Justplainbill's Weblog

October 17, 2020

Too True to be funny

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 6:00 pm

(and, yes, oppressed is misspelt)

October 12, 2020

jfasb funnies 10/12/2020

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 6:40 pm

New Ones

September 27, 2020

Riot Solution, thanks to JFASB for sending

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 6:17 pm

 RIOT  SOLUTION:

Want to stop riots, and stop injuring and killing people?  Call Prime
Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dealt with violence as
much as any human leader on earth.  He and his police force came up
with an extremely effective and physically harmless method to disperse
crowds, IMMEDIATELY.

It is easy to deploy safely, never fails, and is very inexpensive.
What is this ingenious and effective method? It is called “Skunk
Water”.  “Skunk Water” smells like, well ya know, and is fired through
fire truck water cannons.  It not only sends the crowds of rioters
running like Col. Jackson’s enemies running down the streets, briars,
brambles, and bushes where the rabbits can’t go, but will send them
home for a long shower and a change of clothes.*  No one, but no one
will continue rioting smelling like a skunk, nor will anyone want to
be around anyone who smells like a skunk, (right politicians?) and it
encourages social distancing.  SKUNK WATER IS THE ANSWER!

*also takes them some time to burn the clothes they were wearing!  By
that time, the urge to riot could be considerably diminished!

September 24, 2020

Football Quotes

Filed under: Political Commentary — Tags: — justplainbill @ 4:39 pm
#1.  “Football is only a game.  Spiritual things are eternal.  Nevertheless, Beat  Texas” — Seen on a church sign in Arkansas prior to the 1969 game.


#2.  “After you retire, there’s only one big event left… and I ain’t ready for that.” — Bobby Bowden/Florida State

#3.  “The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it.” — Lou Holtz/Arkansas

#4.  “When you win, nothing hurts.” — Joe Namath/Alabama


#5.  “Motivation is simple..  You eliminate those who are not motivated.” — Lou Holtz/Arkansas


#6.  “If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold, you gotta know the password, ‘Roll, tide, roll!’” — Bear Bryant/Alabama


#7.  “A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.” — Frank Leahy/Notre Dame


#8.  “There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.” — Woody Hayes/Ohio State


#9.  “I don’t expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation.  I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation.” — Bob Devaney/Nebraska


#10.  “In  Alabama, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in Bear Bryant.” — Wally Butts/Georgia


#11.  “You can learn more character on the two-yard line than anywhere else in life.” — Paul Dietzel/LSU


#12.  “It’s kind of hard to rally around a math class.” — Bear Bryant/Alabama


#13.  When asked if Fayetteville was the end of the world: “No, but you can see it from here.” — Lou Holtz/Arkansas


#14.  “I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game.” — Bear Bryant/Alabama


#15.  “There’s one sure way to stop us from scoring-give us the ball near the goal line.” — Matty Bell/SMU


#16.  “Lads, you’re not to miss practice unless your parents died or you died.” — Frank Leahy/Notre Dame


#17.  “I never graduated from Iowa, but I was there for two terms — Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.” — Alex Karras/Iowa


#18.  “My advice to defensive players:  Take the shortest route to the ball and arrive in a bad humor.” — Bowden Wyatt/Tennessee


#19.  “I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.” — Duffy Daugherty/Michigan State


#20.  “Always remember… Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David.” — Shug Jordan/Auburn


#21.  “They cut us up like boarding house pie.  And that’s real small pieces.” — Darrell Royal/Texas


#22.  “Show me a good and gracious loser, and I’ll show you a failure.” — Knute Rockne/Notre Dame


#23.  “They whipped us like a tied up goat.” — Spike Dykes/Texas Tech


#24. “I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the  Texas  Longhorns, why he didn’t recruit me and he said:  ‘Well, Walt, we took a look at you and you weren’t any good.’” — Walt Garrison/Oklahoma State


#25.  “Son, you’ve got a good engine, but your hands aren’t on the steering wheel.” — Bobby Bowden/Florida State


#26.  “Football is not a contact sport — it is a collision sport.  Dancing is a contact sport.” — Duffy Daugherty/Michigan State


#27.  After USC lost 51-0 to Notre Dame, his postgame message to his team: “All those who need showers, take them.” — John McKay/USC


#28.  “If lessons are learned in defeat, our team is getting a great education.” — Murray Warmath/Minnesota


#29.  “The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb.  To be a back, you only have to be dumb.” — Knute Rockne/Notre Dame


#30.  “Oh, we played about like three tons of buzzard puke this afternoon.” — Spike Dykes/Texas Tech


#31.  “It isn’t necessary to see a good tackle.  You can hear it.” — Knute Rockne/Notre Dame


#32.  “We live one day at a time and scratch where it itches…” — Darrell Royal/Texas


#33.  “We didn’t tackle well today but we made up for it by not blocking..” — Wilson Matthews/Little Rock Central High School


#34.  “Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.” — Darrell Royal/University of Texas


#35.  “I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.” — Knute Rockne/Notre Dame


#36.  “Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.” — John Heisman

September 10, 2020

In Response to BBC History Magazine articles in Vol 21 No 8; Aug 2020

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 2:27 am

In Response:

To the BBC History Magazine

Racist Articles in the Vol 21 No 8

Aug 2020

BBC History Magazine, August 2020 issue, has several articles misconstruing and intentionally misleading, regarding the period in United States’ history leading up to The War of 1861 a.k.a. The American Civil War, and the subsequent 150 years of alleged systemic racism, let us call it from 1820 C.E. through today. Certain omissions and rat holes should be included and mentioned as well as their reference sources, which I shall include as a bibliographic end-note. Before any reader resorts to the sewer of the (un) -social media (Twitter & Facebook), please read the books herein.

Prior to 1619 C.E., the 15+ British colonies of North America, let us not forget Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and the other Canadian establishments, had all prohibited slavery, allowing only for indentured servitude.[1] The colonial economic system of the time was Mercantilism, a form known for its monopolistic and crony capitalistic practices. Of the many monopolies of the time, the monopoly of The Slave Trade belonged to the British Crown. The Crown received a percentage of every slave sale within The Empire, and, no slaver could legally trade slaves without the Royal Imprimatur.

When the slaver tried to sell his slaves in Virginia in 1619, he was turned away as slavery was illegal in Virginia, and all of British North America.

Knowing that what he was doing was legal within The Empire, the slaver complained, The Colonial Office issued a Writ requiring all of the North American Colonies to open slave markets throughout, and slavery was forced, by an Act of The Crown, upon the British Colonies in North America; and,  The King got a cut of every slave sale.

From this point on, the issue of slavery becomes a very sensitive political, religious, and divisive socio-economic issue. Several of the volumes in the end-note deal with it, but space being limited, I’ll simply state that slavery, except for certain religious reasons, is an economic condition, to which Race has been irrelevant throughout history. The fact that so many Africans were imported to the Western Hemisphere, less than 9% to the British Colonies of North America, was more due to the fact that they were predominantly used as agricultural workers in the Southern Region. Irish slaves were sold as predominantly domestics in the Northern and Atlantic Regions.

Africans taken into slavery were predominantly taken by other Africans, over 83%, in inter-tribal wars and raids, and then sold to European traders through the end of the 18th Century, when most if not all, of those countries with slaves started banning the slave trade, and then, slavery itself. Brazil in the 1880’s being the last country to officially end slavery. More may be said on the current condition of illegal slavery throughout the world, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Throughout U.S. history, the groups that profited from slavery were, New England shipowners and banks; British banks, factors, and manufactories’; Flemish manufactories’; and East African tribes who took the overwhelming majority of Africans into slavery. Financial records show that most plantations and slave owners, were working bankrupts, big mansions notwithstanding. Note how, in order to survive, George Washington gave up on cash crops and went to agricultural products; how Thomas Jefferson died bankrupt; &c.

