Month: July 2023

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Moms for Liberty, a right wing group, recently quoted Hitler. It created a great deal of commotion. So much so that Lt. Gov. Robinson came to their defense. His awkward finesse was basically that just because Hitler and Mao were wrong about a lot of things doesn’t mean that they weren’t right about some things. As the old saying goes, a stopped clock is right twice a day. This doesn’t mean you should rely on that clock in any way.

As a rule of thumb, I think if you have a quote from a serial killing authoritarian and you want to use that quote as support for a position you are espousing, take a deep breath and, after regaining your senses, find another quote from someone less controversial, and when you are considering Mao and Hitler, this would be almost anybody, and use that instead. But never use the quote from the dictator. NEVER. It will only bring you heart ache.

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The discussion regarding the skills some enslaved people received is raging due to a Florida text book singing the praises of plantations at trade schools. I put my two cents in here.

What is interesting is that the a lot of conservative feedback is focusing on the truth of what is in the text book and not the relevance. The line causing the controversy is about the skills that a slave might acquire while working on a plantation which is really a weak way of trying to find something good about having been a slave.

I will let the historians debate the veracity of the statement because I think there is a bigger problem than the truth here. Who cares if it is true? How relevant is it to understanding the Civil War and Reconstruction. The vast majority of the slaves didn’t receive that training so when the Civil War ended the only skill they had was field work. That a few lucky individuals were blacksmiths while slaves and were able to take that skill and make a good life for themselves is a great story but not particularly illuminating on what happened to the millions who did not.

It is a trick. It allows Governor DeSantis to soften the horrible image that white children might conjure when they learn about their slave-holding ancestors. Because White children, for some reason, shouldn’t have to learn about how wretched the slaves were actually treated. Why they may begin to hate their ancestors? And I say good. It is about time.

This also exposes a much bigger problem with American History. There is a tendency to highlight the successes of a few individuals and say this is what is possible. This is actually what could happen to you. The other side of the story is downplayed. The millions of people who don’t make it out of poverty or don’t make a million dollars. Stories just as true as the success stories but, for some reason, we don’t want to tell. Numbers and statistics aren’t personal stories of success. They are abstract so the child can’t see themselves in this personal story even though it is every bit as likely, if not more likely, as making a million dollars.

All these complaints from employers who have to deal with young people with high expectations of their employment might be better addressed if we gave children a more realistic history of what might happen to them. They might understand that world a bit better and not be so disappointed when it doesn’t happen to them. Maybe we should teach them that hard work is often unrewarded. And talented people sometime go unrecognized. The good guys don’t always win. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes people, even leaders of our country, do horrible things. We want kids to have this glorified image of what America is when it is a lot more complicated than that.

There is this fear if children learn the truth that they will just give up on their country. The thing is they do eventually learn the truth but in the process they will also learn that people they trusted, the teachers and the parents played fast and loose with the truth. How is that better?

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Three 16 year old boys died in the past 5 weeks while working with big machinery.

One company explained that “the child ‘should not have been hired’ and that his age and identity were misrepresented on his hiring paperwork with an outside staffing company.” You don’t say. How innocent the company is acting? We were lied to and this poor unfortunate 16 year shouldn’t have been hired, we wouldn’t have hired him if only we had known his correct age.

For some reason I don’t believe it. Every employee has to provide proper documentation in order to work. The company has a responsibility to examine this documentation for validity. This is standard practice in place for some years. I used to do it in the 1980’s. HR departments should have this down. But OK, mistakes happen, perhaps a 16 year old was able to get a hold of a convincing fake document but a quick glance at the prospective employee might have set off some alarms. Somehow these boys with peach fuzz as beards were able to pass themselves off as older. Even if you accept that they are telling the truth, there is a frightening level of incompetence within the management of the company.

But I think this more than just an accident. One of the more illuminating giveaways that this is something more nefarious, is that it happened 3 teenagers at different companies and in different parts of the company met the same fate. This also might explain why Republican governors and legislatures, those champions of the working class, are loosening child labor laws. Companies are complaining that they are having trouble filling their open positions. Something must be done, so teenage labor is the solution to their problem.

Unfortunately, teenagers are banned from hazardous labor. No problem. These companies did a risk assessment about hiring underage employees. They figured out how much potential fines would be and then compared this to the price of raising wages and decided that paying the fines was the better deal. Higher wages are a sure thing while fines need only be paid if they get caught. Now that is a risk worth taking. They would probably have gotten away with it if nothing had gone wrong. This suggests that fines are too low. Fines should discourage companies from breaking the law, not be a factor in whether they are going to break the law or not.

