Constitution in order to convict.
The Senate Minority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell had the temerity, audacity and unmitigated gall to actually give a brief speech on the Senate floor following his “NOT GUILTY” vote for Donald J. “Loser” Trump, which follows at the conclusion of this entry.
Senate Minority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell who wrote email to his Senate minions saying,
“Colleagues, as I have said for some time, today’s vote is a vote of conscience and I know we will all treat it as such. I have been asked directly by a number of you how I intend to vote, so thought it right to make that known prior to the final vote. While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction. The Constitution makes perfectly clear that Presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the President has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling ‘January exception’ argument raised by the House.
“Given these conclusions, I will vote to acquit.
“Mitch”
Yeah… that Kentucky heathen not only voted to acquit the POS45, aka Liar in Chief, leader of the Cult of Trump, but passed the buck.
Not guilty, not guilty 2x, guilty. Alcee Hastings was impeached and found guilty of on charges of perjury and conspiring to solicit a bribe, and was removed from office as a Federal judge in 1989. He’s been a United States Representative for Florida’s 20th Congressional District since 1993.
Here’s the thing, though: For a man who claims to have an interest in historicity for the purpose of the Senate, he is DEAD WRONG about his opinion that, as he writes, “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal…”
As a matter of history, there has been of late at least a moderate amount of discussion and news made about an historical matter involving circumstances very similar to this one (in which the impeached individual is no longer in office), insofar as the two individuals impeached had ALREADY been resigned from, or otherwise out of office when their impeachment occurred.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate do NOT, and will NOT need, “smoking gun evidence” to convict Donald Trump of Insurrection, because in their warped imaginations, he did nothing wrong.
Those feckless individuals have not merely bowed the knee to Trump, or fallen prostate at his feet to lick his boots and the ground he walks upon, but by so doing, they have unambiguously signaled that they are not merely corrupted, but are traitorously and treasonously aligned, as well.
Allan Lichtman
Their fealty, their loyalty, their oath, though it may have appeared so, is NOT to the Constitution, but to some other nation, some other government, one that is NOT the United States of America – The Cult of Trump.
The benighted Moscow Mitch McConnell and his equally benighted Kooky Kentucky Klown pal Rand Paul are still up to no good.
Here Is The Smoking Gun Evidence To Back Impeachment Of Donald Trump
By Dr. Allan Lichtman, PhD, opinion contributor
02/08/21 10:00 AM EST
While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol.
As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. “We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.
When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”
Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, “Stay peaceful!” He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
James A. Garfield
It’s always interesting to see how our forebears thought about certain fundamental matters to our nation’s governance. We have historians to guide us, who make it their life’s work to study, and investigate the men, women, and circumstances of their lives, and the times in which they lived. We can, and should be grateful to, and for, them; for they bring to life those things which, though they may seem dead, are still often, very much alive.
Following is an excerpt in whole, as found in the Congressional Record – a verbatim record of remarks made on the floor of the House of Representatives – of a statement made by then-Ohio Representative James A. Garfield, from the 19th Congressional District, who later became President of the United States, and was also, at age 50, ingloriously, the second President assassinated.
Interestingly, he survived being shot on July 2, but eventually succumbed to infection September 19, which was introduced by doctors who frequently inserted their unsterile hands into the wound in efforts to remove the bullet. Today, unless a bullet is lodged near a vital organ, or blood vessel, and is thought to possibly migrate, they’re left in situ (in place) because, the theory being, that the heat generated by firing kills any bacteria which may be introduced, and sometimes, cauterizes the wound.
Mr. GARFIELD. I desire in a very few words, not to argue the merits of this case but to give the ground on which the Committee on Appropriations made their recommendation. Having stated that ground, I shall leave the question to the discretion of the House.
I agree with everything that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. E. R. Hoar] has said about Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, February 6, 2021
The Number 1 smash hit popularized by Atlanta, Georgia-based family band of Gladys Knight and the Pips in October 1973 was the work of a native Mississippian from Pontotoc named Jim Weatherly.
His family reported that Jim died recently at his residence in Brentwood, Tennessee, a tony suburb of Nashville, of natural causes, aged 77.
Weatherly wrote two additional tunes that became hits for Gladys Knight and the Pips: “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” – which was originally recorded by country singer Ray Price.
A star quarterback for the University of Mississippi, aka “Ole Miss,” in the 1960s, after graduation, Weatherly, who had already formed a band with some classmates, moved to Nashville where he hoped to find his fortune. Nashville, however, long known as a very cliquish town musically, rejected him. So he and his band moved to the Los Angeles area where he became a songwriter in that area’s then-hot music scene. It was a “training ground” for many musicians who later became immensely popular, super-star caliber artists, including Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Beck, and many others who populated the Laurel Canyon area – a mountainous canyon region in LA’s Hollywood Hills West district, in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Although Laurel Canyon is a rocky, arid, and largely agriculturally inhospitable area, it was fertile ground for artists like Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, Love, Michelle and John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, J. D. Souther, Judee Sill, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (of Buffalo Springfield and Poco) and many, many more, almost too numerous to mention.
But, lesser known is the backstory of Jim Weatherly’s first hit song for Gladys Knight and the Pips.
After his college football days ended, Weatherly worked in Los Angeles as a songwriter.
During his off-time in LA he often played flag football with other creative types who had athletic backgrounds – among them, Lee Majors, who himself was a former college football player and was then starring in The Big Valleyas Heath Barkley, alongside the lead and central character Victoria Barkley, played by renown actress Barbara Stanwyck. The Big Valley was a unique western television serial whose central character was a woman (Stanwyck), who had taken Heath as her own, though he was the illegitimate son of her character’s late husband Thomas Barkley, following his death.