In the early 18th Century, The Scottish Reformation and its Evangelicism created a heightened awareness of the humanity of all mankind. It’s impact on The Founders of These United States can be seen in their correspondence and publications but, most importantly for this essay, in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, his Rights of Man, and Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence. Slavery, as a Human and Christian institution, was unacceptable. The problem was, and remained, the amount of capital bound up in it.

With Westward Expansion, slavery moved West with the cotton. Hemp, tobacco, indigo, and potash, the foundations of Southern commercial agriculture, gave way to King Cotton with the invention of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin. With the export of King Cotton, excise revenues exploded, and the divisions between the four Regions, North, Atlantic, South, and West[2]  proved the wisdom of The Founders in creating a bi-Carmel legislature.

However, that only postponed the inevitable war.

After 1790, Jefferson and Madison, recognizing the philosophical divide between themselves as Jeffersonian Yeoman Farmers and Hamilton’s Federalist Jobbers, cobbled together The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions arguing that The Union was a voluntary union, and that is shown by the 9th and 10th Amendments. Secession, whose foundation is/was rooted in Thomas Paine’s works and in the 1776 Declaration of Independence[3], and in basic contract law, is legal and requires constant reaffirmation by each generation.The United States Military Academy’s, USMA, located at West Point in New York State, Constitutional Law course, taught that secession is/was legal.[4]

During The War of 1812, The New England states held a secession convention at Stamford Connecticut wherein they voted to not secede. In The Jackson Administration, South Carolina started to secede, and President Jackson sent former president, now Massachusetts’s Senator John Quincy Adams, to mediate a settlement. The dispute was over taxation. The West, North, and Atlantic regions, seeing the amount of cash being collected through the import excise, wanted to increase the import excise which would have put the entire burden on The South, as The South was the predominant importer. A compromise was met, and various divisive but peaceful agreements were made, which effectively permanently created different countries.

Steam.

In the 1840’s and 1850’s, steam power in the form of railroads, steam threshers, and steam tractors become deconstructive and disruptive technological advancements spelling the peaceful end to slavery but are ignored as such. As steam technology advanced, it became more productive versus slave manpower and cheaper to use and maintain. War based on abolition was stupid as slavery became more expensive than steam. Once again, the amount of capital bound into slavery was a crucial and insurmountable impediment to universal manumission.

From 1820 through 1860, taxes on The South made up over 75% of the federal government’s income. Expenditures during that time, show that over 75% of the national budget, was spent on “national improvement” projects, mostly railroads, canals, and toll roads, in the North, Atlantic, and West Regions. Southern politics allow this, as long as their labor capital is left alone or compensation made, and their representation in congress, in both houses, is unaffected. In the early 1850’s a compromise spending plan for a trans-continental railroad is cobbled together in the expectation that this will draw all four Regions together, as well as integrate the Louisiana Purchase lands and the lands taken from Mexico in 1836.

The original track for this line, was: Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington District of Columbia, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, New Orleans, and pretty much West along where I-20 currently runs, allowing for then existing geographic and political boundaries, to The Port of Los Angeles. Ambitious project, but one that would certainly benefit all of These United States.

Didn’t happen. The Atlantic and Western Regions got The North to go along with a change, and with a majority in The House, that ran the proposed trans-continental railroad along what is now mostly I-70. So, a project that would be mostly paid by Southerners and that would benefit all, became a project that would be paid by Southerners and not benefit them at all, which was the federal government policy from 1819 forward.

This was not the only issue. The Mason-Dixon Line, the slave-free state entry into the Union issue, slaves as property[5], extension of federal jurisdiction over all water[6], suggestion to re-invade and conquer Mexico and all of Central America through to Columbia and Venezuela as well as the Caribbean, &c.

From 1620 through 1860, although treated differently, notice the prohibitions in the Indiana and Illinois state constitutions of 1848, as well as the political franchise, the post-Civil War animus and violence toward those of African descent, didn’t exist. Both slave and freemen contributions to the economy were too extant to be cavalierly dismissed.

What does trigger this animus?

In 1860, the Liberal Wing of The Republican Party, the abolitionists in particular, join with the splintered Whigs, and nominate Abraham Lincoln. With the Democrats split with two candidates, Lincoln wins the presidential election, and a significant portion of the congress goes liberal Republican.

This drives the first of two secessions.

The seven Deep South States secede and declare Birmingham the capitol of The Confederate States of America[7]. These seven states are where slavery is still strong and a viable and integral part of the economy. States like Virginia have by now, through soil ruination reduced slave populations. The Tidewater will no longer grow crops having been so depleted by King Cotton. Lincoln, in violation of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, declares that he will raise an army and bring the wayward states into line. The authority to raise an army is given to congress in Article I, not the president, and congress is in recess. Then Lincoln states that he will take his army and cross Virginia, a state who has not seceded, to get to the rebels.

Virginia and the other two border states stick to the philosophies in the 1776 Declaration of Independence & States’ Rights as delineated in the 9th and 10th Amendments, and declare that every state has the right to choose its own government. They also declare that any attempted invasion by the unionist/Lincoln army will be met with force. Lincoln proceeds, Virginia and the others secede, and Richmond is made the capital of the C.S.A. The Cause,[8] later known as The Lost Cause is the right to chose one’s own government, as declared and defined in the works of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. The Lost Cause is not slavery. It is those Natural Rights enumerated in the works of Thomas Paine and in the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln’s responses lead to triggering the war and its devastation. Slavery is not originally an issue, keeping The Union united is the reason for this war.[9]

Keep in mind that up until this point, Lincoln has proposed that all of the slaves be bought and manumitted by the federal government, a process he is told by congress that is unconstitutional as congress has not the authority to buy slaves, and that he believes that all of the Africans thus freed should be shipped back to Africa at taxpayer expense.

Where comes the animus?

The American Civil War is, by far, the bloodiest world conflict to date. Each battle’s casualty list is so long that every European country blanches at them. Antietam/Sharpsburg is so bloody that both Britain and France decide that they should intercede and recognize the CSA as a free and independent country, thus permanently splintering the United States and creating a new and powerful force in North America which will balance and counter the USA’s growth and projected dominion.[10]

Lincoln knows of this European hostility towards his administration as his war has disrupted trade and caused a European recession. In cabinet, he suggests that they change the footing of the war from just union to include abolition & free trade. His first attempt at getting The Emancipation Proclamation approved fails as, once again, everyone who can read decides that Article II does not give him such authority. Lincoln persists and says that the authority to manumit stems from his position as Commander-in-Chief as this is an economic attack on a declared enemy.[11]

Politically, Britain and France, having abolished slavery years ago, for both social and religious reasons, and both with constitutional monarchies, cannot allow themselves to be tainted with supporting slavery. Both governments would be vilified and voted out of office. Thus, they do not recognize The Confederate States of America.

From this stems the violence and animus toward the African and Amer-Indian former slave.[12]

The list of atrocities perpetrated upon the Southern states are in several books in the end-note. They include Butcher Butler’s occupation of New Orleans, Grant’s burning of Jackson MS so many times even after surrendering that Jackson became known as ‘chimney-ville’, and Lincoln’s orders to take innocent hostages and if there were problems in that particular venue, hang the innocents as a lesson to the others, and the taking of personal property as “contraband” and selling it to foreign agents at discounts while keeping the proceeds for personal gain.

As The Emancipation Proclamation was proclaimed, the continuation of the war and the Confederacy’s crushing defeat, economic collapse[13], and double occupation[14] came to be directly blamed on the African former slaves.

