Give this man a banjo, let him retire in twangy peace (official photo)
And yet, friends from Arlington say he’s done good stuff for their district, and they plan to vote for him again.
AGAIN!????
It is a statistical fact that half of American voters are below average in intelligence. Couple that with a few thousand who actually have smarts, but choose wrong, and you begin to understand how George W. Bush won two terms, and how Obama’s popularity ratings are not pegged at 85%.
“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
More:
Sheesh! Even the Republican Party gets it — but this makes it look like Barton’s retraction was extracted from him only after a round of waterboarding, and he’s still sorry. Well, yeah: Barton is really sorry.
Today, this reeker plopped into my e-mail box — it’s a hoax video. Repeat, it’s a hoax:
The only reason Obama wouldn’t want you to see that is because it’s a waste of your time. It would be laughable were it a high school student history video (I’d flunk it on accuracy and lack of citations). It’s a hoax from set up to wind down. It should be put down.
DeClue explains the video was struck down from some site (probably for reasons of taste; this is an assault on good taste and manners, just in the insulting way it assumes the viewer is too stupid to have read a newspaper in the past three years). It’s now up again on YouTube — a recycled hoax! This one isn’t nearly as funny nor witty as the Cardiff Giant, however.
DeClue sends out e-mails alerting warning of new posts.
Hello!
I’ve just come across a disturbing video you must watch that supposedly shows Obama’s dossier from the FBI. Apparently his actions we know about are only the tip of the iceburg and portend badly for Israel, the war on terror and other foreign policy issues. Not to mention his abuse of our economy and our rights. Please post your comments on the blog and let’s get a good discussion going! We need to come up with some ideas, fellow patriots! Thank you.
Disturbing in its dishonesty, sure. I took a look. I sent her an e-mail alerting her to the hoax, and I left this comment at her site:
This is one of the most irresponsible things you’ve ever posted.
How’s the ride with Osama? Or is the White Citizen’s Council? And if a hoax, so easily disprovable, suckers you in so easily, can it be for any reason other than your own nefarious goals?
FBI doesn’t release dossiers on active politicians, nor on active investigations. That’s the first clue that it’s complete bunk.
You could call Columbia to confirm Obama’s attendance there. Lots of others have. You could call Harvard. For the sake of Jesus, he was president of the Harvard Law Review. Nobody but students get to write on to the law review, no one but an active student can even run for president of the organization.
It’s probably still up. The true birther fanatics don’t care about getting the facts. They are desperate to do damage to Obama’s reputation, no matter how false their claims may be.
Ms. DeClue wrote back wondering how I could possibly know it’s a hoax. Naif. I wrote back with more hints:
You could call the FBI and ask. In fact, I recommend it.
I spent a decade in Washington, and among other duties, I staffed the confirmation hearings before the Senate Labor, and occasionally the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’ve read hundreds of the reports, I’ve been involved in Senate investigations of how the FBI compiles them, and I’ve followed the Freedom of Information issues on the stuff, especially from the Vietnam protests, for years.
But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.
[The FBI doesn’t release dossiers on living people. The claim in this film is that they got the dossier on Obama. We know that’s false from the get-go. The Kennedy story shows how a dossier might be released publicly — a process that is not alleged by the hoax videographer.]
See this non-governmental site on how to get your own file (but not the files of others): http://www.getmyfbifile.com/
I’ve listed several sites you can visit in a comment at the post — check them out, to see the education record. There’s a lot more.
It’s a hoax video.
Sorry you got taken in by it.
What is it with the birthers and other gullibles and hoaxsters around? Is the trouble we have, with Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf of Mexico, the mortgage and housing crisis, the banking crisis, our enormous debts, and a hundred other serious problems, not enough?
But then I listen to Mitch McConnell. He says he’s not so sure about working to make America energy independent, not when Obama can’t pull a Gandalf and wave the Gulf oil spill away.
Troop 1, Brownsville, Texas, May 20, 1916 - photo by Robert Runyon (The Center for American History and General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin; via American Memory, Library of Congress)
On June 15, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the law granting a national charter to the Boy Scouts of America, which had been incorporated six years earlier. The charter is now encoded at 36 USC 309.