Jim Weatherly was inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame at their 45th Annual Induction and Awards ceremony at the Marriott Marquis Theater on June 12, 2014 in New York City.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 31, 2021
Some people – mostly Banana Republicans and similar GOP types – have minds like concrete:
Thoroughly mixed, and permanently set.
That includes Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, R-14 (aka “MT-headed Greene”), and most all of the former “Party of Lincoln.”
In fact, the GOP could now be considered almost-fully matured.
But, we should not tear down the Lincoln Memorial, because frankly, the currently sorry, stinking condition of the once-Grand Old Party is not his fault. Not by a long shot.
What we are seeing now is the natural result and full outcome, the fruit-bearing, of seeds that were planted in 1964. This is their natural fruit. That was the year the GOP suffered one of the most significant losses in American Presidential electoral history. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was the party’s nominee, and the incumbent Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was President, having succeeded to the office after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. He was seeking a second term.
The GOP’s National Convention was held in Daly City, California (adjacent San Francisco on the north) at Cow Palace, a former livestock arena, July 13-16, 1964.
Perhaps you’re wondering, ‘Why, whatever for was he booed?’
He was seeking inclusion of language in the official party platform that condemned, and rejected (there’s the so-called “cancel culture” at work) Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and other domestic terrorists and White Supremacist racists including Dixiecrats – Southern Democrats who supported segregation, racist policies and laws – who had infiltrated the Republican party.
Read it again:
“…Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and other domestic terrorists and White Supremacist racists including Dixiecrats – Southern Democrats who supported segregation, racist policies and laws – who had infiltrated the Republican party.”
Yes, you read that correctly.
Ku Klux Klansmen rally in support of Republican Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee. Image: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
In 1964, the GOP accepted, and welcomed the inclusion of Communists, the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society members, and other radicalized elements, into the party.
That’s a very bitter, and hard pill to swallow, but it’s the unvarnished truth.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 25, 2021
WashingtonMonthly.com
Can Trump’s Pardons Be Reversed?
by Holly Brewer and Timothy Noah
President Ulysses S. Grant did it, and George W. Bush, and the Constitution would seem to encourage it.
January 22, 2021
2:07 PM
We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing about President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour marathon of glaringly unethical pardons, but only a little consideration (see 1-here, 2-here, 3-here, 4-here, and 5-here) about whether the Constitution permits them. A decent case can be made that it does not—and that at least some of these pardons can be reversed.
The relevant passage is Article II, Section 2, in the so-called “Commander-in-chief clause.” The president, it says, “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Nobody knows precisely what that means, but Trump has been under impeachment and awaiting Senate trial — for the second time — since January 13, 2021.
The most interesting real-life precedent for restricting a president’s right to issue pardons concerns President Andrew Johnson, who in March 1868 became the first of three presidents to be impeached by Congress, and two months later became the first to win Senate acquittal.
In March 1869, Johnson, on his last full day in office, pardoned Jacob and Moses Dupuy, who’d been convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Department, and Richard C. Enright, who’d been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. On assuming office, Johnson’s successor, President Ulysses Grant, reversed all three by calling back the U.S. marshals out delivering the pardons. A fourth pardon that Grant meant to reverse, to one James F. Martin, was permitted to stand because Martin had it already in hand, according to the late P.S. Ruckman, Jr., a political scientist at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Grant’s reversal of Moses Dupuy’s pardon was challenged in court and upheld on the technical grounds that Dupuy never received it. (Ruckman, an expert on presidential pardons, Read the rest of this entry »
Talk show host Larry King, face of CNN for 25 years, dies at 87
by Rodney Ho
Larry King died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a tweet by Ora Media, the studio and network which he co-founded. No cause of death was given, but The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media outlets had reported earlier this month he was hospitalized with COVID-19.
Larry King in his office prior to his CNN show in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 11, 2000. (AP Photo/Rene Macura)
He has had many health problems over the years including Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and two bouts with cancer.
His 9PM show “Larry King Live” ran from 1985 to 2010 on CNN, and for many years, the inquisitive man with his signature suspenders and hunched shoulders hosted CNN’s top-rated show, and he and CNN founder Ted Turner became close friends.
His long-running USA Today column, with its random thoughts and observations separated by ellipses, was a precursor to a Twitter feed.
Marlon Brando, right, gestures while talking with Larry King during a break in the taping of CNN’s ‘Larry King Live’ in Los Angeles, Friday, April 5, 1996. Brando denied his opinions are anti-Semitic, but militant and mainstream Jewish leaders said his comments about Jews controlling Hollywood were ‘sloppy’ and shameful. (AP Photo/Larry King Live, Danny Feld)
Over the decades, King interviewed hundreds of celebrities, news-makers and politicians ranging from Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 22, 2021
Following are excerpted portions of the in-depth interview, which may be read in its entirety, or heard, via the link at the end this entry.
Book ‘Kill Switch’ Examines The Racist History Of The Senate Filibuster
TERRY GROSS, HOST: Congress is trying to return to normal after the insurrection. But what is normal? There are more threats of violence surrounding the inauguration. The norm-breaking that became the norm during the Trump presidency is about to change with the Biden administration. Another change will be the new Democratic majority in the Senate. After newly elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in, the Senate will be evenly divided, 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. But Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tie-breaking vote.