Africans and Amer-Indians were badly treated throughout the United States, North, South, Atlantic, West, and Pac-Coast. In World War I, they were drafted. In FDR’s depression, regardless of status or when hired, FDR and SCOTUS allowed Africans to be fired before Whites at the whim of employers and unions. Freedmen, and Irish & Italian immigrants were seen as threats to common wage earners yet potential sources of power to political cliques against established powers.[15]

Yet, things were gradually improving.

World War II sees the turning point and the acceptance of each to the other of both African-Americans and Euro-Americans.[16]

The melting pot of the military experience brings immeasurable assimilation based on experience and not biased talk. Everyone’s blood is red and when seen spilling out of a wound, skin color becomes irrelevant. Everyone being subject to the draft, regardless of color or other background, brings forward a personal commonality difficult to break and requiring more power than rhetoric can provide to break, in the face of common traumatic experience. The military experience of World War II and the need for labor on the home front, creation of a level playing field not seen before, and which continued, even in the Deep South, Strom Thurmond & John Stennis notwithstanding, through the assassination of Dr. King and President Johnson’s racist and SCOTUS’ approved New Society.

The statistics for the period of 1945 – 1967 are profound. Out-of-wedlock births are lower among Blacks than Whites. Upward economic mobility is greater. Educational opportunity and class standing is greater. Lower crime in Harlem NYC than in St. Albans NYC. And it goes on and on[17]. Dr. King’s equal opportunity for all is winning the day. Assimilation and personal success, based on the individual’s character and personal skill set, predominate and predict an economic utopia devoid of division and the possibility of a truly mature society, based on universal Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Moving toward equality is squashed at this point by several cultural and political events. LBJ & Co. put all sorts of exceptions in The Selective Service Act (aka “The Draft”), in §2 which applied mostly to Euro-Americans, college graduates, and specific “essential” job classifications. This disproportionately reduced the Euro-pool candidates and unfairly increased the, now, Black candidates. Affirmative action was introduced both legally and culturally as ‘reparations.’ As a practical matter, it made Blacks a privileged class and the Euro-Middle Class a subordinate, oppressed class paying all the bills, while the intellectual and establishment elites looked on and supervised the redistribution of over twenty-three trillion dollars ($23,000,000,000.00) through various ‘war’ programs and educational assistance farces.[18] Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan, appear to assassinate Dr. King which kills Dr. King’s equality agenda, and they replace it with the victim/reparation Racist agenda, from which they both profit.

As anyone with a knowledge of the basics of organizational theory will tell you, with the exception of The March of Dimes and various religious charitable organizations,[19] just because an organization has reached its goal doesn’t mean that it will go away. It will always try to continue, for good or ill, to keep itself alive, functioning, and providing wages for its employees and benefits, financial or otherwise, to its founders +/or successors. Government programs are no different. Now that a group of permanent victims has been established, and a group defined as oppressors who may be permanently charged with fiscal liability, and a bureaucratic oligopoly[20] created to feed off of this fisc, Racism, based not on race but on the amount of melanin[21] in one’s skin, will go on until  either the economic incentives fail or Thomas Chittum’s Civil War II predictions are fulfilled.

Racism in the United State of America is not systemic; it is economic and as long as a regulated Free Market is our economic foundation, will gradually disappear so long as each generation progresses toward complete cultural assimilation; however, Racism, both Euro-Phobic and Afro-Phobic, will continue for as long as some profit from it and its divisiveness, or until the taxpayer revolts and an equal playing field is introduced.

Bibliography

Adams, Charles                                                                        Slavery, Secession & Civil War

Bartlett, Bruce                                                                          Wrong on Race

Borneman, Walter R.                                                             1812, The War that Forged a Nation

Callaway, Colin G.                                                                    The Scratch of a Pen 1763

Cooper, William                                                                       Jefferson Davis, American

Cox-Richardson, Heather                                                    The Death of Reconstruction

Detzer, David                                                                            Allegiance

Lefkowitz, Mary                                                                       Not Out of Africa

DiLorenzo, Thomas                                                               The Real Lincoln

                                                                                                         Hamilton’s Curse

Ellis, Joseph J.                                                                            Founding Brothers

                                                                                                         His Excellency George Washington

Foner, Eric                                                                                  Reconstruction

Foote, Shelby                                                                             The Civil War: a narrative

Freehling, William                                                                  Secession

                                                                                                         The Road to Disunion (2 Volumes)                       

Goldsworthy, Adrian                                                             The Complete Roman Army

Kaminski, John P.                                                                    The Founders on the Founders

Kennedy & Kennedy                                                              The South Was Right

Kennedy, Roger G.                                                                  Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause

Kukla, Jon                                                                                    A Wilderness so Immense

Maier, Pauline                                                                           Ratification

Mapp, Alf J.                                                                                 Thomas Jefferson

Marshall, Taylor                                                                      Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages

Mason, Matthew                                                                      Slavery and Politics in the Early American                                                                                                                   Republic

McCullough, David                                                                  John Adams

McDonald, Forrest                                                                  States’ Rights and the Union

McLemore, Richard                                                                A History of Mississippi

Middlekauff, Robert                                                               The Glorious Cause

von Mises, Ludwig                                                                 Human Action

Paine, Thomas                                                                          Common Sense

                                                                                                         Rights of Man

Rothbard, Murray N.                                                             Conceived in Liberty (5 volumes)

Schumpeter, Joseph A.                                                          Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

Shankman, Andrew                                                               Crucible of American Democracy

Sowell, Thomas                                                                       Vision of the Anointed

                                                                                                         Intellectuals and Race

                                                                                                         Discrimination and Disparities

Taylor, Alan                                                                               American Colonies

Thomas, Hugh                                                                          The Slave Trade

de Tocqueville                                                                          Democracy in America (2 volumes)

Weisberger, Bernard A.                                                       America Afire

Willis, Garry                                                                               James Madison


[1] Dating back to who knows when. The Roman Legions had enlisted periods starting at 20 years, with, if they wanted to keep you, an option for another ten, and it was at tens thereafter.

[2] Particularly the Ohio River Valley portion of the West, which remained occupied by the Royal Army until 1819 as it took that long for the accords of The Treaty of Versailles 1783 to be fulfilled

[3] “When in the course of human events” – the declaration includes, as do numerous other works, that a people have The Right to establish their own choice of government, as well as that all governmental power derives from The People and that it is a Natural Right, derived from God.

[4] This is one of the principle reasons that so many graduates of the USMA who graduated in the upper half of their classes, went to the Confederacy as generals.

[5] Scott vs Davis, (The Dredd Scott Decision) of the US Supreme Court declaring humans as property – slaves -are not protected by the US Constitution. Another incorrect, political decision by unelected officials.

[6] Justice Story, “if it’s a corncob in a bucket, it’s federal jurisdiction.”

[7] The legal legitimacy for the CSA exists in two arguments: one, the CSA was formed in exactly the same manner as the USA in 1776, and two, read Tom Paine’s pamphlets and the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Both arguments are irrefutable as long as you accept that the USA is legitimate and the statements of Paine and Jefferson are true.

[8] In 1776, known as The Glorious Cause.

[9] An interesting aside at this point: Missouri holds a secession convention and votes to not secede. The MO secessionists recess to Springfield MO and vote to secede, to which the rest of the state mostly ignores them, until … Lincoln sends General Fremont to invade Missouri, which he does at St. Louis declaring Martial Law, to bring them back in line! Decades later, Fremont’s daughter admits that Fremont took the commission so that he could form a kingdom, with himself as king, in the middle of the continent and along the Mississippi River while the rest of the country went to hell in a self-consuming war.

[10] Formalized later as Manifest Destiny, but such was already talked about in the 1790’s and when Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.

[11] Never mind that there was never a declaration of war as that would have legitimized the CSA, nor, if you actually read it, that it frees no slaves as it only applies to those regions in rebellion where his writ does not run. Read it carefully, it frees NO slaves and leaves those enslaved in union states, like Maryland and Delaware, still enslaved. Slavery is not ended in the USA until passage of the 13th Amendment in 1866.

