A Dove Rises From the Land of the Hawks

Like I said, my family was pretty dovish for the times, and I followed their lead in spite of my hawkish neighbors, at least until the riots started in the late '60s.  So, Uncle Ken, from whence came your dovishness?  Were you always that way, or did you pick it up later in life?

Say what you want about Trump, but he has proven once and for all that anybody can become President of the United States.  Now all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork, apparently thinking  "If he can do it, why can't I?"  Something like happened the last time but, although there was no shortage of Republicans seeking Obama's job, I don't think they had the diversity that the present slate of Democratic hopefuls represents.  Of course only one of them can win, but only time will tell if it's one of the more reasonable candidates or one of the "bull goose loonies", a term that Uncle Ken has used on more than one occasion.  Then again, Trump might not even make it through the remainder of his first term.  I understand that impeachment proceedings have actually been initiated in the House, although it's unclear if Pelosi will let them ever see the light of day.  As I understand it, she has no love for Trump, but is afraid that a failed impeachment attempt might boost his ratings like it did for Blow Job Bill back in the day.

So what happened with Mueller's testimony the other day?  All the articles I have come across just accuse one side or the other of lying about it.  I have not seen anything that tells whether or not he said anything substantive that he didn't already say in the published report.

growing up in the hood and the debates

When Beagles mentioned that in Cheboygan sometimes your family name means a lot it reminded me of how Ruby Dew. growing up in a town of a few hundred maybe fifty miles outside of Cheboygan, talked about family status.  There was a broad divide  to the extent that kids after a certain age were told not to, or no longer themselves wanted to, hang with other kids.  I guess it was mostly money, but your name could mean something if your family had once been rich. 

It's often used as a plot device in books and movies, the once proud family suffering bad fortune and living in relative penury but keeping their proud, aristocratic, noses up; and the newly-rich family that comes into money and moves into a rich community but keep their crude habits and all their new neighbors look down on them.

There was nothing like that in Gage Park, or I imagine anywhere in the bungalow belts because your neighbor's house cost about the same as yours, and no family had been around a long time because forty years ago the neighborhood didn't exist.  It always seemed an odd, likely old-fashioned custom, this snooty thing, but I guess it was just something we didn't have in our neighborhood.  I'm kind of proud of that, but on the other hand the neighborhood was very racist.  I wonder what Old Dog's hood was like growing up.


Watched the debate last night between innings of the baseball game.  It was like Sanders and Warren were the giants and everybody else was a pygmy.  The pygmies were generally more conservative and their message was that because of that they were more electable.  The only time it got pretty heated is when they talked health care, the main issue being can you still have private insurance.  It seems to me that once the gummint sticks its big foot in the only way private insurance can still exist is for things like nose jobs, and rightly so because they are leeches, leeches I tell you.  I will be glad to see them go and take their stupid commercials of grinning idiots showing off their cards with them.

Tomorrow I will also be watching between innings.  It will be the newly risen in the polls Biden (33 percent in the latest) with the leftier Booker and Harris on either side, and another bunch of pygmies whose names I couldn't tell you right now.  I don't really like Biden, but I wonder if he is more electable because he's kind of a big clown himself and might he not siphon some of the big clown vote away from the biggest clown in the world?

More About Bears

There are three species of bears: black bears, brown bears, and polar bears.  There are several sub-species of black and brown bears, but I don't think there are of polar bears.  The grizzly is a sub-species of brown bear, as is the Kodiak bear.  I don't think there are any wild brown bears east of the Mississippi in the US, but I'm not sure about Canada.  Polar bears are the largest and most aggressive, with brown bears coming in second, but even black bears can become aggressive on occasion.  That said, black bears probably account for the most attacks on humans because they are the ones that are most comfortable living around humans.  Brown bears are more reclusive, although they do become habituated in the national parks.  "Habituated" doesn't mean "tame", it just means that they get used to seeing people and become less afraid of them.  There is a town in Canada on the shores of Hudson Bay, I believe it's Churchill, where the local polar bears have become so habituated that armed guards have to accompany children when they go trick-or-treating on Halloween.  Adult brown bears do not climb trees, but their cubs do.  Black bears can climb trees at any age, but I think they do it less frequently as they get older.  I don't think there are any trees where polar bears live.