But how much power does that actually give Democrats in the Senate? A majority is not enough to pass legislation anymore and hasn’t been for a long time because of the modern use of the filibuster. It takes three-fifths of the Senate to override a filibuster, which means the minority only needs 41 votes to prevent any bill from even coming to a vote. My guest Adam Jentleson says the modern use of the filibuster has crippled American democracy, enabling the minority to systematically block bills favored by the majority. He’s the author of the new book, “Kill Switch,” about the rise of the modern Senate. He knows the ins and outs of Senate rules because he worked as Harry Reid’s deputy chief of staff when Reid was the Democratic leader. Jentleson joined Reid’s staff in 2010 and stayed until 2017.
“Kill Switch” is a history of how the filibuster started as a tool of Southern senators upholding slavery, and then later was used as a tool to block civil rights legislation. The book concludes with Senator Mitch McConnell’s advances in the use of filibuster as an obstructionist tool. Jentleson is now public affairs director at Democracy Forward, which was founded in 2017 to fight corruption in the executive branch.
ADAM JENTLESON: Slowly, over the course of time, but primarily to serve the interests of slave states and try to preserve slavery against the march of progress and a growing majority of both states and Americans who wanted to abolish slavery. The filibuster did not exist in name or practice until about the middle of the 19th century. So this was well after all of the Founding Fathers had passed away. James Madison was one of the longest lived and an ardent opponent of the filibuster to the extent that it sort of was coming into existence in the 1830s. And he passed away in the early 1830s.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), United States Representative of South Carolina-CD6, 10th Secretary of War, 16th Secretary of State, Senator of South Carolina, and 7th Vice President (1825-1832), ardent slavery proponent, and slave owner.
So the progenitor of the filibuster, its main innovator, was John C. Calhoun, the great nullifier, the leader, father of the Confederacy. And Calhoun innovated the filibuster for the specific purpose of empowering the planter class. He was a senator from South Carolina. His main patrons were the powerful planters. And he was seeking to create a regional constituency to empower himself against the march of progress and against – what was becoming clear was a superior economic model in the North. So Calhoun started to innovate forms of obstruction that came to be known as the filibuster.
GROSS: So you describe John Calhoun as, like, basically, the father of the filibuster. Let’s be clear who he was. I mean, he not only wanted to protect slave owners, he argued that slavery created racial harmony and improved the lives of slaves. You quote him in the book. He said, never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. Amazing that he could justify that slavery was improving the lives of enslaved people.
JENTLESON: That’s right. And it’s important to note at this time, you know – not to give people of that era too much credit for being enlightened. But, you know, there was a shift in public opinion going on regarding slavery in the United States. The abolitionist movement was beginning to gain traction. And, you know, while folks weren’t exactly at the enlightened state of believing in full equality, they recognized that slavery had – was, at best, a necessary evil, emphasis on the evil.
And so Calhoun took it upon himself to argue that there was nothing evil about it. In that same speech that you quoted, he went on to explain that slavery was not a necessary evil, but, quote, “a positive good.” He was such an ardent defender and such a vehement racist that he couldn’t even accept the sort of antebellum acknowledgement that there were parts of the institution that were evil. So it was very clear what his motivations were. He wanted to preserve slavery. And the filibuster was what he deployed to achieve that goal.
GROSS: So we’ve established that needing a supermajority to pass legislation was not what the founders wanted. They wanted simple majorities. You’ve talked about how the filibuster was initiated in the mid-19th century and the ways it was used to enable slave owners and to keep the institution of slavery. But you write that the only time the filibuster was used during Jim Crow with any consistency was to block any form of civil rights legislation and that this happened through the 1960s.
So give us an example of that – like, of the systematic use of the filibuster to block civil rights legislation.
JENTLESON: So what Southern senators faced starting in the 1920s was majority support for civil rights bills. These were rudimentary civil rights bills. These were anti-lynching bills and anti-poll tax bills, but they were civil rights bills nonetheless. These bills started passing the House with big majorities. They had presidents of both parties in the White House ready to sign them, and they actually had enormous public support. Gallup polled the public on anti-lynching bills in 1937 and found 70% of Americans supporting federal anti-lynching laws. And they polled anti-poll tax laws in the 1940s and found 60% support. So Southern senators started to block these bills in the name of minority rights Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Democratic Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.
Perhaps you’ll recognize the opening words of Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, delivered March 4, 1861. There is one very minor, only slight change, however, and it is the substitution of the word “Democratic” for the word “Republican.”
That is purposeful, and deliberate, to illustrate a case in point.
Photograph shows participants and crowd at the first inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, at the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. Lincoln is standing under the wood canopy, at the front, midway between the left and center posts. His face is in shadow but the white shirt front is visible. (Source: Ostendorf, p. 87) “A distant photograph from a special platform by an unknown photographer, in front of the Capitol, Washington, D.C., afternoon of March 4, 1861. ‘A small camera was directly in front of Mr. Lincoln,’ reported a newspaper, ‘another at a distance of a hundred yards, and a third of huge dimensions on the right … The three photographers present had plenty of time to take pictures, yet only the distant views have survived.” (Source: Ostendorf, p. 86-87)
Slave Southern states nowadays are largely Republican political strongholds.
That is not accidental. It is deliberate, and has been an ongoing effort in the Republican party since at least 1964, or, perhaps even earlier.
States below the Mason-Dixon line – a surveyor’s line of demarcation delineating primarily the southern border of Pennsylvania, and the western border of Delaware, from Maryland – sometimes also known as, or referred to as “slave states,” i.e., states where slavery as an institution was considered not only legal, but morally upright, ethical, and good – were once largely Democratic strongholds until around the mid-1960’s, or thereabouts.