[12] Keep in mind that according to the 1860 census, 59% of US slaves were of African descent and 38% from Native American Tribes. The rest were made up, mostly, of Chinese and Irish Catholics.

[13] The loss of capital caused by the universal manumission. Anybody know how the union slave states were reimbursed for their slaves?

[14] The first being as the war ended and “Reconstruction” and its carpet baggers took over, and the second when the proposed 14th Amendment was rejected by the Southern states and as a punishment the Southern representatives were ejected from congress and the South reoccupied.

[15] Look at the political corruption in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia during these years. Look at Tammany Hall and the Joseph Kennedy political shenanigans.

[16] For a really good look at 1945 through 2020 read anything by Thomas Sowell, start with his Vision of the Anointed, and make sure that you look at all of his source material.

[17] See Dr. Sowell’s many works on these subjects.

[18] ‘War on Poverty,’ ‘War on Crime,’ ‘Pell Grants,’ ‘War on Drugs.’ ‘The Head Start Program.’ ‘Public Television’ & ‘Public Radio’ – Sesame Street & Evening Commentary ; note that ALL of these programs violate SCOTUS’s Disparate Outcome from Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka which is the test for unconstitutional discrimination. A test that is only applied when Blacks scream discrimination. Notice how it is not used in the current Asian-American Lawsuits against universities for admissions discrimination.

[19] The March of Dimes has moved on to Muscular Dystrophy as a cause and other medical researches, whereas as long as there are poor and disadvantaged among us, The Salvation Army, Sisters of Carondelet, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Samaritan’s Purse, &c, will always be with us and to our benefit and succor. Notice how The Southern Poverty Law Center and The ACLU have taken up the most absurd issues while refusing to take on any cause of action that benefits or diminishes the unfair burdens on Euro-Americans or diminishes African-American windfalls and tax redistributions.

[20] Not at all limited to government bureaucracies. Notice how the corporate world has taken to hiring ‘diversity’ officers, universities with Ethnic and Gender Studies programs, all taught by racists and sexists with vested interests in the continuation of both of these prejudices so that they won’t have to get economically productive positions, LGBTQ commissioners hired to see that homosexual technique is properly taught in high schools in Colorado, how all sorts of resources are wasted in non-productive areas.

[21] Skin color

September 6, 2020

Capt John’s Op-Ed #506

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 3:11 pm

                                 I’m Not Just Voting For President Donald J. Trump

By Capt Joseph R. John, September 6, 2020; Op Ed # 506

To answer all of those who keep saying; “I can’t believe you are voting for Trump.”

Well my fellow Americans listen up!  I’m not just voting for President Donald J. Trump.  If you absolutely MUST know what I am voting for:

  • I’m voting for the right of every American Citizen to Bear Arms, as outlined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
  • I’m voting for the next Supreme Court Justice who will not legislate from the bench, but will issue decisions in accordance with the US Constitution.
  • I’m voting to retain the Electoral College, to support the Constitutional Republic that governs all Americans equally under US Federal Law.
  • I’m voting for equal justice for every American, against racism, and against Progressives who call me a racist because I was born white.
  • I’m voting for law and order in support of Police Officers; against Black Lives Matter Marxist and Antifa Domestic Terrorist violent riots in 400 US cities.
  • I’m voting in support of the US Military and Veterans who fought and died for their fellow Americans and the Republic for 244 years.
  • I’m voting to respect of the American Flag that is always missing from the Democratic debates and events.
  • I’m voting to say “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag, which was eliminated from the Pledge during the Democrat Convention.
  • I’m voting for the Freedom of Speech, the right to speak my opinion without being censored, or being told I am not politically correct.
  • I’m voting to close the southern border to prevent white slavers, drugs, MS 13 gangs, terrorists, and Illegal Aliens from 60 nations from entering the US.
  • I’m voting for Freedom of Religion and the right to praise God without the fear of being attacked by Progressives and Democrats.
  • I’m voting for every unborn soul that Planned Parenthood and Democrats supports removing from the womb up to the day of birth, using tax payer money.
  • I’m voting to support The Bill of Rights—Freedom of Assembly, Individual Rights, the Free Enterprise System, and Liberty For All.
  • I’m voting for good and against evil, for Patriotic Americans who oppose the anarchy by Black Lives Matter Marxists and Antifa Domestic Terrorists.
  • I’m voting to strengthen the US Armed Forces, to protect the Republic from the threats from Communist China, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran.
  • I’m voting to support standing and placing my right hand over my heart, and not kneeling when the National Anthem is played.
  • I’m not just voting for the President, I’m voting for the future of our US Constitutional Republic, and to retain our individual freedoms!

What are you voting for?

 Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt    USN(Ret)/Former FBI

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

https://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” -Isaiah 6:8

September 5, 2020

Are you a Socialist, test (thanks to Sue for sending)

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 4:38 pm

Are You A Socialist Test

Former Congressman Steve Stockman | 9/4/20

Biden and Bernie
…if you think 2,000 patriots watching President Trump speak outside are super-spreaders of COVID-19 but massive riots and looting while not practicing social distancing is a good thing that won’t spread COVID-19.

…if you think rioting for 3 months and shouting anti-Trump slogans while the mayor and governor sit on their hands watching their cities burn, refusing help from President Trump, is okay, but you believe the rioting and looting is President Trump’s fault.

…if you think the socialists-communists taking over the Democrat party is mainstream, but you fear and believe President Trump’s free market, putting America first agenda is like the Nazis and is racist.

…if you see people burning and looting as peaceful demonstrators, but citizens rallying peacefully to re-open their businesses as frightening and threatening.

…if you think Michigan’s governor is correct that only non-motor boats on the lake stops the spread of COVID-19, but citizens who have boats with motors spread COVID-19.

…if you think it’s okay for white liberals to scream at African-American police officers calling them the “N” word, advocating the burning of their homes, but President Trump speaking up for African-American police officers is racist.

…if you think the way to stop crime is to cut police budgets, release violent criminals, disarm law abiding citizens and you believe that social workers can protect you from violent crime.

…if you think it’s okay that Hillary Clinton took millions of dollars in donated funds to her nonprofit meant for Haiti to rebuild their nation and redirected it to her friends and family to spend on their own enjoyment; but believe NRA, Steve Bannon, President Trump, Congressman Stockman, and Arkansas Sen. Jon Woods all abused their nonprofits in helping others.

…if you think Michigan’s Henry Ford University research hospital printing a peer-reviewed medical journal article stating that hydroxychloroquine really works is a lie and conspiracy, but you believe a CNN “reporter” with no medical degree or training who, because President Trump recommended it, reports that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work.

…if you think teachers NOT going to work and not teaching your children is okay, but you have no problem seeing teachers and leftist politicians sending their children to private schools so they will have quality education.

…if you don’t believe the Democrat-led Mueller investigation which spent millions of our tax dollars and three years investigating Russian collision determined there was no Russian collision, but you still believe Rep. Adam Schiff claims he has super-secret documents showing Russian collusion.

…if you think having a small sticker on NFL football helmets honoring the lives of five murdered Dallas police officers is too political and disrespectful of football norms, but that plastering pro-communist organizational slogans all over uniforms and football fields is a good thing.

…if you can name all the African-Americans who died from police actions, but can’t name a single murdered police officer or black child who was murdered at the hands of those in Antifa “CHOP’s peaceful” zone.

…if you hate slavery from a 150 years ago, but don’t mention or remember the murder and enslavement of millions of Jews by the Nazi regimen seventy-five years ago and you approve of leftists attacking and defacing 2/3 of synagogues in LA.