The more I think about it, that North Side-South Side thing is largely a myth.  From what Uncle Ken said, it's more about how close you live to Lake Michigan.  That's not so different than what we have here except that family name also enters into it.  It's not necessarily the richest families either, some families are just more respected than others, or at least they used to be.  I don't know how much that matters anymore, it never did matter to me anyway.

When I engage Uncle Ken in an adversarial discussion, I have little hope of changing his mind.  Mostly I am just trying to find out what's in that mind of his.  Many people prefer to converse with like minded individuals, but you'll never learn anything that way.

monday morn

I was going to ask what kind of bears your friend was tracking, but then I realized that I don't know one bear from another.  There are black and brown ones, and some other kinds I guess, and of course the grizzly.  I guess what I wanted to know was was it the human eating kind.  I got to wondering why it is called the grizzly.  Anymore grizzly has come to mean. well tough enough, but I don't know whether the name of the bear of the other predates, and wiki was not helpful on that account.  Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog doc, Grizzly Man, about that crazy guy who thought he could become friends with the grizzlies just by hanging around them and ended up getting eaten by them? Pretty good flick.

I've seen that book about the empire and leafed through it at Barnes and Noble.  The odd thing is that we never tried to hold onto territory very long.  We did fight an ugly colonial war with the Philippines that is largely forgotten now. 

The opening went well enough, good enough turnout and somebody bought one right on the spot which I don't think has happened before.  The muffins didn't do that well.  They were kind of burnt which I kind of like but obviously others don't.  I didn't put enough jalapenos in one of the batches, and they turned out not so hot.  Nothing more disappointing than biting into something that you expect to be hot, and then it isn't very. 

I watched that video about the Japanese painter and I wasn't that impressed.  It reminded me of those tv painters, where they would show you how to paint a tree or a bird or a sunset or whatever, and the thing is if you have a rote manner that you always follow when doing those things well what is the point?  If I would never paint something like a tree the same way everytime.  It depends on what is going on with the rest of the painting and then you try to paint the tree corresponding to how you have painted everything else.  To me the whole point of a painting is finding out how it turns out, if you know that before you begin then again, why bother?  I do a thing where after every sitting on a painting I take a photograph and then I put them together into an animated gif, and you can see the results here: http://www.bckat.us/KenSchadt/112015/index.htm

It was good to see Old Dog at my opening.  He's not too interested in me and Beagles going after each other hammer and tongs, and I agree, I will try to do something more like telling a story in the future.  I was going to write about cars and my changing feelings towards them today, but it is getting late and I think I have written enough for today.

Bear with me

Well time to bake the corn muffins.

And a fine batch of muffins they were, too.  Uncle Ken is on a roll with marked improvements in both the muffins and the watercolors.  I've seen enough cat variations to last me a while but the new paintings of the night time winter scenes were impressive.  I think I mentioned a YouTube video by a Japanese watercolor artist a while back and Uncle Ken asked me to repost it, so here it is for those who are interested in this sort of thing.

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I recall back in the army days a reference to cock meaning pussy but it was in a different context.  Some guy was describing another guy as a "real cockhound" and I had no idea what he meant, and he wasn't a southerner.  Maybe it's a weird east coast expression, I don't know, but I haven't heard it since and it's been more than forty years.