The tables, however, were largely turned, and the tide began to shift in earnest beginning with the candidacy of Arizona United States Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the failed Republican candidate for President in 1964, opposite President Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, who as Vice President, succeeded to the Presidency upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
At the GOP National Convention that year, New York’s Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller ominously warned of the invasion of the GOP by radicalized elements from the South, which included members of the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, Communists, and other domestic terrorists. In his address to the party’s delegates at the July 1964 Republican National Convention at Cow Palace in Daly City, California, he was given 5 minutes to address the delegates, and was booed for over 16 minutes. He was requesting adoption of a resolution to the 1964 official party platform condemning those groups and individuals whom belonged to them, who had infiltrated the Republican party, and sought to include the following language: “The Republican Party fully respects the contribution of responsible criticism, and defends the right of dissent in the democratic process. But we repudiate the efforts ofRead the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 18, 2021
Dear President Lincoln,
You and George Washington had something in common, aside from Presidency – you were both honest men.
There’s a story told, that as we understand it now, is but a mythical fable of someone’s vivid imagination, although every lie has an element of truth. That fable was first apparently crafted by the Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), the first person ordained by the Anglican Church for the Episcopal Church in America after the American Revolution.
Though he first studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and in London, his calling was apparently to the Christian ministry, and he never practiced medicine.
His 1784 ordination – first as deacon, as customary, September 5, and then as priest on September 12 – was remarkable in part, because he was the first beneficiary of the English Parliament’s passage of the Enabling Act on August 13, 1784, which thereby enabled English bishops to ordain clergy for the American Church without requiring them to swear a loyalty oath to the English sovereign.
He later served as rector in two Maryland parishes – All Hallows’ Parish in Anne Arundel County, 1784-1789, and then from 1790-1792 of Westminster Parish in the same county.
For about 20 years, he was also an itinerant preacher at various Virginia parishes, most notably among them the Pohick Church, where George Washington (1732-1799) attended, before the Revolution. That enabled him to refer to himself as “formerly rector of Mt. Vernon Parish.”
From around 1791 until his death, he became an author, and book peddler for publisher Matthew Carey. Though he wrote and had published various moralizing tracts and biographies of individuals of renown in that era, such as Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, and General Francis Marion (a Continental Army General nicknamed the “Swamp Fox” for his elusive tactics), his most famous biography was of George Washington – “The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, General and Commander of the Armies of America” – and first published in 1800. It proved to be quite a success, especially with school-aged children, and in its fifth edition in 1806 – albeit with a slightly different title, “The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen” – for the first time, there appeared the anecdote of Washington and the cherry tree.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 15, 2021
Freedom.
What a concept, eh?
The very idea that you have a brain, and therefore, can think independently to decide FOR YOURSELF what you want, or ought, to do, continues to frustrate others who think that they know better than you do what personal decisions you should make for yourself!
It’s an adult decision.
Why, it’s nothing short of… LIBERTY!
ENOUGH! of the “Nanny State”!
Take your religion home, and GET IT OUT OF GOVERNMENT!!
Practice it PRIVATELY, with your family, friends, and other like-minded individuals. STOP forcing your PRIVATE religious ethics and morals upon others by writing public laws that mirror your private interpretation of your religion.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists that cited the establishment clause of our nation’s Constitution, which as he wrote, erected a “a wall of separation between Church & State,” or as we now say, between government, and religion.
Religious nuts have been trying to tear it down, ever since.
And they’re STILL TRYING TODAY!
‘Drug Use For Grown-Ups’ Serves As An Argument For Personal Choice
If you grew up scared of what illicit drugs could do to you — hearing about all the horrors that could befall you from everyone from Nancy Reagan to your parents — the threat may have felt very real: If you actually took a puff off that joint that the kid who slept through math class offered you, it could lead to failed relationships, chronic unemployment, self-destruction.
The shame would outlive you.
But drugs are a more complicated matter than they’ve been made out to be, according to Dr. Carl L. Hart. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the Columbia University professor of psychology and psychiatry zealously argues that drug use should be a matter of personal choice — and that, in more cases than not, personal choice can lead to positive outcomes. His positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense — and are backed up by ample research.
A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report:
“The practice spread widely…Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”
Then there was the post-Civil War use of cocaine among some Black day laborers, something Hart writes was at first encouraged by white employers because of the productivity it could promote. Soon enough, however, articles appeared widely that tried to make a connection between African American cocaine use and criminality. One particularly egregious article in The New York Times in 1914, cited by Hart, even reported that some police in the South “who appreciate the vitality of the cocaine-crazed” were switching to higher-caliber weaponry capable of “greater shocking power for the express purpose of combating ‘the fiend’.”
But horrifying history aside, one of the book’s most eye-opening aspects is its challenge of the long-running association between drugs and addiction. First the basics: Addiction, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM – 5), must be a source of distress for a drug user. It must also interfere with a person’s job, parenting or personal relationships. Other indications of addiction may be Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, January 2, 2021
There is little-to-no question that the damage done to the Republican Party by the Liar/Narcissist/Loser in Chief has taken a toll upon the party, and it may well be years before they can recover from the 4-year onslaught.
There is also little-to-no question that they have been their own worst enemy. That is not to say that the Democrats are all light and goodness, for they are not. Hillary Rodham Clinton did her damndest to hobble the party by literally having the party’s directors and upper level managers sign a contract over to her relinquishing, and ceding control of the party to her. While that was not illegal, it was unethical has hell, and spelled the end of Bernie Sanders candidacy, who, with crowds surpassing those of Hillary and Trump combined, and with a political history that was unwavering and consistent, appeared TWICE as if he would be the party’s nominee. But for Hillary.