…if you think it’s okay that President Obama illegally gave millions of dollars in ransom payment to the Haqqani terrorist network for American traitor Berg Bergdahl, but find President Trump calling a newly-elected Ukrainian President by phone is an impeachable offense.

…if you think it’s okay for President Obama to put in cages children who came to America illegally, but criminal if President Trump follows President Obama’s policy.

…if you think Joe Biden isn’t racist even though he supported segregation of schools, his best friend in the Senate was KKK leader Robert Byrd, he supported restoring American citizenship for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis, and he picked a VP running mate whose family owned 216 slaves; but you think President Trump is a racist and that his support for traditional black colleges and his creation of the lowest black unemployment rate in history are just ploys to appease white supremacists.

…if you have no problem with Uncle Joe Biden’s niece and son getting special Democrat privilege and “get out of jail” deals for defrauding an elderly lady and leaving a crack pipe in a rental car, respectively, but you think President Trump’s company owing a hotel in Washington is a crime.

…if you have no problem with Joe Biden’s son Hunter taking $1.5 billion from the Chinese then investing it in helping China buy military-sensitive companies in America for the production of Chinese weapons, but think Donald Trump Jr. is a criminal for operating hotels owned by the family business owned prior to his father’s election.

…if you want President Trump to condemn Carl Rittenhouse, but you think it’s okay that Joe Biden shouldn’t condemn the cold-blooded murder of a President Trump supporter.

…if you think it’s too dangerous to have your elementary kids return to school because of COVID-19, but you have no problem sending your children to school during the flu season which kills many more children.

…if you think it’s okay that Hillary Clinton used her office as Secretary of State to circumvent American laws by approving a sale of dual-use steel by her sham nonprofit’s largest donor, a Ukrainian oligarch, to the terrorist nation of the Republic of Iran by.

Congratulations! If you scored a 100 in agreement, then you can legally attack supporters of President Trump outside the White House and you are a Democrat in good-standing. Therefore, you can get secret funding, have all your bills paid, and stay in 5-star hotels while flying around the country burning down buildings – all paid for by a former Democrat presidential candidate.

July 28, 2020

2020 election, decide for yourself

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 4:03 pm

July 22, 2020

BLM info, from Bill O’Reilly [c]

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 2:47 pm

Bill’s Column on the BLM Organization: ‘It’s News to Us’

This is one of Bill O’Reilly’s better reports. It has information I have mostly not seen anywhere else:

June 28, 2020

Americans are divided, angry, sad, inspired in some cases, and watchful of the Black Lives Matter Movement.  This week one of its leaders proclaimed on national TV that “if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn the system down.”

Hawk Newsome continued saying he might be talking figuratively … or literally.

Very macho.  Very provocative.  Might be a threat.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/black-lives-matter-leader-burn-down-system

Now, you would think the national press would be all over this story, trying to get accurate information about the Black Lives Matter operation to the American people, who the press is supposed to serve.  I mean, this is an important story, is it not?

Mr. Newsome, who heads the New York City chapter of Black Lives Matter, is the new Huey Newton, whom the 1960’s media largely adored.  Mr. Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party.

Do you know who co-founded the current Black Lives Matter organization?  Bet you don’t.  Because the press has totally ignored the real story regarding the BLM movement.

Three women are behind “The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,” which is the central organization that directs policy. Alicia Garza, 39, is the chief strategic advisor.  Patrisse Cullors, 36, is also a top advisor.

Finally, Opal Tometi, 36, is the third force. She works with the BLM Foundation and is also the Executive Director of the “Black Alliance for Just Immigration.” That group is associated with the “Freedom Road Socialist Organization,” a Marxist-Leninist group that has received funding from the Tides Foundation run by George Soros.

Ah, the plot thickens.

The three women who essentially run the BLM Foundation keep a very low profile.  No cable news interviews for them. 

Nope, these ladies are serious.

In an interview with a professor from Morgan State University, Ms. Cullors said: “Myself and Alicia (Garza) in particular are trained organizers.  We are trained Marxists.  We are super-versed on ideological theories.”

So, do you think the protestors chanting “Black Lives Matter” in the streets understand what the “Black Lives Matter Global Network” really is? 

And then there’s the “Thousand Currents” operation out of Oakland, California.  Ever heard of it?  I didn’t think so.

Because the Black Lives Matter Foundation does not have tax exempt status, at least not yet, the radical left “Thousand Currents” outfit “fiscally sponsors” BLM.  The means it holds their donations, which now number in the millions.  Because the non-profit “Currents” is overseeing the cash, donors are allowed to write off donations to BLM, according to the IRS.

Karl Marx would love this; a capitalist government allowing tax deductions for money earmarked to destroy it.

And so ignorant celebrities and clueless corporations benefit financially when giving money to the radical left Black Lives Matter Global Organization Foundation.  Right on!

Another question. When BLM receives the donated money where does the cash wind up?  Well, according to FactCheck.org, 71 percent of it goes to salaries, benefits, and “consulting fees.”

Wow!  How great is this?  Your mom could be a “consultant.”

Interesting, right? The Black Lives Matter organization is run by Marxists who have access to lots and lots of money.

Who knew?  Certainly not anyone who follows the national press.  Those “news” organizations couldn’t care less.

As long as they can virtue-signal and damage “Donald Trump’s America,” the press is happy in its laziness and apathy.

Does the truth matter?

Not to the media.

Power to the people!

[I never cared much for O’Reilly. When he was on FOX I always found him to be an arrogant blow-hard with HUGE gaps in his knowledge base. However, this particular column is informative and important. The info in it has been checked and is true.]

July 21, 2020

This is what’s going on in Denver, [Thank you, Californicators!]

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 7:57 pm

This is what is going on in Denver:

July 20, 2020

Just a thought, 7/20/20

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 11:17 pm

I was reading the paper, today, and the magnitude of the nihilism hit me. Struck by an article about the next “stimulus” it struck me like being hit with a baseball bat, more than once, that there is a problem/ story here that has been ignored by everyone, Left, Right, or Unaffiliated.

Who is Fricking Paying for The Anarchy???

These riots and lootings have been going on for months. Whole sections of cities, and not just on the West Coast, but throughout these United States, have been taken over by thousands of people. The CHOPS occupiers in Seattle WA lived for months with no discernable economy or income. Who paid for their electricity? Who paid for their food? Who paid for their water? Who paid for their trash removal? I don’t mean after they left, I mean, while they were there? The way to break all of these occupations would have been to cut off all water and electricity, no???

And, I mean ALL of the riots, not just on The West Coast. Who is paying for all of the destruction?

Where did and has all of the money necessary to support these people come from? Adidas may now be paying BLM cash, but that is now. Who paid for it originally?

How much was taxpayer money? How much came from The Ford Foundation? How much came from the anonymous donors of unknown 501(c)(3)’s? Is it all George Soros, NAZI sympathizer, unextradited convicted Felon (in France) +/or his “charities”? Islamic Jihadis? China? Russia?

The media is not going to investigate, nor will any of the various state governments. This leaves only the U.S. Department of Justice.

I’ve emailed the Presidency, the D.O.J., my responsible senator (Cory Gardner) – my other two federal reps are idiots and approve of the rioting – and those whom I think will get involved like Bob Fitton at Judicial Watch.

Who is paying for this nihilism?

Mike Gonzalez’s Op-Ed (got enough requests after my response post, so, here it is)

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 7:35 pm

We Might Get Fooled Again

The policy mistakes of the 1960s and ’70s laid the foundation for the identity politics of today.

By Mike GonzalezJuly 9, 2020 7:16 pm ET

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A National Guard patrolman rests following the Watts riots in Los Angeles, August 1965.PHOTO: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Faced with general unrest in the streets, will America’s political, corporate and media leaders panic? Will they acquiesce to bad policies that the nation will regret for decades? You can count on it, because that’s what happened the last time America was convulsed by racially charged riots.