The purposes of the corporation are to promote, through organization, and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods that were in common use by boy scouts on June 15, 1916.
Good goals then, good goals now — maybe more important now.
Have you volunteered to be a leader?
Resources (and councils where I’ve Scouted and volunteered):
From the digital collections at the Library of Congress:
Boy Scout wreath, 1924 - Library of Congress Digital Collection, National Photo Company Collection (Call Number: LC-F8- 28581 (P&P))
Three Boy Scouts and a wreath with the BSA’s fleur de lis, in 1924. Who are the Scouts? What was the occasion? Questions we have in the centennial year of Boy Scouting.
This photo is in the middle of a collection of photos taken at the funeral of President Woodrow Wilson, which was on February 6, 1924. Was this the Boy Scouts’ tribute to Wilson? By the way, Wilson is the only president interred in the District of Columbia (Arlington National Cemetery is across the Potomac River, in Virginia). Wilson’s sarcophagus in in the main chapel of the National Cathedral.
Woodrow Wilson's tomb in the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. - Wikimedia image
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Historic irony: On Flag Day in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of West Virginia vs. Barnette.
Image 1 - Billy Gobitas explained why he would not salute the U.S. flag, November 5, 1935 - Library of Congress collection
The case started earlier, in 1935, when a 10-year-old student in West Virginia, sticking to his Jehovah’s Witness principles, refused to salute the U.S. flag in a state-required pledge of allegiance. From the Library of Congress:
“I do not salute the flag because I have promised to do the will of God,” wrote ten-year-old Billy Gobitas (1925-1989) to the Minersville, Pennsylvania, school board in 1935. His refusal, and that of his sister Lillian (age twelve), touched off one of several constitutional legal cases delineating the tension between the state’s authority to require respect for national symbols and an individual’s right to freedom of speech and religion.
The Gobitas children attended a public school which, as did most public schools at that time, required all students to salute and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. The Gobitas children were members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that in 1935 believed that the ceremonial saluting of a national flag was a form of idolatry, a violation of the commandment in Exodus 20:4-6 that “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor bow down to them. . . .” and forbidden as well by John 5:21 and Matthew 22:21. On 22 October 1935, Billy Gobitas acted on this belief and refused to participate in the daily flag and pledge ceremony. The next day Lillian Gobitas did the same. In this letter Billy Gobitas in his own hand explained his reasons to the school board, but on 6 November 1935, the directors of the Minersville School District voted to expel the two children for insubordination.
The Watch Tower Society of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sued on behalf of the children. The decisions of both the United States district court and court of appeals was in favor of the right of the children to refuse to salute. But in 1940 the United States Supreme Court by an eight-to-one vote reversed these lower court decisions and ruled that the government had the authority to compel respect for the flag as a key symbol of national unity. Minersville v. Gobitis[a printer’s error has enshrined a misspelling of the Gobitas name in legal records] was not, however, the last legal word on the subject. In 1943 the Supreme Court by a six-to-three vote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, another case involving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, reconsidered its decision in Gobitis and held that the right of free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution denies the government the authority to compel the saluting of the American flag or the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
There had been strong public reaction against the Gobitis decision, which had been written by Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965). In the court term immediately following the decision, Frankfurter noted in his scrapbook that Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980) told him that Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971) had changed his mind about the Gobitis case. Frankfurter asked, “Has Hugo been re-reading the Constitution during the summer?” Douglas replied, “No–he has been reading the papers.”1 The Library’s William Gobitas Papers showcase the perspective of a litigant, whereas the abstract legal considerations raised by Gobitis and other cases are represented in the papers of numerous Supreme Court justices held by the Manuscript Division.
1. Quoted in H. N. Hirsch, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 152.
John E. Haynes and David Wigdor, Manuscript Division
Second page, Billy Gobitas's explanation of why he will not salute the U.S. flag: "I do not salute the flag not because I do not love my country but I love my country and I love God more and I must obey His commandments." - Library of Congress
Supreme Court justices do not often get a chance to reconsider their decisions. For example, overturning Plessy vs. Ferguson from 1896 took until 1954 in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. In the flag salute/pledge of allegiance cases Justice Hugo Black had a change of mind, and when a similar case from West Virginia fell on the Court’s doorstep in 1943, the earlier Gobitis decision was reversed.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all other Americans, thereby have the right to refuse to say what they and their faith consider to be a vain oath.