Her corrupted actions were detailed in a book authored by Donna Brazile, which was entitled “Hacks.”
And, perhaps you may recall how she later revealed in her book, an excerpt of which was made into a Politico article, what she’d found when she was briefly DNC chair, specifically, how a back-room deal was struck between Hillary and the DNC a year before the 2016 election campaign season began.
“I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
“So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
“When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook [Hillary’s Campaign Manager] with a copy to Marc Elias [General Counsel for Hillary’s campaign]—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC
Senator Josh Hawley isn’t just engaging in civic vandalism—he is an emblem of a weak and rotten Republican Party.
Ryan Christopher Jones / The New York Times / Redux
Those hoping for a quick snapback to sanity for the Republican Party once Donald Trump is no longer president should temper those hopes.
The latest piece of evidence to suggest the enduring power of Trumpian unreality is yesterday’s announcement by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri that he will object next week when Congress convenes to certify the Electoral College vote.
Hawley knows this effort will fail, just as every other effort to undo the results of the lawful presidential election will fail. (A brief reminder for those with faulty short-term memories: Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes.) Every single attempt to prove that the election was marked by fraud or that President-elect Biden’s win is illegitimate—an effort that now includes about 60 lawsuits—has flopped. In fact, what we’ve discovered since the November 3 election is that it was “the most secure in American history,” as election experts in Trump’s own administration have declared. But this immutable, eminently provable fact doesn’t deter Trump and many of his allies from trying to overturn the election; perversely, it seems to embolden them.
One such Trump ally is Tommy Tuberville, the newly elected senator from Alabama, who has suggested that he might challenge the Electoral College count. And there are others. But what makes Hawley’s declaration ominously noteworthy is that unlike Tuberville—a former college football coach who owes his political career in a deep-red state to Trump’s endorsement in the GOP primary against Jeff Sessions—Hawley is a man who clearly knows better. According to his Senate biography, he is “recognized as one of the nation’s leading constitutional lawyers.” A former state attorney general, Hawley has litigated before the Supreme Court. He graduated from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006. He has clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts; he taught at one of London’s elite private schools, St. Paul’s; and he served as an appellate litigator at one of the world’s biggest law firms.
It is one thing for Hawley to position himself as a populist, something he had done even before he was elected in 2018; it is quite another for him to knowingly engage in civic vandalism and, in ostentatiously unpatriotic ways, undermine established norms and safeguards. This is precisely what Senator Hawley is now doing—and he is doing so in the aftermath of Trump’s loss, when some political observers might have hoped that the conspiracy mindset and general insanity of the Trump modus operandi would begin to lose their salience.
A longtime acquaintance of the Missouri senator explained to me Hawley’s actions this way: “Hawley never wants to talk down to his voters. He wants to speak for them, and at the moment, they are saying the election was stolen.”
“He surely knows this isn’t true,” this acquaintance continued, “and that the legal arguments don’t hold water. And yet clearly the incentives he confronts—as someone who wants to speak for those voters, and as someone with ambitions beyond the Senate—lead him to conclude he should pretend the lie is true. This is obviously a very bad sign about the direction of the GOP in the coming years.”
Think about this statement for a moment: The incentives Josh Hawley and many of his fellow Republicans officeholders confront lead them to conclude that they should pretend the lie is true.
Those who have hoped that Republicans like Senator Hawley would begin to break free from Trump once he lost the election have not understood the nature of the change that has come over the party’s base.
Trump was the product of deep, disturbing currents on the American right; he was not the creator of them. Those currents have existed for many decades; we saw them manifested in the popularity of figures such as Sarah Palin, Patrick J. Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Oliver North, and many others. But their power grew in force and speed over the past decade. In 2016, Trump tapped into these currents and, as president and leader of the Republican Party, he channeled those populist passions destructively, rather than in the constructive ways that other Republicans before him, such as Ronald Reagan, had done. (Even if you’re a progressive who loathed Reagan, the notion that he was a pernicious and malicious force in American politics in the style of Trump is simply not credible.)
What is happening in the GOP is that figures such as Hawley, along with many of his Senate and House colleagues, and important Republican players, including the former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, are all trying to position themselves as the heirs of Trump. None of them possesses the same sociopathic qualities as Trump, and their efforts will be less impulsive and presumably less clownish, more calculated and probably less conspiracy-minded. It may be that not all of them support Hawley’s stunt; perhaps some are even embarrassed by it. But these figures are seismographers; they are determined to act in ways that win the approval of the Republican Party’s base. And this goes to the heart of the danger.
The problem with the Republican “establishment” and with elected officials such as Josh Hawley is not that they are crazy, or that they don’t know any better; it is that they are cowards, and that they are weak. They are far more ambitious than they are principled, and they are willing to damage American politics and society rather than be criticized by their own tribe. I’m guessing that many of them haven’t read Nietzsche, but they have embraced his philosophy of perspectivism, which in its crudest form posits that there is no objective truth, no authoritative or independent criteria for determining what is true or false. In this view, we all get to make up our own facts and create our own narratives. Everything is conditioned on what your perspective is. This is exactly the sort of slippery epistemic nihilism for which conservatives have, for more than a generation, reproached the academic left—except the left comes by it more honestly.
The single most worrisome political fact in America right now is that a significant portion of the Republican Party lives in a fantasy world, a place where facts and truth don’t hold sway, where “owning the libs” is an end in itself, and where seceding from reality is a symbol of tribal loyalty, rather than a sign of mental illness. This is leading the party, and America itself, to places we’ve never been before, including the spectacle of a defeated president and his supporters engaging in a sustained effort to steal an election.
