Monday Morning Smile

 

In the Air

 I've always loved Phil Collins voice and  joie de vi·vre.

Unfortunately, he has suffered some huge setbacks in recent years and is not able to perform any longer.

The Genesis legend's health has been declining for the last 15 years. He suffered injured vertebrae in his upper neck, which led to crippling nerve damage, and is also battling acute pancreatitis.

Here's a look back at him performing one of his most popular songs.  Enjoy.

Tom on Indictments and Elections

 Donald Trump received a target letter from the special prosecutor in the matter of the events surrounding the insurrection of 6 January 2021 a couple of days ago. 

 A target letter almost always precedes an indictment, which would make 3 so far with at least one more case pending.

In the Senate, Tommy Tuberville is continuing to block nominations for newly promoted flag officers, and his colleague, Rand Paul (R-KY),is similarly blocking appointments of upper level State Department appointees, including a number of Ambassadors. But the most consequential development of recent days comes to us from  Michigan 

 Yesterday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 individuals with electoral fraud in a scheme to replace Michigan's electors, who were Democrats chosen by the voters of the Wolverine State.

 Remember: When we vote for President, we're actually voting for a slate of electors who will, in turn, elect the president when the Electoral College meets. General Nesson has shown great wisdom by resisting the impulse to charge 'national' Republicans, such as Trump, Giuliani, et al because, in the final analysis, these are state cases which have no businesses in federal courts. We can only hope that Attorneys General in states such as Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, where like  charges are under consideration, show similar restraint 

 This is the point in the election cycle where third party initiatives begin to appear. It doesn't happen in every cycle, but when it does, it has the potential of being game-changing, especially in these days when national elections are often decided by a relatively small number of votes.

 In 1980, Illinois congressman John Anderson may have siphoned off enough votes from Jimmy Carter to tip the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.

 In 1992 the quirky and entertaining H Ross Perot insurgency denied George HW Bush a second term in office,  and in 2000 Ralph Nader's vanity campaign gave us George W Bush and Dick Cheney.

 In 2016 Dr Jill Stein sucked just enough votes away from Hillary Clinton to give us Donald Trump.

 As you can see, third party candidacies tend to work against Democrats. The reason is that for Progressive Democrats the perfect is the enemy of the good. They are more concerned with ideological purity than with electability. While Democrats squabble among themselves, Republicans stick together and win elections.  

 Which brings us to the 'No Labels initiative. It's a group founded by former Sen Joe Lieberman, who has made a fetish out of bipartisanship. The group proposes to run a third party candidate for president in 2024, and that human 'turd in the punchbowl', Sen Joe Manchin, (D-WV), is thinking about a run.  The reason that Manchin is even considering what he must surely realize is a quixotic run, is because he's up for re-election next year in a state that has become so red that most observers give him little chance of holding on to his seat .Manchin, like a number of 2024 Republican candidates, is actually auditioning for a cabinet post in what they hope will be a Trump Restoration. In Manchin's case, he's a candidate for Secretary of Coal.

Tom on Florida Education and White Supremecists

 The State of Florida announced it's new standards for the teaching of Black History yesterday, and to say that these new standards are controversial would be an understatement.

 The standards were developed by 13 members of a group handpicked by Florida's Board of Education, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DeSantis for President Campaign, whose purpose is to ensure that no White child ever heard a discouraging word about the beneficence of the White Race.

 Lest you think that I exaggerate, consider this bit of guidance from the new standard, which states that the standard should show: "...how slaves developed skills which in some instances could be applied to their personal benefit...". To their way of thinking slavery was good for our "Niggrah" charges, for they are simple folks who benefit from the guidance of the White Man.

 The new standards aim to restrict kids in the lower grades from learning anything about our Black forbearers, save for anodyne lists of inventors, athletes, and tap dancers.

 High School students will learn that while Black people were sometimes sinned against by Whites, Blacks sometimes sinned against Whites. The entire purpose of this exercise is to sanitize the history of the Black Experience in America, because the common belief that slavery was a bad thing was a fabrication of the ' 'Woke" left. 

 The late Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, was once quoted in Rolling Stone magazine as saying that what a Negro most wanted from life : "I'll tell you what the coloreds want: It's three things: first a tight pussy; second,loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. That's all!!!". This, my friend, is an admittedly crude look into the mind of your typical White Supremacist. The author of the article was former White House Counsel John Dean, and also present was the singer Pat Boone. After that enlightening anecdote was published, Sec Butz was forced to resign. 

 Tribal hatreds and historical ignorance have combined forces to make America into a land where fear of "The Other" has become the defining characteristic of Modern American Life. Sometimes, it seems as if White men who claim to have built America; that: "...shining city on a hill..." ,out of sheer force of will, fear everything and everyone who are not exactly like them. They fear immigrants and folks with dark skin. They fear the "Elitists" who they imagine look down on them with contempt. while never realizing that their political champions are almost universally products of the very elite institutions that they so loathe. Many of their wives and girlfriends are better educated and make more money than they do and, deep down in the dark recesses of their souls, they understand that they are inadequate to the demands of modern life.