Some 700 riots shook America between 1965 and 1971, leaving devastation in their wake. Between 1965 and 1968, more than 300 riots left 250 people dead and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, according to historian Hugh Davis Graham. The establishment lost its nerve and capitulated. Militants intimidated politicians, college administrators and midlevel bureaucrats into laying the foundation for the identity politics that rankle our lives today.

In response to the activists’ demands, the policy makers of the past blessed the federal bureaucracy’s creation of racial and ethnic categories and the related use of racial preferences for university admissions, employment and government contracting. The formalizing of groups, the addition of incentives to adhere to them, and the culture of victimhood that the whole scheme instilled, betrayed the colorblind promise of the civil-rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to cure problems like segregation. Instead, by creating an incentive system based on grievances, the architects of identity politics all but ensured victimhood would never end.

That didn’t matter to men like La Raza executive director Raul Yzaguirre, who urged the Census Bureau in 1974 to abandon national origin questions and instead create groups. “There is a difference between a minority group and a national origin group—a difference recognized in terms of national economic and social policies,” he wrote.

The racial activists of the late 1960s and early ’70s insisted they were acting on behalf of the grass roots. Not so. The real images of the period, writes John D. Skrentny in “The Minority Rights Revolution” (2002), weren’t angry raised fists: “The images of the minority rights revolution are mostly of mainstream Euro-American males and minority advocates, wearing suits, sitting at desks, firing off memos, and meeting in government buildings.”

As for the leaders of the establishment, many believed that racial preferences and the balkanization of identity politics would be temporary. Forty years later, we know how wrong they were.

McGeorge Bundy was President Kennedy’s national security adviser. No Boston brahmin was more representative of the elite set. By the time he left Camelot and took the helm of the Ford Foundation in 1966, the era’s riots were fully underway. Bundy and the other foundation executives “had little idea about how to stop the rebellions or their negative impact on ‘the American body politic,’ ” according to historian Karen Ferguson. “Fear of the destabilizing impact and revolutionary possibility of a sustained black revolt drove virtually all American social policy, public and private, during this crisis.”

Bundy and his team believed in a staggering stratagem that Ms. Ferguson calls “developmental separatism.” The theory held that only after a period of ethnic separation could assimilation take place at some time in the future. One could say that they invented modern identity politics.

Already in 1969, the Ford Foundation was making “grant proposals directed at increasing the group identity and power of minorities.” Via large grants, the foundation created the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

They also midwifed racial preferences. Key passages of Justice Harry Blackmun’s frequently quoted concurring opinion in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the 1978 Supreme Court case that cemented racial preferences in college admissions, were lifted almost verbatim from a 1977 essay Bundy wrote for the Atlantic. It was Bundy who wrote: “To get past racism, we must here take account of race. There is no other present way.”

Bundy wasn’t alone. Following the Detroit riots, Michigan Gov. George Romney co-founded an organization called New Detroit, which funded black nationalists who had little actual support among African-Americans. According to Jake Klein of the Capital Research Center, New Detroit produced a school curriculum that contained the first mention of the notion that racism had to include both prejudice and power. Such identity-based schemes failed to close the gap because, as Ms. Ferguson notes, they reduced the problems of the black community to a “psycho-cultural and therapeutic issue of black identity without having to deal with the structural and material issues.”

Today we see the same problems. Take the effort to “defund” or “dismantle” police departments. The rich will always be able to buy their own private protection. But how will leaving entire urban areas without the protection of the law help our most impoverished citizens?

Or consider the call for reparations, backed by the New York Times’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the “1619 Project.” Talk of reparations distracts us from addressing the cultural dysfunctions that ail Americans of all kinds, such as family breakdown. Payments for race-based suffering will further enshrine resentments as the basis for attention, assistance and sense of self-worth.

The unseemly rush by corporations to outwoke each other has already filled the coffers of radical organizations like the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, whose stated goals include the destruction of the nuclear family—the very institution that needs shoring up. Meantime, the push by newspapers and other media companies to silence voices that dissent from these “remedies” will only ensure that the country walks into more problems without a real debate.

We have been here before. Our leaders panicked and let ideologues dictate terms. Let history be our guide this time.

Mr. Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free.”

Write to Mike Gonzalez at Mike.Gonzalez@wsj.com

July 13, 2020

Abe Miller to the class of 2020, from The American Spectator, thnx to jf for sending

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 3:40 pm

An Old White Professor Speaks to the Class of 2020A dose of reality for those who think they can change the world simply by following woke causes.byABRAHAM H. MILLERJuly 5, 2020, 12:09 AMhxdbzxy/Shutterstock.com🔊 Listen to this article

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Nearly every graduation speaker tells the graduates that they are going to change the country profoundly and irrevocably. Don’t worry, you won’t.

For the most part, that’s a good thing. While America is not without its policies that cry for change, there is much that is good about America that has become impolitic to speak about — especially at graduations.

There is no perfect economic system. Capitalism is not evil; crony capitalism is.

For the last four years, you haven’t had a course in civics, but you did have a course in social studies taught by people who believe that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic society that possesses a fascist political culture.

Many generations have a revolution fantasy. I saw the barriers go up in Seattle and thought of Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue in the 1960s.

So, think a moment. Did any of these teachers get fired for such words? Did they go home looking over their shoulders, worried about whether the secret police were going to knock on their door? Did they contemplate making a dangerous journey and trying to sneak into Mexico or Canada?

You see, in a real fascist culture, you cannot criticize the regime and stay out of prison or stay alive.

As the old joke of my generation goes: In America everyone is always looking for a party. In Russia, the party is always looking for you.

Your generation thinks you have discovered the evils of racism and discrimination and that both are uniquely Western institutions.

Let me burst your bubble. There are few societies, if any, that have not practiced slavery, and more white people have been enslaved by North Africans than Africans by white people.

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams negotiated with Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, over the enslavement of Americans. They asked Abdrahaman what right he had to seize slaves. He replied that his right was “founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran.”

But if your teachers were to teach about that — assuming they would want to — political outrage and cries of Islamophobia would ensue, and they would be cowed into submission.

Two African kings, Tegesibu of Dahomey and Alvarez of the Congo, numbered among the richest men in the world in the early 18th century. Their wealth came from providing slaves to the Portuguese.

Slavery is evil in all its manifestations, whether the horror of the Middle Passage, the North African slave raids on Italy, or the Ottoman forays into the Slavic countries. The word itself comes from the Muslims of Andalusia (Spain) taking slaves from among Eastern European Slavic peoples.

And while your generation is marching, protesting, and calling for revolution because of the remnants of racism in this society, you need to be reminded that black chattel slavery, in all its ugly forms, is still alive and well in Libya in the 21st century.

So, when you say that racism and slavery are uniquely Western institutions, you are not simply wrong, you are pathetically ignorant.

Many generations have a revolution fantasy. I saw the barriers go up in Seattle and thought of Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue in the 1960s.

When people from my generation went to Cuba under the auspices of the Venceremos Brigade and sat around the campfires talking to the heroes of the revolution about urban guerrilla warfare in America, the veterans of the campaign against Fulgencio Batista laughed.

Your Paris commune fantasy in Seattle, like the Weatherman Days of Rage of the 1960s, inflicted pain, suffering, and death, but it was not the route to change.

These puerile and egotistical ideas of revolution will mobilize the great silent majority who abhor Black Lives Matter but are too intimidated to speak out against an organization rooted in racism and anti-Semitism.

You see, Class of 2020, the most important political concept is legitimacy.

For all its flaws, the American system is viewed as not only legitimate, but one that also offers a nonviolent means to change.

So when you block the emergency room of the local hospital and then justify it by saying white people have blocked black people for 400 years, you are destroying your own legitimacy with a rationale that is as stupid as it is reprehensible.