The tactics of Hawley and his many partisan confreres, if they aren’t checked and challenged, will put at risk what the scholar Stephen L. Carter calls “the entire project of Enlightenment democracy.” This doesn’t seem to bother Hawley and many in his party. But what he should know—and, one hopes, does know, somewhere in the recesses of his heart—is that he has moved very far away from conservatism.
Whether the Republican Party can be salvaged is very much an open question. I don’t know the answer. But here is what I do know: Patriotic Republicans and conservatives need to fight for the soul of the Republican Party, for its sake and for the sake of the nation. America needs two healthy and sane political parties. Trump’s departure on January 20 should open up space for at least a few brave and responsible figures to arise, to help ground the GOP in truth rather than falsehoods, reality instead of fantasy, and to use the instruments of power for the pursuit of justice.
Their task won’t be easy; right now the political winds are in their face rather than at their back. Trump’s hold on the GOP remains firm, and separating from Trump and Trumpism will trigger hostility in an often angry and radicalized base. The right-wing ecosystem is in a mood to find and (figuratively) hang traitors, whom it defines as anyone in the Republican Party who doesn’t acquiesce to Trump’s indecency and paranoia. Which in turn means that those hoping to lead a Republican reclamation project need to find ways to be shrewd and persuasive, to be crafty while maintaining their integrity. They need to connect with the base but find ways to elevate it instead of pandering to it. In better times, many Republican leaders have done so, starting of course with Abraham Lincoln, “the great hero of America’s struggle for the noblest cause,” in the words of his early 20th-century biographer Lord Charnwood. But others have done so as well.
Our collective hope should be that principled Republicans will find their voice and prevail—one courageous step at a time, one act of decency at a time, one year at a time.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in March 2016. The Senate never voted on his nomination.
Led by Republican Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell, the Senate took no action on POTUS Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick B. Garland on March 16, 2016.
The last time the Senate had NOT considered a SCOTUS nominee was 61 years 4 months 8 days prior with Harlan Johnson, who was nominated by Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 9, 1954.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 21, 2020
This is what the soft hatred of bigotry cloaked in religious garb looks like.
This revelation should come as no surprise, that a radicalized right-wing religious zealot should serve at a high level on the Board of Directors for three schools in three separate states under a common umbrella would discriminate.
Below her image are three more images of the same type thing.
This person must NOT be confirmed to the nation’s highest court!
And toward that end, perhaps it may alarm you to know that a Ku Klux Klansman has been seated on the nation’s highest court.
You can read Matt Reimann’s excellently succinct August 15, 2017 article via the link above. Of note, Mr. Justice Black was also a “textualist” on matters of interpretation of the Constitution – the same thing late Justice Scalia said he was, and which Judge Barrett says she is.
“CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she is preparing for when Amy Coney Barrett takes her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was asked to share her thoughts Tuesday on the judge and minced no words.
“Mayor Lightfoot was first asked if she views the U.S. Constitution as Judge Barrett does, as an “originalist.”
“Originalists firmly believe all statements in the U.S. Constitution must be strictly interpreted based on the original understanding at the time the Constitution was adopted. They do not believe in the concept of a “Living Constitution” that can be interpreted in the context of current times.
““You ask a gay, black woman if she is an originalist? No, ma’am, I am not,” Lightfoot laughed.
““That the Constitution didn’t consider me a person in any way, shape or form because I’m a woman, because I’m black, because I’m gay? I am not an originalist. I believe in the Constitution. I believe that it is a document that the founders intended to evolve and what they did was set the framework for how our country was going to be different from any other.
““But originalists say that, ‘Let’s go back to 1776 and whatever was there in the original language, that’s it.’ That language excluded, now, over 50 percent of the country. So, no I’m not an originalist.”
“Mayor Lightfoot said she’s deeply worried about some of Judge Barrett’s stated views, for instance, being against gay marriage.
““I deeply worry about this woman’s stated views. She’s on the record on a number of different things, not the least of which is thinking that gay marriage is something that shouldn’t be countenanced. And she’s got soulmates in Justice Thomas and others, who think that the decision by the Supreme Court…should somehow be rolled back,” Lightfoot said.
““What should I tell my daughter — that somehow now my wife and I are no longer married? That we’re no longer legitimately recognized in the eyes of the law? That is dangerous, dangerous territory. And what about a woman’s right to choose? We’re gonna keep re-litigating this issue, and we’re gonna make abortion illegal, as Amy Coney Barrett thinks it should be?”
“The Mayor also called Republicans “hypocrites” for pushing the Barrett nomination when they put off taking up the Merrick Garland nomination by President Obama.
“”The hypocrisy is something that is a bitter pill for me to swallow,” Lightfoot said.”
The September 13, 1937 front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printed an image of Black’s KKK resignation letter.
“Hugo Black had been associate justice of the Supreme Court for less than a month when the news broke. In September of 1937, an exposé by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found proof of Black’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan. He had joined in September of 1923, and resigned in July, 1925, as one of his first moves before running for one of Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat. Ironically, the smoking gun was Black’s resignation letter, written in legible longhand on Klan stationery, which appeared on the paper’s front page.
“Franklin Roosevelt, who nominated Hugo Black, was implicated in the scandal, which threatened to have far-reaching consequences for the president’s New Deal image. What was once seen as shrewd politics — the New Deal-friendly textualist was confirmed with a 63–16 vote — had become a disgrace. “Millions of Americans,” wrote one Indiana newspaper, “will not forget this sole tangible accomplishment of President Roosevelt’s attempted ‘liberalization’ of the Supreme Court.”