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Months ago, back in April, I mentioned a book, How To Hide An Empire.  I reserved it at the library and finally a copy was available which I picked up this past Saturday.  So far, so good, but it's not a quick read.  I'm less than a hundred pages into it but the underlying theme seems to be that American expansion was the white man's destiny and the hell with everyone else.  No surprises there but I'm interested in how it unfolds; there's plenty of stuff that never made it into the classrooms I attended.  I didn't know that Andrew Carnegie wanted to buy the Philippines so he could give it back to the people.  I should probably keep notes as I read this lest I get confused; we'll see.

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It's funny that Mr. Beagles has been talking about bears in Beaglesonia.  I just saw a video clip of a small black bear climbing a tree and it was not what I expected; he practically flew up the tree like a giant squirrel.  Amazing!

No Bears in Beaglesonia

There were lots of bears around here in the 70s.  They had learned to forage in the township dumps, which were just open pits where people threw their garbage.  Once or twice a year, when the pit would get full, they would cap it off with clean earth and dig another pit.  Some townships would burn the stuff off periodically to reduce the volume and make the pit last longer.  Most of the dumps were located far enough away from people's houses that it didn't bother anybody, but then more people came, built more houses closer to the dumps, and then complained about the smoke from the fires that often would simmer for days.  The state finally passed a law that prohibited burning the dumps and requiring that the garbage be buried each day.  About that time, commercial haulers started offering curbside pick up service and large steel containers that could be left at a site and picked up by a truck when they were full.  All the townships eventually went with the containers, and the dumps became "transfer points".  The commercial haulers truck all the garbage to far away "landfills" that are large enough to justify keeping earth moving equipment on site to cover the garbage each day.

The local bear population declined considerably after the dumps were closed, which was for the best because they were losing their fear of humans, and it was only a matter of time before somebody got hurt.  There were occasional sightings right in the city limits, and no good could come of that.  The most dramatic incident was the time a bear crashed through the front window of a furniture store on Main Street in broad daylight, cutting itself in the process and bleeding all over a bunch of expensive furniture.  I don't remember how they got the bear out of that store but it was not killed or captured.  I think they opened the back door and it ran out on its own, either that or it went back out the front window.

Long before any of that happened, I came to the conclusion that bear hunting with dogs was not practical in this neighborhood.  A bear chase can easily cover 20 miles, and there are too many ways a dog can get into trouble when it's that far from home.  I don't remember how many dogs I lost, but I know I spent more time searching for them then I did actually hunting bears.  The short bear season was over when we went on strike at the paper mill in '73, and I traded my three bear dogs for one good rabbit dog, one of the wisest decisions I ever made.

I seem to remember coming across some bear tracks when the seller was showing me around the property back in '85, but I haven't seen any sign of bears in Beaglesonia ever since.  There are a few coyotes around and even fewer bobcats, but no wolves or cougars, at least not yet.  If you're looking for the top predator here, I suppose that would be me.

north side, south side

Polacky?  I've never heard that term used in that way.  I googled it, but apparently it is a surname and all I got was people named Polacky.  Well I know that Beagles is not using it a slur for Polish people, but rather as a term to mean something like roughneck.  As a Bohunk I rather identified with the Poles, my Slavic brothers.  My mother used to say that a Bohunk is just a Pollack with a nickel in his pocket.  When the satellite countries broke free from the Russkies it didn't mean they were all united.  I remember reading that the East Germans looked down on the Czechs who looked down on the Polish.

I agree that the south side was considered more roughneck than the north side,  Of course when we speak of the south side what we really mean is the southwest side and when we speak of the north side we are inclined to think of the part of it closer to the lake.  To the west of the lake the north side is the bungalow belt which probably has more in common with the south side bungalow belt than their neighbors to the east.  It always seemed to me that the main difference between the two was that the north siders were Cub fans and the south siders were Sox fans.  That's no longer as pronounced as it once was and you see plenty of Cub hats on the south side and Sox hats on the north side.

A bear hunt huh?  So there are bears in that swamp?  None in Beaglesonia though I reckon because I have never heard Beagles speak of them, nor wolves or cougars, so I wonder what is the top predator in Beaglesonia?