But, saying that they can’t attract workers is misleading. These companies are having problems filling positions at the wage they want to pay. The wage isn’t enough to attract adults to perform an obviously hazardous job. When labor is scarce and the job is hazardous, the company needs to pay wages that attract the best workers. It is basic capitalism. They can’t just expect workers to risk life and limb for nothing. But, of course, these companies do.

What I find particularly irksome here is that these so called Capitalists only like Capitalism when it is to their advantage. When it isn’t, they moan to government for help — make the laws easier so we can hire people who will take the jobs at the rate we want to pay. Let in qualified immigrants who will take the lower wage. Hire teenagers who will take the lower wage. Boo hoo. Whatever they are, they aren’t good Capitalists.

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Governor Santis is having some effect in his effort to rid history text books of anything that might upset a student. A new Florida textbook now includes a statement that some slaves learned marketable skills from their time on the plantation. Really. You don’t say. That is the first time I’ve ever known that plantation doubled as trade schools. But interesting nonetheless.

So what it sounds like to me that there was some kind of trade off occurred here. The slaves worked the plantation while learning marketable skills that would help them in the future. Is this giving any 21st child any idea of what happened on a plantation? It is a completely meaningless statement without context of the time, the skills they are talking about, and whether they were relevant to the individual’s future.

History books have to cover hundreds of years and numerous topics. The history taught in the grade schools are broad brushstrokes focusing on the most important information. The things you would want children to remember. I challenge Governor DeSantis to show any Civil War historian who would prioritize the job training at plantation trade schools.

I am sure the publisher told some poor text book authors to make slavery sound a little less horrible and, after several stiff drinks, and failing to come up with anything, decided this little ditty would work. It’s incredibly weak and patently dishonest. There is some outrage about this now, so maybe something will happen. I’m not very confident though, unfortunately, there are so many things to be outraged about and so little time to focus on all of them.

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The present Republican party loves love fighting each other, if not more, than they like fighting Democrats. The recent Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene dustup was shockingly unnecessary and brutally public. If I understand this correctly, Greene called Boebert a bitch and, not under her breath, out loud so Boebert could hear her. There were some extra adjectives dangling before the actual word bitch but I am on a roll here and don’t want to lose my momentum so I am not going to stop and look them up, suffice it to say they weren’t very nice and Boebert got pissed about it.

On the other hand, was it a faux pas worthy of kicking Greene out of the Freedom Caucus. Boebert and Greene agree about almost everything, what is a little name calling among friends? This is really nothing, right? Not something to make a public scene about. Why put their party in a bad light over something so petty? But apparently I am wrong. Petty as it appears to be, the two battlers are making this public. I don’t know about you but I would be mortified if everyone in my office knew I was arguing with a coworker about being called a bitch. I would have to quit from the embarrassment.

This is, I think we can all agree, small potatoes. There are other arguments going on as well. The Never Trumps like George Will, the Bushes, Liz Cheney, who are basically in ideological agreement with the Republican Agenda, they just hate Trump are also battling with the Trump Republicans. The Trumpies like to imply that the Never Trumps are somehow not real Conservative Republicans because they are critical of Trump. Loyalty to Trump is now the baseline that Trump requires from all Republicans. This means that the Never Trump Republicans will continue to hate Trump from afar as Trump will not go away. In a normal political party this is where the party elders might come in and tell everyone to play nice. Except that the party elders are all almost universally despised by the Trump Republicans. So, even if they did try to bring peace, it isn’t going to matter.

At this point, Republican Party brawling is a pretty reliable expectation, kind of like Saturday night boxing. So I thought I was inured to this petty but vicious infighting until I read this column by Robert Zimmerman. He is mad at Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz. Zimmerman sounds really far right wing, but not that much further right than Cruz, a senator that only the Reddist of Republicans could love. Cruz was apparently too accommodating with the Democratic Majority when dealing with a matter in the senate. That Cruz is in the minority and his hands were tied is irrelevant. He should have made a scene. I am certain Cruz was perfectly willing to make a scene when he sees potential gain but he does have to space them out to make them more effective. If he were to make a scene every day, he might be mistaken for Marjorie Taylor Greene and nobody wants that distinction.

The funny thing, at least I find it amusing, is that this destructive political infighting used to be the province of Democrats. All of these Republicans trying to pick up the mantle of Reagan forget that he was comfortable with a party that included a lot of different factions. Reagan was remarkably adept at keeping all these sometimes contentious factions in the same boat and, for the most part, rowing in the same direction. His 11th Commandment was thy will not speak ill of a fellow Republican. And, speaking as someone who didn’t like his politics, this was no mean feat. Reagan, if you will recall, also won elections with landslide margins. Trump can’t say that and will never be able to. He is poison to half of the electorate.