And that, boys and girls, is what the First Amendment means.
One hundred and fifty National Geographic Society employees march in the Preparedness Parade on Flag Day, June 14, in 1916. With WWI underway in Europe and increasing tensions along the Mexican border, President Woodrow Wilson marched alongside 60,000 participants in the parade, just one event of many around the country intended to rededicate the American people to the ideals of the nation.
Not only the anniversary of the day the flag was adopted by Congress, Flag Day is also the anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s controversial addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.
(Text adapted from “:Culture: Allegiance to the Pledge?” June 2006, National Geographic magazine)
The first presidential declaration of Flag Day was 1916, by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson won re-election the following November with his pledge to keep America out of World War I, but by April of 1917 he would ask for a declaration of war after Germany resumed torpedoing of U.S. ships. The photo shows an America dedicated to peace but closer to war than anyone imagined. Because the suffragettes supported Wilson so strongly, he returned the favor, supporting an amendment to the Constitution to grant women a Constitutional right to vote. The amendment passed Congress with Wilson’s support and was ratified by the states.
The flags of 1916 should have carried 48 stars. New Mexico and Arizona were the 47th and 48th states, Arizona joining the union in 1913. No new states would be added until Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. That 46-year period marked the longest time the U.S. had gone without adding states, until today. No new states have been added since Hawaii, more than 49 years ago. (U.S. history students: Have ever heard of an essay, “Manifest destiny fulfilled?”)
150 employees of the National Geographic Society marched, and as the proud CEO of any organization, Society founder Gilbert H. Grosvenor wanted a photo of his organization’s contribution to the parade. Notice that Grosvenor himself is the photographer.
I wonder if Woodrow Wilson took any photos that day, and where they might be hidden.
Since 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation establishing a national Flag Day on June 14, Americans have commemorated the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by celebrating June 14 as Flag Day. Prior to 1916, many localities and a few states had been celebrating the day for years. Congressional legislation designating that date as the national Flag Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1949; the legislation also called upon the president to issue a flag day proclamation every year.
According to legend, in 1776, George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation. Scholars debate this legend, but agree that Mrs. Ross most likely knew Washington and sewed flags. To date, there have been twenty-seven official versions of the flag, but the arrangement of the stars varied according to the flag-makers’ preferences until 1912 when President Taft standardized the then-new flag’s forty-eight stars into six rows of eight. The forty-nine-star flag (1959-60), as well as the fifty-star flag, also have standardized star patterns. The current version of the flag dates to July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became the fiftieth state on August 21, 1959.
Fly your flag with pride today.
Elmhurst Flag Day 1939, DuPage County Centennial - Posters From the WPA
James is home for the weekend, then back to Wisconsin on Sunday for a summer of physics beyond my current understanding. He flew home to wish bon voyage to Kenny, who is off to Crete to learn how to teach English, and then (we hope) to find a position teaching English to non-English speakers somewhere in Europe.
I wondered: What about that volcano erupting in Iceland?
Little worry for the trip over, this weekend. Longer term?
So I turned to the Smithsonian to find a volcano expert, and came up with this video of Smithsonian Geologist Liz Cottrell who explains where the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull fits in history, and maybe some — with a lesson in how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull’s name.
So:
Can teachers figure out how to use this in geography, and in world history? (Science teachers, you’re on your own.)
Life is a gamble if you live close to a volcano, and sometimes when just happen to be downwind.
In the past couple of hundred years, maybe volcanoes worldwide have been unusually quiet.
As to size of eruptions and the damage potential: We ain’t seen nothin’ recently!
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
“She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”
The real question you might be asking yourself right now is why was the man in a boat? You understand, as a map savvy person, that 31 degrees 14.97 minutes North and 100 degrees 49.09 minutes West puts the balloon about 20 miles southwest of San Angelo, Texas, probably still in the city limits of Mertzon, Texas, just off U.S. Highway 67. He’s a few miles west of any significant boat-supporting body of water.