So my opening is coming up this Saturday.  I think this will be my tenth.  I get all fired up at the beginning deciding what to put in the show and designing the postcard and all, but as the date of the opening approaches I get to thinking it's an awful lot of work, not that it really is, but for us retired people even going to the dentist is a lot of work, shoots the whole day, you know.  Imagine back in the day we would work eight hours (eight hours!) and then go to the dentist.  Imagine that, I hardly can.

Well time to bake the corn muffins.

Say What?

I only remember hearing the word "cock" to mean "pussy" once.  It was in the army and the guy was a White Southerner.  He seemed surprised when the other guys told him that it made him sound like he was gay, and I don't think he used it very much after that.  I have heard that the lyrics to rap music were pretty trashy.  I never could understand them myself, but then again I never tried to.  There is nothing about rap that ever interested me, but then I was never crazy about most rock music either.

I seem to remember discussing this before but, briefly, the army was decisively more integrated than civilian life back in those days.  The White Southerners were not happy about that, but they never said anything in public, just grumbled about it among themselves.  Looking back on it, though, I don't remember ever seeing any of my Black comrades down town.  They had their own place to go, and the local girls, who were all White, would meet them there.  You never saw a Black guy and White girl walking down the street holding hands or anything like that.  I'm guessing that the Blacks represented less than 10% of us when I first arrived in Berlin but, as I said, their numbers increased to almost 50% before I left. I had the feeling that I was getting out of there just in time, and I seem to remember hearing that there was indeed some trouble after I left.  Of course there was some trouble like that in a lot of places in those days.

I only knew my Black friend Henry during the summer of '73, which was the last year I tried bear hunting with dogs.  The bear season was short, and I spent all summer trying to get my dogs in shape for it.  We were allowed to chase bears with dogs in the off season, we just weren't allowed to shoot them.  Henry lived way off in the swamp, and he had some problem bears hanging around that had lost their fear of humans.  A mutual acquaintance put us in touch with each other.  I told Henry that I couldn't shoot the bears for him, but that putting my dogs on them might teach them some respect.  My dogs were well trained by the time it was shooting season, but so were the bears, and I never did shoot one.  Henry had agreed to set up an ambush where the bears usually crossed the road when being chased, but he never showed up.  Henry didn't have a telephone, but I learned from a friend of his that he wasn't feeling good that morning, and that he went to the hospital shortly thereafter.  I never did see him again, I think he either died or went Down Below to be with his relatives.  Henry and I never talked about race, just about bears and war stories.  He was a veteran of World War I, so he was no spring chicken by the time I met him.

I made that comment about the North Side last night to be a smart aleck, but then I got to thinking, "What do they say about the North Side?"  What I came up with was that the North Side had a reputation of being kind of fancy-pantsy, while the South Side was thought of as being kind of Polacky.  Although the Loop straddles both sides, In think it should be included with the North Side for this purpose.  In my part of the country, it's the waterfront property that is fancy-pantsy while everything else is Polacky.  Fancy-pantsy people are bound to get along better with other fancy-pantsy people than they do with Polacky people, and vice-versa, no matter what race they are.  Don't you think?

cock as vagina?

It was Harry S Truman who integrated the army in 1948.  Kind of a late date I think after two world wars, but from what I hear it has been pretty successful.  From an us vs them viewpoint, it seems like soldiers vs civilians might be a stronger bond than black vs white.  When people around me got drafted and came back after basic training one of the things they talked about most was running into southern boys and their different ways.  One of the most amusing things is that they would use the word cock to refer to lady parts, 

Interruption here, after writing that I wondered am I remembering this right, it sounds so odd, so I went to the google machine and came up with a very interesting article on the subject.  The issue is more complicated than I thought and here is the link: https://www.laweekly.com/cock-means-vagina-let-us-explain/

Anyway I brought up the southern boys because they generally have some pretty unpleasant views on race, and I wonder what life was like for black people in the army in the mid sixties.  Not so hot I imagine and as their numbers grew is it not likely that they began to think we are tired of being pushed around, and if that was that the attitude that Beagles describes as arrogant and hostile.  Here is where I have a problem with Beagles's hawkishness.  To my thinking black people had an absolute right to demand equality in housing and jobs, and to try get that they are going to have to step on some white toes, and Beagles takes that as hawkishness against him and that increases his hawkishness against them and I think that is wrong.  I assume some similar thing was going on in Beagles's army group.