“When asked by the press to remark on the scandal, Roosevelt brushed questions aside, saying, “I only know what I have read in the newspapers. I know that the stories are appearing serially and their publication is not complete. Mr. Justice Black is in Europe where, undoubtedly, he cannot get the full text of these articles. Until such time as he returns, there is no further comment to be made.”“
apnews.com
Barrett Was Trustee At Private School With Anti-Gay Policies
By Michelle R. Smith and Michael Biesecker
October 21, 2020 at 10:51:08 AM CDT
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom.
The policies that discriminated against LGBTQ people and their children were in place for years at Trinity Schools Inc., both before Barrett joined the board in 2015 and during the time she served.
The three schools, in Indiana, Minnesota and Virginia, are affiliated with People of Praise, an insular community rooted in its own interpretation of the Bible, of which Barrett and her husband have been longtime members. At least three of the couple’s seven children have attended the Trinity School at Greenlawn, in South Bend, Indiana.
The AP spoke with more than two dozen people who attended or worked at Trinity Schools, or former members of People of Praise. They said the community’s teachings have been consistent for decades: Homosexuality is an abomination against God, sex should occur only within marriage, and marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Interviewees told the AP that Trinity’s leadership communicated anti-LGBTQ policies and positions in meetings, one-on-one conversations, enrollment agreements, employment agreements, handbooks and written policies — including those in place when Barrett was an active member of the board.
“Trinity Schools does not unlawfully discriminate with respect to race, color, gender, national origin, age, disability, or other legally protected classifications under applicable law, with respect to the administration of its programs,” said Jon Balsbaugh, president of Trinity Schools Inc., which runs the three campuses, in an email.
The actions are probably legal, experts said. Scholars said the school’s and organization’s teachings on homosexuality and treatment of LGBTQ people are harsher than those of the mainstream Catholic church. In a documentary released Wednesday, Pope Francis endorsed civil unions for the first time as pope, and said in an interview for the film that, “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God.”
Barrett’s views on whether LGBTQ people should have the same constitutional rights as other Americans became a focus last week in her Senate confirmation hearing. But her longtime membership in People of Praise and her leadership position at Trinity Schools were not discussed, even though most of the people the AP spoke with said her deep and decades-long involvement in the community signals she would be hostile to gay rights if confirmed.
Suzanne B. Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies sexuality and gender law, said private schools have wide legal latitude to set admissions criteria. And, she said, Trinity probably isn’t covered by recent Supreme Court rulings outlawing employment discrimination against LGBTQ people because of its affiliation with a religious community. But, she added, cases addressing those questions are likely to come before the high court in the near future, and Barrett’s past oversight of Trinity’s discriminatory policies raises concerns.
“When any member of the judiciary affiliates themselves with an institution that is committed to discrimination on any ground, it is important to look more closely at how that affects the individual’s ability to give all cases a fair hearing,” Goldberg said.
The AP sent detailed questions for Barrett to the White House press office. Rather than providing direct answers, White House spokesman Judd Deere instead accused AP of attacking the nominee.
“Because Democrats and the media are unable to attack Judge Barrett’s sterling qualifications, they have instead turned to pathetic personal attacks on her children’s Christian school, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that religious schools are protected by the First Amendment,” Deere said in an email.
Nearly all the people interviewed for this story are gay or said they have gay family members. They used words such as “terrified,” “petrified” and “frightening” to describe the prospect of Barrett on the high court. Some of them know Barrett, have mutual friends with her or even have been in her home dozens of times. They describe her as “nice” or “a kind person,” but told the AP they feared others would suffer if Barrett tries to implement People of Praise’s views on homosexuality on the Supreme Court.
About half of the people asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation against themselves or their families from other members of People of Praise, or because they had not come out to everyone in their lives. Among those interviewed were people who attended all three of its schools and who had been active in several of its 22 branches. Their experiences stretched back as far as the 1970s, and as recently as 2020.
NOT WELCOME
Tom Henry was a senior at Trinity School in Eagan, Minnesota, serving as a student ambassador, providing tours to prospective families, when Barrett was an active member of the board.
In early 2017, a lesbian parent asked him whether Trinity was open to gay people and expressed concern about how her child would be treated.
Henry, who is gay, said he didn’t know what to say. He had been instructed not to answer questions about People of Praise or Trinity’s “politics.”
The next day, Henry recalled, he asked the school’s then-headmaster, Jon Balsbaugh, how he should have answered. Henry said Balsbaugh pulled a document out of his desk drawer that condemned gay marriage, and explained it was a new policy from People of Praise that was going into the handbook.
“He looked me right in the eye and said, the next time that happens, you tell them they would not be welcome here,” Henry recounted. “And he said to me that trans families, gay families, gay students, trans students would not feel welcome at Trinity Schools. And then he said, ‘Do we understand each other?’ And I said, yes. And I left. And then I quit the student ambassadors that day.”
Balsbaugh, who has since been promoted to president of Trinity Schools Inc., says his recollection of the conversation “differs considerably,” but declined Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, September 25, 2020
The Supreme Court, and the legal profession in general, are steeped in tradition – perhaps even more so than the United States Senate.
If you’ve ever heard any of the oral arguments before the nation’s highest court, you’ve likely heard the opening remark, “Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.”
However, if you’ve never heard an oral argument, you’re fortunate to be living in this age, because oral arguments in the nation’s highest court are recorded and archived for posterity sake. Audio recordings of the arguments may be found Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
That oxymoronic statement is likely more moronic than oxy. And yet, we as human beings are capable of change. Change is the only constant. Sometimes, we change for the better, while at others, the worse. But change we must. Again, change is the only constant.