Don’t get me wrong. Personally, nothing makes me happier than Republicans on a suicide mission. But it is stunning to hear their lack of self awareness when talking about RINOs (Republican in Name Only) here and RINOs there and then complaining about election rigging. RINOs do vote. Their complaints might be more believable if they didn’t spend so much time bad mouthing their own party members.. Theoretically, in order to win elections, you have to add members to your party to achieve a majority and not chase members away. The sad truth that Republicans can’t face is that Trump doesn’t give a damn about the Republican Party. He cares only about Donald Trump and if he has to destroy fellow Republicans to get what he wants, he will happily do so. I don’t think you can say the same thing about Ronald Reagan and there, my friends, is the difference between a landslide and a close election.

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When I finished reading Peachy Keenan “Everyone is gay, can you blame them?” I got a sinking feeling it my stomach. Keenan was using satire to describe what she sees as a problem with modern academia. She is trying to explain why 40 % of the student body of Brown calls themselves Bisexual/Gay/Trans. She says being Gay or Trans is the in thing to be right now and thus the only way to get ahead, particularly in a weird Ivy League school such at Brown, is to say you are gay or, if you really want to grab power, get a sexual reassignment surgery.

Maybe there is a giggle or grin here. There is also something more worrisome and insidious — Gay and Trans people have power and you better bow down to them in order to get ahead. This is false. Most gays are not in a position of power. Most college students are still heterosexual with little evidence that this is changing. There is no reason to be worried about the Brown survey. Gays do not want to make your children gay. Gays do not want your children changing their gender. The problem with satire is there are people who get it and people who don’t. There is the danger that the ones who don’t will believe that Gays are all powerful and need to be stopped. Once you have a culprit, then the humorless can remove the culprit from power.

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A Cervical Cancer society in the UK recently made a suggestion, and it was a suggestion and not a command, to medical professionals to use the term bonus hole or front hole instead of vagina when talking to trans patients. It isn’t going to happen. One, if someone said bonus hole to me I wouldn’t have a clue what they are talking about. My mind drifted to golf for some reason but it did not go to vagina. There is also a perfectly good word already in use for vagina that would be vagina. I am not sure why it is offensive to Trans people and I am not sure why it needs to change.

But what about Trans people’s feelings? I doubt that many Trans people actually are offended by the use of the word vagina. Has anyone ever checked into this? Or are Trans activists, with nothing better to do with their time, imagining offenses where no offense is being taken. The Trans community would be better served by activists who can explain why Trans people might need medical treatment, how they are not forcing these medical options on Trans people, and helping parents make the necessary decisions regarding their children’s future. Until then, Trans Activists are acting as if they have won the day and that they are in a position to direct people’s language. They are not. Trans activists are going to lose while also alienating potential supporters of Trans rights which is something I would think they would like to avoid.

Then there is the argument that if it is important for people to be comfortable and to use language that supports this comfort, what about all the people who prefer vagina to bonus hole? Aren’t they people too? Last year, Bette Midler got entangled in another controversy because she objected to replacing the word woman with birthing people or menstruators. She wants to be called a women and I am betting that there are billions of other women who have the same preference. Billions, mind you, while Trans people being offended by the word woman is how big a group — I am guessing hundreds, maybe thousands at best. And to make it even more confusing, what about Trans women who want to be called women? Can they use women? Language is around to make life simpler. Menstruator and Bonus Hole makes life more complicated so are doomed for failure.

So in summation, this society is recommending replacing a perfectly useful and widely understood word like vagina to a different word nobody knows so nobody will understand it when used in order to prevent offending a very small group within society who may not even be offended by vagina in the first place. There is a better use for people’s energies than this losing battle.

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Tommy Tuberville, Republican Senator from Alabama, flubbed a question about white Nationalism the other day. Since nobody admits to making a mistake any more, he has chosen to double down on the mistake. Which probably will turn out all right because his voters don’t give a damn about the topic. On the other hand, an admission he goofed would certainly save the rest of the Republican party running around having to say White Nationalists are indeed racists and we don’t know what Tommy Tuberville is talking about here but we can guarantee you he isn’t racist.

Which is understandably disturbing to those of us who do know what White Nationalism is all about. So, what exactly does he think when hanging out with these friends he just disagrees with but they themselves are really good people when they spew this racist poison. What is a Senator to do? For Tuberville, it is just a simple difference of opinion, requiring nothing more than an oh shucks you crazy guys, I can’t believe you still think that is true.