It's rare these days, but there still are flareups about black people moving into some white enclave.  The main reason the ghetto is still there is because of poverty.  It is the cheapest place to live and black people in general are poorer than white people.  These days I think a black person could move anywhere in the city without much fuss, and they probably would like to, but most can't afford it.  There was no big hispanic ghetto in our day, but now our old hood is part of a big hispanic ghetto.  But I use that word only out of convenience, nobody is forced to live there because they cannot live anywhere else these days.

Of course there are white people moving into black and hispanic neighborhoods.  It's called gentrification.  There is graffiti and sometimes marches, but no burnt garages or broken windows that I know of. 

I wonder if Beagles has seen a photograph, in his black friend of the 70's front room, of Martin Luther King, or of the march on Washington or maybe even of the friend in his Black Panther days, would he have thought so genially about the guy?

The Hawks and the Doves

Uncle Ken's paragraph about the hawks and the doves was spot on, I can relate to that.  As for actually relating to Black people in the real world, that is, working and living in their midst, I haven't done that since I got out of the army in 1967.  Not that I didn't want to, it just never came up.  I didn't leave Chicago to get away from Black people, it's just that city life didn't appeal to me.  My family was actually pretty dovish for the times, and I didn't start to drift into hawk mode until about the time I got out of the army.  I think MLK's march on Gage Park occurred in '66, which was about the time that I noticed the Blacks in our outfit becoming more arrogant and hostile as their numbers increased, approaching the 50% mark just as I was leaving.  That's when I first came to the conclusion that minorities were okay as long as they remained minorities, and I suppose they feel the same way about us.  I wouldn't have a problem today if a Black family moved across the road from me.  My nearest neighbor's house is actually less than a hundred yards from my house.  He is part Native American, and I have no reason to believe that he would be any harder to get along with if he was Black.  Truth be known, most of my hawkishness probably came from reading newspapers and watching television anyway.

There's been a lot of water over the dam since the days of MLK, and I think Black people can live anywhere they want today, but I seem to remember Uncle Ken saying that the Chicago "Ghetto" is still there.  Do Blacks still face violent discrimination when they try to move somewhere else, or do they just remain where they are because they want to?  And what about the Hispanics?  I don't remember any kind of Hispanic "ghetto" back in the day.  And what about the Whites, do they ever try to move into a Black or Hispanic neighborhood?  Apparently Marina City is well integrated, but that's on the North Side, and you know what they say about the North Side.

Actually, I had one Black friend back in the '70s.  He lived in nearby Carp Lake and was recommended to me by a mutual acquaintance.  One day he invited my wife and me to a BBQ party he was having when some of his relatives came up to visit.  He said to bring out daughter along because there would be some kids there her age (about 3 or 4 years old).  We didn't have a television in those days, and it occurred to us that our daughter had probably never seen a Black person in her life.  We discussed whether or not to say something to her ahead of time so that she wouldn't blurt out something embarrassing.  We decided not to say anything to her, figuring that the people there wouldn't hold anything she said against her because she was so darn cute.  Turned out we needn't have worried, she got along famously with those kids and never mentioned anything about their appearance.  On the way home, we asked my daughter if she had noticed anything different about the kids she had met that day.  She said that some of them were girls and some of them were boys, one of them was older than her, and a couple of them were younger than her.  That was all she had noticed.  I looked across at my wife and said, "Do you think we should tell her?"  My wife said "No, unfortunately she'll find out about it soon enough."  I suppose we did the right thing because my daughter has been a dove ever since.