Change implies that a state of being exists in which either progress or regress is possible. (I have opined on that subject previously.) There is no such thing a genuine stasis. Even within the human body, stasis ulcers, also known as venous stasis ulcers, bought about by blood “pooling” – typically in the lower extremities – causes a deterioration in the character and quality of the surrounding flesh. Venous stasis ulcers develop because of venous valve malfunction, and accompanying high return pressure, and occur typically in the feet, ankles, and lower legs. In turn, swelling occurs in the extremity. If you’ve ever wondered why blood only goes in one direction, it’s because of one-way valves in the veins. When the valves malfunction, the return pressure is transmitted AWAY from the heart (venous blood circulates returning TOWARD the heart, in order to be re-oxygenated by passage through the lungs).
But again, let one thing break down, and the entire surrounding environment starts deteriorating. (I would say “goes to hell,” but some might say that’s “unprofessional.”)
Point being, is that condition itself demonstrates that change occurs, and that not all change is good.
On the other hand, positive change yields positive results, and positive change is possible.
What you’re about to read may shock you.
It did me.
For whatever reason, I long had the impression that Lincoln had always been a proponent of racial equality.
That’s not true.
However, he changed.
Exactly how, and when that change began to occur is largely unknown, but his changing opinions about slavery reflected the development of his thought on racial equity. And for that, he became a target, literally, of Southerners who sought his assassination for that reason.
They did mange to succeed in killing him following Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, in Washington, D.C. at Ford’s Theatre, through John Wilkes Booth who throughout the Civil War was a Confederate spy.
“While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor ofRead the rest of this entry »
“Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is “in the know” will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.
“Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level.”
Trump To White Minnesota Audience:
“You Have Good Genes.”
by Christopher Wilson – Senior Writer, Yahoo News
September 21, 2020
It’s called a “dog whistle,” a word or phrase in a speech that is unobjectionable on the surface but conveys a coded message to partisans, by analogy to high-pitched sounds that are audible to dogs but not to people. Richard Nixon leaned on it heavily during his 1968 presidential campaign, referencing “law and order” and a “war on drugs,” further codifying racial appeals from Barry Goldwater for “states’ rights” and “freedom of association.” Ronald Reagan took it to another level in 1976, demonizing a “welfare queen” who fraudulently collected $150,000 in government benefits, a barely concealed appeal to the race and class resentments of White voters toward Blacks.
Ed. NOTE: Reagan’s demagogic demonization of an ostensibly Black woman as a “welfare queen” is a highly-popularized modern-day Republican myth. Linda Taylor, a Tennessee-born White Chicago-area resident, was given the miscreant moniker by the Chicago Tribune in October 1974, which also focused upon her personal possessions – jewelry, furs, and a Cadillac – though the real story of her behavior was much worse, and more complicated than a relatively minor case of simple welfare fraud. In 2013, Josh Levin, Editorial Director for Slate, wrote an extensively detailed report of the real-life character who Reagan mythologized on his campaign trail, exclusively in an effort to capitalize upon the “shock and awe” factor to gain voter support for his candidacy. Reagan’s use of exaggeration as a raconteur was renown, and in a January 1976 campaign rally, as any good story-teller would, he embellished that character by claiming, “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” While much has been written about Reagan’s well-known penchant for demagoguery, little of what he claimed was true, though he made significant political hay with it by portraying one isolated problem as a wholesale representation of systemic organizational failure, which he later used to justify reducing spending on social welfare programs. While Taylor did go to prison for committing about $8000 in welfare fraud (the 2020 value of which would be about $36,500), she was more memorable for her theft-claim and bigamy scams, which frauds were discovered only years later, along with probable murder and kidnapping for which she was never indicted. Levin wrote, “For Linda Taylor, people were consumable goods, objects to cultivate, manipulate, and discard. For Ronald Reagan, Taylor was a tool to convince voters that the government was in crisis.”
By that standard, President Trump’s riff about the “good genes” found among the people of Minnesota — an 80 percent white state — wasn’t a dog whistle. It was a train whistle, folding in Trump’s long-held belief that some people, himself especially, are simply born with superior traits to others.
“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump said during his Saturday rally in front of a nearly all-white crowd in Bemidji. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
The racehorse theory is the belief that some humans have a better genetic endowment than others, and by breeding two superior people you end up with superior offspring. The belief in eugenics, the pseudoscience of trimming out “inferior” bloodlines to increase the quality of the gene pool, is part of a long, racist history in America, from forced sterilizations to research funded by the Carnegie Institution, among other wealthy foundations. Earlier this month, charges surfaced that a doctor at an ICE facility was performing unwanted and likely unnecessary hysterectomies on detained immigrant women, which would prevent them from having more children.
“It’s not just eugenics in theory, but it’s eugenics in practice,” said Steve Silberman, a historian whose Read the rest of this entry »
That is also why, when the first enduring “snap” of winter, i.e., COLD weather, came along, it was called “hog killing weather,” because the cool, even cold temperatures largely delayed (retarded), if not temporarily prevented, spoilage (as rancidness, referring to an oxidized, deteriorated state of fat), and deterioration (rotting) of the uncooked flesh. Lard would be rendered (changed in character) from fat, which is accomplished by heating it, most typically in a large cauldron suspended over an open fire, to melt it.
And as a tenet of their faith, they are vegetarian — some lacto-ovo, some pescatarian, some vegan. And you know you’ve made friends with them when they invite you to share a meal with them — that’s true of any people, religious, or not — and I have always considered it great honor to share a meal with them. One such time was Thanksgiving several years ago, when I was 
A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report:
Warm Southern Breeze 