Don’t let that detract from the joke. Just consider that the woman was trying to meet up with friends attending the Texas Republican Convention this weekend in Dallas.
Balloon Crash, image from Dave Statter, WUSA9
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
This spring’s publication of a book, The Excellent Powder, by Richard Tren and Donald Roberts, repeating most of the false claims about malaria and DDT, got me wondering. Their organization, Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM):
In its seven years of operation, AFM has helped transform malaria control by taking on and turning around failing public health institutions, donor agencies and governments.
Offhand I can’t think of any public health institution AFM has even been involved with, other than its undeserved criticism of the World Health Organization — and if anyone knows of any donor agency or government AFM has “turned around,” the history books await your telling the story.
In its 2009 Annual Report, AFM proudly states “AFM is the only advocacy group that routinely supports IRS [Indoor Residual Spraying] and through its advocacy work defends the use of DDT for malaria control.”
Cleverly, and tellingly, they do not reveal that IRS in integrated vector (pest) management is what Rachel Carson advocated in 1962, nor do they mention that it is also supported by the much larger WHO, several nations in Africa, and the Gates Foundation, all of whom probably do more to fight malaria when they sneeze that AFM does intentionally.
Google and Bing searches turn up no projects the organization actually conducts to provide bed nets, or DDT, or anything else, to anyone working against malaria. I can’t find any place anyone other than AFM describes any activities of the group.
AFM has impressive video ads urging contributions, but the videos fail to mention that nothing in the ad is paid for by AFM, including especially the guy carrying the pesticide sprayer.
Looking at the IRS Form 990s for the organization from 2003 through 2008 (which is organized in both the U.S. and South Africa), it seems to me that the major purpose of AFM is to pay Roger Bate about $100,000 a year for part of the time, and pay Richard Tren more than $80,000 a year for the rest of the time.
Can anyone tell me, what has Africa Fighting Malaria ever done to seriously fight malaria? One could make the argument that if you sent $10 to Nothing But Nets, you’ve saved more lives than the last $1 million invested in AFM, and more to save lives than AFM in its existence.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula and Antievolution.org, even though AFM wasn’t what they were targeting.
[Editor’s note: This post is an attempt to fix a formatting error in the earlier post with the almost-same headline, which has some corruption in it I have been unable to find or fix, but which renders the text almost unreadable. My apologies. Have not yet figured out how to move comments, alas; check the old post.]
This spring’s publication of a book, The Excellent Powder, by Richard Tren and Donald Roberts, repeating most of the false claims about malaria and DDT, got me wondering. Their organization, Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM):
In its seven years of operation, AFM has helped transform malaria control by taking on and turning around failing public health institutions, donor agencies and governments.
Offhand I can’t think of any public health institution AFM has even been involved with, other than its undeserved criticism of the World Health Organization — and if anyone knows of any donor agency or government AFM has “turned around,” the history books await your telling the story.
In its 2009 Annual Report, AFM proudly states “AFM is the only advocacy group that routinely supports IRS [Indoor Residual Spraying] and through its advocacy work defends the use of DDT for malaria control.”
Cleverly, and tellingly, they do not reveal that IRS in integrated vector (pest) management is what Rachel Carson advocated in 1962, nor do they mention that it is also supported by the much larger WHO, several nations in Africa, and the Gates Foundation, all of whom probably do more to fight malaria when they sneeze that AFM does intentionally.
Google and Bing searches turn up no projects the organization actually conducts to provide bed nets, or DDT, or anything else, to anyone working against malaria. I can’t find any place anyone other than AFM describes any activities of the group.
AFM has impressive video ads urging contributions, but the videos fail to mention that nothing in the ad is paid for by AFM, including especially the guy carrying the pesticide sprayer.
Looking at the IRS Form 990s for the organization from 2003 through 2008 (which is organized in both the U.S. and South Africa), it seems to me that the major purpose of AFM is to pay Roger Bate about $100,000 a year for part of the time, and pay Richard Tren more than $80,000 a year for the rest of the time.