remember Gage Park

Again, I do not want to use the term racist when discussing people who prefer their own kind (Don't like that phrase with its unpleasant West Side Story connotations) because it is too much of a bludgeon and even between the three of us there is no agreement on what the term means.  So in that context yes, it would be, oh, dicey, to prefer the company of another race to your own.  Seems to me that if you prefer one you have to be, to some extent. disdaining the other, and if that disdain results in your not wanting to mix with a certain race (even your own) then yes, there is something wrong with that.

Absolutely Beagles is correct when he says that the thing to do is ignore race.  I am confused, are certain black people insisting that he relate to them all as a group or not at all?  Are they saying that he can't be friends or work with or live next to black people unless he relates to them as a group whatever that means?  And further does he take this perception of black people to justify his decision to not to relate to them at all?

See what I think we have here is a situation of hawks and doves.  Some black people are saying things that Beagles doesn't like (that curious thing about relating to them as a group or not at all), and let's call them the hawks.  Note that not all black people are saying that, just the hawks, but Beagles, being a hawk himself, hears only the hawks on the black side, and the black hawks hearing Beagles, the white hawk, use that to justify their own hawkishness, so the two sides are united in having hostile relations between the races.  Myself as a white dove, I mostly hear the black doves, and the black doves hearing my song of peace and love use that to justify their dovishness.  So the real situation here is not whites vs blacks, it's hawks vs doves.

I happen to know that Beagles was living in Gage Park until 1963 and is aware of Martin Luther King's march on the heavily segregated neighborhood and the violent response.  I guess that's evidence of people being able to live wherever they want.  I mean who would want to live in a neighborhood where they set your garage on fire or throw bricks through your windows?  It's just a matter of free choice right?

The way we city slickers (the doves among us, the hawks not so much) deal with the racial problem is by trying to get along.  My next door neighbors are black and there are one or two more on the floor and we all get along just fine.  We don't need no stinking 88 acres of swamp to protect us. 

The Only Way Out

I knew that I wasn't making a lot of sense last night, which is why I said I'd have to think about it for awhile, which I did.  If it's racist to prefer the company of your own race, then it's just as racist to prefer the company of another race.  The only way out that I can see is to ignore race and relate to people as individuals instead of as members of a group.  That's hard to do when the people to whom you are relating insist that you must relate to them as a group or not at all.  The only way I can see out of that one is to choose "not at all".

"There is something unhealthy about the races living apart, it's too easy to dislike people who live faraway and eat at another table in the lunchroom." - Uncle Ken

I agree, but that's the way most people choose to live, so whatcha gonna do?  I can control where I live, but I can't control where other people live.  The only way I can see out of that one is to live on 88 acre of prime swamp land.  Nobody can ruin my neighborhood because I am the neighborhood.  How do you city slickers deal with that?  

Speaking of race, I read something about this before but didn't copy the link.  This time I did, and here it is.  If they all look alike to The Machine, what hope is there for the rest of us? Not to worry, The Machine is currently learning how to evaluate its own training and reject any racial bias that it finds in it.  Maybe people will be able to do that when we're all plugged in to The Machine.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAEKHWl?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

arguing for argument's sake

I didn't say racist, I said dicey, which maybe means kind of racist in my opinion.  The whole thrust of my argument is different people use the word differently, and I didn't want to be arguing.  The whole point of bringing in the earliest posts was to bring some kind of nostalgia into the conversation, to promote maybe a discussion of what The Institute means to us and get away from arguing, but very well.

Beagle's paragraph seems hopelessly convoluted, so let me try to make it simpler.  It is okay for me, a white democrat, to prefer the company of  democrats of any race to republicans of any race, because we have similar interests, and can have a conversation without getting into those pointless arguments that don't change anybody's minds.  It is dicey for me to not want to associate with black people who are either democrats or republicans because this is similar to the cafeteria where the white people sit at one table and the black people another, or worse, to neighborhoods that are all white or all black.  There is something unhealthy about the races living apart, it's too easy to dislike people who live faraway and eat at another table in the lunchroom. 