He either is an idiot, which could be the answer, but I really want to give Tuberville the benefit of the doubt here, he is, after all, a US Senator, so he must raise, if ever so slightly, above being characterized as an idiot. This leaves he doesn’t give a damn what people think as, to some extent, he is OK with White Nationalism. This seems closer to the truth as I can’t believe that a Republican US Senator would not be prepared for such a softball question. His internal danger warning must have been screaming DANGER, DANGER THIS IS A TRICK QUESTION SENATOR.

Instead of taking the easy way and finesse the question to a meaningless but agreeable mush of words, Tuberville, knowingly stumbled into the controversy that followed. Nobody, even his White Nationalist friends, would have condemned him had he responded with some benign blather about all races are equal under the law and he judges each person as an individual and not by their race. Since he decided to engage in a conversation about White Nationalism, it suggests he holds a more nuanced understanding of White Nationalism and he is putting his toe in the water to see how receptive the American public was to this position.

The good news for the country was there was enough blowback to make Republicans tell Tuberville he was wrong and Tuberville kind of sort of backed down just a smidge on what he meant. It is still concerning that a Republican Senator clings to a racist belief system and is a little confused on why people are getting all worked when he expresses his opinion. There is a persistent group within the Republican Party attacking democracy as we have understood it for the past 50 years. The heart of their argument is defining who is worthy to be considered a full citizen. They worry that certain groups are not the right people to be considered citizens. They worry about illegal aliens giving birth to American citizens. They worry about softhearted woman voters. They worry about poorer citizens exercising their right to vote, and they question the ability of urban counties run by Black officials to count votes fairly.

Their real worry is these groups don’t vote Republican and hence are making their party’s electoral survival more difficult. Any party that has only won the popular vote once in the last six presidential elections has every reason to worry about this too. Making their arguments more palatable to the American voter, however. might be a better strategy to pursue than changing the makeup of the American citizenry.

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Elon Musk thinks that the collapse of babies being born is a bigger concern than global warming. He is not alone. Many Conservative and Libertarian men share this concern. China, the second heaviest populated country, and until just a short time ago, the heaviest populated country in the world, has begun a population reversal. So what? Well, given all the present data, China will suffer a population collapse do to this reversal. Again, so what? China is also a country that many of these same men ascribe as the author of many of the evils in the present world, isn’t that a good thing. No, you see, the problem plagues much of Southern Europe (Spain, Italy and Bulgaria) and Eastern Asia (Japan and South Korea). The West is beginning to lose population as well.

I am still unmoved. Well, then think about the economy which depends upon consumers buying products, you idiot. If there are less consumers, there are less customers for the products business is selling. So that’s the real problem money. I should have guessed. The worry is that the combined problem of an overburdened social security system and the lack of new customers will undermine Western economies.

This is irritating for a number of reasons. Predictions based on present data is quite often wrong which is, again, something that these Conservative men should understand. They are constantly making this same claim when discussing Global Warming. Sometimes these predictions just don’t pan out. For example, many demographers in the 1940s were predicting a low population growth in the USA for the 1950’s based on the low birth rates of the 1930’s, instead they got a Baby Boom. The explanation is simple. Parents of the 1930’s were reacting to the Depression, while parents of the 1950’s were reacting to the post-World War II economic boom. People make different decisions when their circumstances change.

If women knew it was an essential for the continuation of civilization as we know it, then they might be prone to having children, until then I think a few less people being born might be something to give a little time to get used to and see what happens. Perhaps, the ever ingenious human being will come up with an alternate way to live other than consumer consumption of mostly useless products for an endlessly expanding population.

Instead of thinking about these new possibilities, these free thinkers are slyly going after abortion and birth control. David Strom, pro-life writer, recently gloried that more babies are being born in Texas population since the reversal of Roe v Wade. So then he celebrates the birth of 10,000 babies while ignoring the women who gave birth to these babies. At best this is a morally ambiguous achievement. A woman is being forced into having a baby against her will, a reasonable person might also show some sympathy for the women put in this position. He doesn’t. Furthermore, the Roe decision also has emboldened anti-birth control advocates to step up their efforts to make birth control more difficult to obtain. Yes, and, also they are going after a women’s right to vote. The real goal here is obvious — keeping women barefoot, pregnant and powerless.

With all these efforts to make women mothers, you would think that the Republicans would try to make motherhood more attractive. They aren’t. A good example of this penchant for stopping government involved in anything even if it would help potential mothers is a recent development in Idaho where the Republican dominated legislature there decided to stop tracking maternal health mortality program. There isn’t enough money and, besides, the government should be involved in learning more about public health problems. Right. Message received.

So, to summarize, the world needs more babies. Women aren’t stepping up and having them. Governments need to make it more difficult to obtain abortions and birth-control in order to make this happen. And, no, the Government isn’t going to help women with their health or any of the many expenses a baby might cause her. Well, then, how fucking urgent can it be?