Can anyone tell me, what has Africa Fighting Malaria ever done to seriously fight malaria?
One could make the argument that if you sent $10 to Nothing But Nets, you’ve saved more lives than the last $1 million invested in AFM, and more to save lives than AFM in its existence.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula and Antievolution.org, even though AFM wasn’t what they were targeting.
It wasn’t in the textbooks before, and after the Texas State Soviet of Education finished work on new social studies standards last month, the Great Cowboy Strike of 1883 remains a topic Texas students probably won’t learn.
In the history of labor in the U.S., the common story leaves out most of the great foment that actually drove progressive politics between, say, 1865 and 1920. Union organization attempts, and other actions by workers to get better work hours and work conditions, just get left behind.
Then there is the sheer incongruity of the idea. A cowboy union? Modern cowboys tend toward conservative politics. Conservatives like to think of cowboys as solitary entrepreneurs, and not as workers in a larger organization that is, in fact, a corporation, where workers might have a few grievances about the fit of the stirrups, the padding of the saddle, the coarseness of the rope, the chafing of the chaps, the quality of the chuck, or the very real dangers and hardships of simply doing a cowboy’s job well.
Until today, I’d not heard of the Great Cowboy Strike of 1883.
COWBOY STRIKE OF 1883. In the two decades after the Civil War the open-range cattle industry dominated the Great Plains, then died and was replaced by closed-range ranching and stock farming. In West Texas during the 1880s new owners, representing eastern and European investment companies, gained control of the ranching industry and brought with them innovations threatening to many ranchhands. Previously, cowboys could take part of their pay in calves, brand mavericks, and even run small herds on their employers’ land. New ranch owners, interested in expanding their holdings and increasing their profits, insisted that the hands work only for wages and claimed mavericks as company property. The work was seasonal. It required long hours and many skills, was dangerous, and paid only an average of forty dollars a month. The ranch owners’ innovations, along with the nature of the work, gave rise to discontent.
In 1883 a group of cowboys began a 2½-month strike against five ranches, the LIT, the LX, the LS, the LE, and the T Anchor,qqv which they believed were controlled by corporations or individuals interested in ranching only as a speculative venture for quick profit. In late February or early March of 1883 crews from the LIT, the LS, and the LX drew up an ultimatum demanding higher wages and submitted it to the ranch owners. Twenty-four men signed it and set March 31 as their strike date. The original organizers of the strike, led by Tom Harris of the LS, established a small strike fund and attempted, with limited success, to persuade all the cowboys in the area of the five ranches to honor the strike. Reports on the number of people involved in the strike ranged from thirty to 325. Actually the number changed as men joined and deserted the walkout.
It was the wrong time to strike. With a full month remaining before the spring roundup, ranchers had plenty of time to hire scabs and strikebreakers, to replace the striking cowboys. Some ranches increased wages, but most of them fired the strikers and made the strikers crawl back to beg for jobs. Santayana’s Ghost is tapping at the chalk board about the potential lessons there. (You should read the whole article at TSHA’s site.)
It didn’t help that the striking cowboys didn’t have a very large strike fund, nor that they drank a lot of the strike fund up prematurely.
The Great Cowboy Strike, unimpressive as it was, is part of a larger story about labor organizing and progressive politics especially outside the cities in that larger Progressive Era, from the Civil War to just after World War I. It involves large corporations running the ranches — often foreign corporations with odd ideas of how to raise cattle, and often with absentee ownership who hired bad managers. The strike talks about how working people were abused in that era, even the supremely independent and uniquely skilled cowboy. It offers wonderful opportunities to improve our telling the story of this nation, don’t you think?
Mothers, hide the babies: Republicans are coming to Dallas this weekend.
Come to think of it, you maybe ought to hide your Bible and any other books of note — dictionaries, science books, history references — too. Texas Freedom Network has the full rundown. Be sure to read the specific stupidities.
UPDATE: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting that immigration is likely to be a key point of contention in the Texas GOP’s platform debate this weekend. Other platform proposals are expected from “birthers” who don’t believe President Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen and people who want Republicans to support the Constitution against threats by “Sharia law adherents living in the United States of America and the rest of the world.” … W … Read More
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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