Personally I kind of like republicans who are well-behaved, because what is the point of talking to a bunch of people who believe the same things I do?  When I say well-behaved I mean capable of reasoned argument and not calling names and getting angry.  The same of course should apply to democrats, we should be well-behaved when in the company of republicans.  Nothing ruins a party like some partisan of either ilk who just wants to get into a fight.

I was going to say who wants to argue for argument's sake, but then I realized that I kind of like to argue for argument's sake.  There is the point about making one's point, but behind that there is the whole tactical chess-playing side, scoring a point here, blocking your opponent's point there, vanquishing your enemy.  Of course your opponent generally walks away thinking they have vanquished you, so what is the point?  After the initial glow of what I see as my victory that is what I am often thinking, and then looking over my argument I can see where sometimes my tactics may have been, oh less than Queensbury, and I don't feel too good about that,

We're All Racists Under the Skin

 "Does a preference for your own "kind" mean that you are racist?"  - Old Dog

"I'm not sure what Old Dog means by 'your kind,' if it means like Cub fans vs Sox fans or people who are interested in the same things you are that's fine, but if it means people of the same ethnicity then it gets a little dicey in my eyes." - Uncle Ken

Uncle Ken, are you saying that preferring the company of people of your own race to the company of  people of a different race makes you a racist?  The definition I found on Wiki says that a racist believes that one race, presumably his own, is "superior" to another race, so it seems it could be stretched to mean that.  So then it's okay to prefer the company of Republicans to the company of Democrats, unless the Democrats in question are of a different race?  But what if the Democrats in question are of my race and the Republicans in question are of a different race?  I'm not sure where I'm going with this, let me think about it for awhile and get back to you.

memory lane

It's good to see Old Dog posting again, it seems like it has been a pretty long time.  I think he rather leavens the pound cake of Beagles and myself pounding each other.

The video I was talking about was the one where the actors read the Mueller report. I didn't remember the Bachelors but when I went to the YouTube I do remember the songs, but they didn't make an impression on me, not the sort of songs that would worm my ears, or so I say now.  I may find that they have wormed their way in by afternoon.  Kind of an odd thing when out of nowhere they come into your ears like when you are listening to the radio and suddenly another channel intrudes on your frequency.

I'm not sure what Old Dog means by 'your kind,' if it means like Cub fans vs Sox fans or people who are interested in the same things you are that's fine, but if it means people of the same ethnicity then it gets a little dicey in my eyes.

Old Dog threw me a bit when he abbreviated 'those guys,' into TG.  Not reading it closely the first time I thought he was referring to trans gender.  I don't get the part about making them your new best friends.  Does that mean you would be polite, but you wouldn't want to hang out with them?


The heat dome has passed and outside on my balcony my morning glories are blooming and it is a soft summer morn, and I am not inclined to pick up my cudgel.  The Institute came from maybe two years of Beagles and myself exchanging emails.  It became the blog on 11/7/2013, about six years ago.  I don't remember when Old Dog joined, oh there it is June of 2016, he began by making a couple of comments.  Brexit seems to have been the issue of the day.  And it still is as of these days.

Here are the first two posts of The Institute, make of them what you will.

Introduction

About a year and a half ago, I ran across one of my old high school buddies on the internet. We hadn't been in contact since we graduated back in 1963, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Truth be known, we hadn't known each other all that well in the old days but, by now, we have become fast friends. Funny thing is that we have very little in common, in fact we are on the opposite sides of most issues, yet we seem to be able to discuss those issues in a fairly rational and dispassionate manner, which is kind of unique nowadays. We have been communicating exclusively by e-mail because both of us were tired of the abusive and insulting dialog that has become so common in both  cyberspace and in the real world of today. Nevertheless, we recently decided that our ponderings and permutations are just too good not to share, and that the world would become a better place if everybody else would follow our shinning example. Neither of us are spring chickens anymore and, all too soon, we will belong to the ages. Will we be remembered for our wit and wisdom, or will we be buried under the ash heap of history? Only time will tell, but we'll never know if we don't try.