 Most men who find themselves in this state recognize the reality of the situation, and happily take on a subsidiary role in their families, but others rage and lash out at everyone who they see as 'keeping them down'. Many of these men fetishize guns, follow false prophets who promise a new world where White Christians dominate and women know their place, and where liberals are thought of as pedophliac vermin. 

 I'll end this screed by saying that while some folks are ignorant and hate-filled deplorables, most Americans are fundamentally decent people who want to live their lives in peace, whatever their party affiliation. The culture warriors of both the left and the right will soon find themselves on the ash-heap of history. One can only hope... 

Blast from the past

 I love this photo of Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, and David Niven all getting a laugh at a rehearsal for the 1958 Oscar show.

Monday Morning Smile

 

Climate Change History

 #Maddow

I posted this the other day but it's a good reminder. Climate change from 1880 to 2021. Courtesy of NASA and NOAA weather.

Mondy Morning Smile

 

Liberal Redneck - White House Cocaine

Monday Morning Smile

 

Tom on Affirmative Action

 As almost everybody thought would happen, SCOTUS  essentially banned the use of race as a factor in college admissions. Folks to the left side of the political spectrum are predictably outraged by the ruling, and a dispassionate observer might conclude that today's decision prohibited any member of one of the previously protected classes: Blacks, Hispancs, and Native Americans would be prohibited from attending college at all, rather than that admission be due to racial considerations in whole or in part. Those to the right side of the political spectrum are looking at a new day in college admissions in which the only members of the previously protected classes admitted to the nation's colleges would be athletes, certain theatre types, and a smattering of cute Black and Hispanic girls. The fact is that the SCOTUS may have made an important point with today's decision.. 

There have always been favored and disfavored groups in the area of college admissions. Favored groups have included so-called 'legacy" applicants, who are relatives of people who have attended that same school. Additionally, non-legacy applicants from a universe of preparatory schools that have historically served as 'feeder schools' to our most selective and prestigious institutions always contribute their share of new students. Disfavored groups, like the poor, have always been with us, although they have changed over time.

The Irish were  unwelcome at many of the 'best' schools until the early 20th century, when they were replaced by the Eastern and Southern European immigrant children whose parents flocked to these shores during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Jews were subjected to quotas because it was feared that should they be allowed unrestricted access to the 'best schools', they would crowd out students less dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge than their usual applicant . Striving Asian applicants have mostly replaced the Jews of the first half of the 20th century as existential threats to those  unwilling to work hard .

The truth is that college admissions are as much art as science. Admissions officers at every college in the land see it as their task to assemble an incoming class that brings a variety of life experiences to the table. They want an incoming class to reflect different ideas about what they want to get out of their educational journey. Their goal is to construct a mosaic that will make college a special period in the lives of all who accept the school's offer of admission.

But too often this mosaic included few Black tiles. In my class at St A's there was only one  Black kid in my year, and he happened to live directly across the hall from me. There were a couple more in the class following mine, and I like to think that I saved one of them from a savage beating one fine Saturday morning. 

I was on my way to get the morning papers when I came across a big dude about my dad's age with an angry look on his face. He asked me if I knew where a kid named Billy Washington lived. I had a nodding acquaintance with him because he lived next door to my debate partner.

Anyway this guy who was looking for him looked like trouble squared, so I went to his room and woke him from a sound sleep and told him what was happening, and he near shit himself because the angry dude was his girlfriend's dad, and he was not at all happy that his Princess, a cute White girl from Maine, was allowing herself to be touched inappropriately by a 6'4"Black dude. Anyway we went over to my dorm where we called security and they got the Dean of Students to talk the angry dad down.    

All of this took place around the time of what was the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement: the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with along with all manner of legislative and regulatory efforts to address the wrongs perpetrated upon our Black population by an aggressively racist subset of White citizens who thought that things were fine just as they were. Out of all this tumult emerged the spectre of Affirmative Action. 

Affirmative Action was a chainsaw of a remedy directed at a real problem that would have benefited from a more nuanced approach.

The remedy has served it's purpose and it's time to move on. The practice put a good many Black and Hispanic kids into educational venues in which they had no hope of succeeding.

There is a significant difference in the suitability of a valedictorian from a challenging high school such as Boston Latin or New Trier to achieve success at a challenging school like MIT or Johns Hopkins. A valedictorian  from a crappy high school in Chicago has absolutely no chance of success in such a rarified educational atmosphere. These kids would be better served by attending a school more suited to their actual abilities where they had a realistic chance of success. 

Affirmative Action should be a class based remedy, rather than a racially based one. But the overriding purpose of any type of remediation should be to place kids into an environment where they are likely to succeed, rather than the school that offers the most prestigious rear window decal.