Don’t be swayed by what you see on TV about marches or hear from woke business leaders trying to do damage control or cash in on the symbolism of Black Lives Matter.

As you pampered potential Marxists play with your cell phones at graduation, waiting to return home in your own automobiles, eager to Zoom with your friends, what you don’t know is that it’s not a revolution being televised but a political orgy of fun and profit.

The word “revolution” means to return back to the point of origin. After the French Revolution and decades of war and upheaval, the monarchy passed from Louis XVI to Louis XVIII and then to Charles X. Or, as the French might say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The Russians would say that communism is the longest road from capitalism back to capitalism.

If you want to change the system, join the system, because in America, revolution — like urban guerrilla warfare — is a childish fantasy.

America has flaws, but it is still a strong, legitimate democracy with a vital political center that has always abhorred violence as a political instrument.

Be grateful for what you have and embrace a system that offers opportunities for change.

If you were taught that revolution is the way to change the system, you need to contact the bursar’s office and demand a refund for a meaningless education.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.

July 10, 2020

Re: Mike Gonzalez’s “We Might Be Fooled Again” TWSJ Op Ed 7/10/20

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 5:32 pm

Re: Mike Gonzalez’s We Might Be Fooled Again

The Wall Street Journal op-ed July 10, 2020

A wonderful opening to a problem that is exemplified in today’s Letters to the Editor. Let’s throw in some serious facts, their referents, and some points unmade.

Too many people are talking historical inaccuracies from their Bully Pulpits. The American Civil War, aka The War of 1861 was NOT fought over slavery. It was fought over the issues of self-government set forth in documents such as The Declaration of Independence (USA 1776), The 1695 Englishman’s Bill of Rights,[1] and Thomas Paine’s two works, Common Sense and The Rights of Man.[2] The Glorious Cause mentioned for decades is that of personal freedom and the right to political self-determination as expressed in the above documents.

For decades prior to 1860, a primary stumbling block to abolition was how to compensate slave owners for the capital tied up in slavery. Lincoln even proposed that The Federal Government buy out the slaves, only to be refused by the Democrat congress on the grounds that that was unconstitutional.1

There were two secessions in 1860. The first was of the seven Deep South slave states trying to maintain their agricultural export economies made up of hemp, tobacco, and cotton almost exclusively to Europe. The second was when Lincoln unconstitutionally raised an army to invade The Carolinas, and having to cross Virginia to get there, Virginia then seceded to protect its sovereignty and political integrity.1

Slavery as an issue comes after Antietam’s casualty list comes out. Although a strong recruiting point by the Lincoln administration, keeping the Union together was the more important issue to most of the Northern populace.[3] When the bloodiness of Antietam reached Europe, both Britain and France decided that they should recognize and help the Confederacy in order to stop the bloodshed. Lincoln and his cabinet, aware of Europe’s attitude, promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation[4] which turned the major issue of the war from freedom and self-determination into a war against slavery.1 Supporting slavery, which is what the war became with the Emancipation Proclamation, would have been political suicide for both European governments, so the policy of interceding and ending the war died stillborn.

Just a few facts from 1860: according to the 1860 census, 32% of slave owners were black; 58% of slaves were black; 38% of slaves were Native Americans; 3% of slaves were Chinese (almost exclusively in California working on the railroads), and 1% were Irish.1

The profits from slavery went almost exclusively to Northern ship owners, British, Flemish, & French manufacturers, and British & Northern bankers. Most plantation owners were working bankrupts and, like Thomas Jefferson, died that way – bankrupt.1

For the historical fraud of black contributions and history to the United States and the failed policies of government which have resulted in the current mess, in addition to Mr. Gonzalez’s Op-Ed, I direct your attention to the following, which are a small part of the portfolio of works on these subjects out there:

Sowell, Thomas:                         Intellectuals and Race

                                                            The Vision of the Anointed

                                                            Discrimination and Disparities

Lefkowitz, Mary:                        Not Out of Africa

Dilorenzo, Thomas J.:               Hamilton’s Curse

Bartlett, Bruce:                            Wrong on Race


[1] The Rights of Englishmen as discussed from 1758 through 1776 were codified in this statute and not just ephemeral musings as is currently suggested in the Common Core

[2] Adams, Charles: Slavery, Secession, & Civil War

Thomas, Hugh: The Slave Trade; a History of the North Atlantic Slave Trade

Freehling, William W.: The Road to Disunion, 3 volumes

McDonald, Forrest: States’ Rights and the Union

Neely, Mark E., jr.: The Union Divided

Foote, Shelby: The Civil War; a narrative

Mason, Matthew: Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic

(and many, many more)

[3] Although, this ‘indissoluble’ union violated all rules of self-determination for future generation and the legal concept of ‘The Rule Against Perpetuities,’ it is still promoted as desirable and holy.

[4] Not only unconstitutional, but it freed NO slaves. The end of slavery in the United States comes with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Its only purpose was to change the major issue of the war from Secession to Slavery and thus keep Europe out of the conflict.

July 7, 2020

more observations

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 5:21 pm

1. From an old issue of Punch magazine:
    Who is in charge of the clattering train?
    The axles creak, and the couplings strain,
    And the pace is hot, and the points* are near,
    And Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear;
    And signals flash through the night in vain,
    For Death is in charge of the clattering train.

*train track switches
2. From Churchill’s (y’all remember him, yes?) years in the Wilderness:
    In response to Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives, Churchill told his constituents:

    “It seems difficult to realize that a great and highly educated and scientific nation, with all its treasures of literature, learning, and music behind it, should present itself to the word in such an awful guise. We are in the presence of a tyranny maintained by press and broadcast propaganda and the ruthless murder of political opponents.”

3. What was it that Santayanna said about history repeating?

July 2, 2020

Oriel College, Oxford, rebukes black activistis

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 2:40 am

 Oxford Rebukes Black Activists

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Here is a response from Oxford University to black students attending as Rhodes Scholars who demand the university removes the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.

Interestingly, Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), The Chancellor of Oxford University, was on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 on precisely the same topic. The Daily Telegraph headline yesterday was “Oxford will not rewrite history”

Lord Patten commented: “Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to our contemporary views and prejudice.” (Direct link below letter).

“Dear Scrotty Students,

Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort  and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of  them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you. This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in  his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?

Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilization, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly

And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure, we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilization of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.

You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the? #?blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American mind”. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the world’s greatest university.

Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.

That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!”  No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea is worthless.

This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”

Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artifacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.

And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your “rhodesmustfall” campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”. One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!”

Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalized corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford?

And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.

Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.

Yours, Oriel College, Oxford

Oxford will not rewrite History

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 2:38 am

Oxford will not rewrite history, says chancellor

Lord Patten says university will resist pressure to remove statue of Cecil Rhodes

  • The Daily Telegraph
  • 13 Jan 2016
  • By Javier Espinoza EDUCATION EDITOR

OXFORD UNIVERSITY cannot rewrite history to pander to “contemporary views and prejudices”, its chancellor warned yesterday.

Lord Patten of Barnes, the former Conservative Party chairman, defended the university’s historical relationship with Cecil Rhodes, saying that many of its scholars depended on activities that would be “unacceptable” in the modern world.

Oxford has faced a growing campaign, led by a South African student, to remove a statue of Rhodes from Oriel College as part of a drive to distance the university and its curriculum from the colonial past.

The college has agreed to review the statue’s position, leading to a wave of international criticism amid wider fears that universities are being undermined by political correctness.

Yesterday, in their first public comments on the furore, both Lord Patten and the university’s new vice-chancellor said that history could not be rewritten.

Speaking as Prof Louise Richardson was installed as Oxford’s 272nd vicechancellor, and the first woman to hold the position, Lord Patten said universities were “institutions where freedom of argument and debate should be unchallenged principles”.

He warned: “One thing we should never tolerate is intolerance. We do not want to turn our university into a drab, bland, suburb of the soul where the diet is intellectual porridge.”

He added: “Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been, according to our contemporary views and prejudices.

“Because we value tolerance, we have to listen to people who shout – at a university, mark you – about speech crimes and ‘no platforming’.

“We have to listen to those who presume that they can rewrite history within the confines of their own notion of what is politically, culturally and morally correct.”

Lord Patten, a former governor of Hong Kong and chairman of the BBC Trust, added that many of the university’s “great buildings” were constructed using the “proceeds of activities that would be rightly condemned today”.

Prof Richardson backed the view that students should be exposed to uncomfortable ideas, and criticised attempts by campaigners among them to censor free speech.

She asked: “How do we ensure that they appreciate the value of engaging with ideas they find objectionable, trying through reason to change another’s mind, while always being open to changing their own? How do we ensure that our students understand the true nature of freedom of inquiry and expression?”

She said, in light of a push from students to create “safe spaces” at institutions, that universities should be places where the young are encouraged to think “critically”.

“If we can provide leaders for tomorrow who have been educated to think critically, to act ethically and always to question, these are the people who will prevent the next financial crisis; who

will help us grapple with the fundamental questions prompted by the accelerating pace of technological change, as we confront profound ethical choices about the prolongation and even replication of life.”

Concerns have been growing that many American universities risk succumbing to political correctness.

Students at Harvard have asked for rape law to be dropped from lectures in case any had been victims of sexual assault, it has been disclosed.

In Britain, a number of people, including Germaine Greer, pop songs and even sombreros have been banned from campuses.

Last month, a number of professors wrote to The Daily Telegraph to condemned campus censorship of anything that causes offence. They said that a generation of students was being denied the “intellectual challenge of debating conflicting views”. Oriel College is considering removing a historic statue of Cecil Rhodes, one of its alumni and benefactors, over his role in the colonisation of southern Africa.

A senior source at Historic England, which will be consulted if the college decides to remove the statue, has suggested it would be nearly impossible because of its intricate relationship with the architecture and history of the listed building where it stands.

Prof Richardson spoke as she was admitted to office at the world’s second oldest university during a ceremony in front of congregation, the university’s parliament.

Oxbridge should not be “harried” into accepting more state school students, Lord Patten suggested. He said that “ill-considered actions” in the name of social mobility “may cast doubt on the ability of some who study… to gain a place on their own merits”.

June 14, 2020

UC Berkeley History Professor’s Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy By Tracy Beanz – June 12, 2020

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 4:56 pm

UC Berkeley History Professor’s Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy By Tracy Beanz – June 12, 2020

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TAGS BLM George Floyd Joe Biden Racism Tracy Beanz UC Berkeley UC Professor UncoverDC

Note from Editor: I was sent this and felt the need to share it to a wider audience on Twitter. I shared a link to the original post in the tweet. Then, the post was removed, and I made the decision that this is an important perspective not given an equal share in the marketplace of ideas. It is for this reason that UncoverDC now publishes it, not only because it is newsworthy, but because it is a critical piece of history. Wilfred Reily, mentioned in the letter alongside Thomas Sowell, retweeted my original tweet confirming that he personally received the email, thus verifying its credibility.

Tracy Beanz

Dear profs X, Y, Z,

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCBwide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counter-narrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews.

None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number.

I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.

Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. No discussion is permitted for non-black victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of non-black violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd.

For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and WalMart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it. The claim that black interracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and policeon-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.

The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.

There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’: hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship. Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.

MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?

As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors. And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinionshaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise.

Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.

It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.

I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic.

I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end. I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no groveling handmaiden to politicians and corporations. Like us, she is free.

May 13, 2020

Perspective

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 3:28 pm
Maybe we don’t have it that bad?
It’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria. For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.
On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday.
22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.
When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.
And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.
Smallpox was epidemic until you were in your 40’™s, as it killed 300 million people during your lifetime.
At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish. From your birth, until you are 55 you dealt with the fear of Polio epidemics each summer. You experience friends and family contracting polio and being paralyzed and/or die.
At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. During the Cold War, you lived each day with the fear of nuclear annihilation. On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, almost ended. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.
Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How did they endure all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85-year-old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Refined and enlightening as time goes on. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Your parents and/or grandparents were called to endure all of the above, you are called to stay home and sit on your couch.
Indeed, we need be grateful for all we have.

May 7, 2020

Where did the “stimulus” money go? thnx to Bob for sending

Filed under: Political Commentary — justplainbill @ 3:09 pm
Thanks to Bob Meyer for this.

———-the good news is–this is finally done–the bad news is–it is only the beginning….still waiting to get MY own free money…



cid:image001.png@01D0BEC8.B5F6A040
Check out the following for “the answer”
American population: 330,483,530
Stimulus bill: $2,000,000,000,000
Dividing the cost by every person in America is $6,051.74.

The government could have given every person over $6,000, but instead will give $1,200 to each adult under a certain income.

Would you like to know where the missing 96% of your tax dollars went? Take a deep breath!
                $300,000,000 for Migrant and Refugee Assistance pg 147

$10,000 per person for student loan bailout

$100,000,000 to NASA, because, who knows why right now.

$20,000,000,000 to the USPS, because why the hell not.

$300,000,000 to the Endowment for the Arts because? Anyone? Bueller?

$300,000,000 for the Endowment for the Humanities/ because no one even knew that was a thing.

$15,000,000 for Veterans Employment Training / for when the GI Bill isn’t enough

$435,000,000 for mental health support

$30,000,000,000 for the Department of Education stabilization fund

$200,000,000 to Safe Schools Emergency Response to Violence Program

$300,000,000 to Public Broadcasting / NPR has been bought by the dems. Don’t expect objectivity for your money

$500,000,000 to Museums and Libraries / Who the hell knows how we are going to use it

$720,000,000 to Social Security Admin /  but – get this – only 200,000,000 is to help people. The rest, 520 mill, is for admin costs

$25,000,000 for Cleaning supplies for the Capitol Building / I shit you not. It’s on page 136

$7,500,000 to the Smithsonian for additional salaries/ Wait a minute…additional?

$35,000,000 to the JFK Center for performing Arts/ because so important to all Americans – will never go there

$25,000,000 for additional salary for House of Representatives [That’s an additional $57,000 for each member of the House.]

$3,000,000,000 upgrade to the IT department at the VA

$315,000,000 for State Department Diplomatic Programs

$95,000,000 for the Agency of International Development

$300,000,000 for International Disaster Assistance

$90,000,000 for the Peace Corp pg 148

$13,000,000 to Howard University pg 121/because why

9,000,000 Misc. Senate Expenses pg 134

$100,000,000 to Essential Air carriers pg 162 This is of note because the Airlines are going to need billions in loans to keep them afloat. $100,000,000 is chump change

$40,000,000,000 goes to the Take Responsibility to Workers and Families Act. This sounds like direct payments for workers. Pg 164

$1,000,000,000 Airlines Recycle and Save Program pg 163

$25,000,000 to the FAA for administrative costs pg 165

$492,000,000 to National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) pg 167

$526,000,000 Grants to Amtrak to remain available if needed through 2021.  pg 168 (what are the odds that doesn’t go unused)

Hidden on page 174 the Secretary has 7 days to allocate the funds & notify Congress

$25,000,000,000 for Transit Infrastructure pg 169

$3,000,000 Maritime Administration pg 172

$5,000,000 Salaries and Expensive Office of the Inspector General pg 172

$2,500,000 Public and Indian Housing pg 175

$5,000,000 Community Planning and Development pg 175

$2,500,000 Office of Housing

Are you angry yet?
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