Ken and I grew up in a decent neighborhood on the South West Side of Chicago. I was exposed to rural living at an early age and quickly decided that was what I wanted to do when I grew up. Ken, on the other hand, was a city boy at heart, and still is. He ended up living in a high rise apartment downtown, and I ended up living in a modest home in the swamps of Northern Michigan. Politically, I like to think of myself as a reactionary, but I get tired of trying to explain to people what that means, so I usually tell them that I'm a conservative. Ken is a self described liberal who marched in protest demonstrations during the Vietnam era, while I marched with the U.S Army in Berlin, Germany. Our discussions have helped us to understand what was going on in each other's heads in those days so that we have both become more tolerant of diverse and dissenting opinions. May they do the same for you.

About a year and a half ago I started thinking about my high school friend, Talks with Beagles. We were both in what were called advanced classes at Gage Park High School on the southwest side of Chicago, and it was drummed into our heads constantly that we had to go to college. But when it came to time to apply for college, Talks with Beagles announced he had no plans to go to college. It was a bit of a scandal, how could he not go to college?  It was the American dream of getting ahead. I didn't agree with his decision, but I rather admired him for standing against the tide.

I went to college, dropped out, and dropped back in. Became a hippie, was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam war, spent about twenty years tending bar, had a state job for about ten, and was a substitute teacher for about seven. All this time I have been a liberal democrat, and I follow politics the way some follow the sports page.

When I got in touch with Talks With Beagles I learned that his politics were about 180 degrees of mine, and he liked to write, and so far we have been exchanging about an email a day.

I’m not a man of faith, but I have always believed that if men of reason could get together and discuss things coolly and logically, and not stray from the subject and call each other names then they would eventually come to an agreement. I have to admit I have never seen this happen in real life, and I don’t think I have changed Talks with Beagles’ mind about anything, but you never know.

So now we need a subject to gnaw on.  Beagles, the ball is in your court.


PS, 7:36 AM and Marie has wormed her way into my ear.  Thanks a lot Old Dog.

Losing the race

...I'm still waiting to hear if he has listened to the entirety of that youtube video.

You've lost me, Uncle Ken; to what YouTube video are you referring?  I think that I've seen all the video links but one or two may have slipped between the cracks.

I should have made myself more clear when I mentioned the earworm tunes because both of you guys assumed it was Irish music.  Not so.  The group was Irish but they sang older American songs, mostly, and had a good run in the early and middle 60s.  Only three guys, a pair of brothers and one of their friends.  Good voices with nice harmonies and YouTube has a few live versions if you want to check them out.  They are The Bachelors and they were still performing up until a few years ago and sounding pretty good.  The main earworm offenders are Diane and Marie, a couple of old songs, 1927 and 1947 respectively.  Cheesy and schmaltzy but sometimes that's how I roll.

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I'll reserve judgement on Uncle Ken's 5 point racism scale.  Does a preference for your own "kind" mean that you are racist?  I think not but that's another can of worms I'll leave on the shelf.

As far as I'm concerned, a major component of racism, racialism, or whatever you want to call it is simply silly bullshit and not in my best interest.  Suppose I don't like "those guys," or TGs for short.  I'm not about to refuse medical treatment because the doctor is one of TGs or refuse delivery of an Amazon package because the driver is one of TGs.  Taking a broader view, our society would fall apart if it was not for the efforts of certain groups of TGs.  I don't have to make TGs my new best friends but at least I should try to treat them with dignity and respect and not try to screw them over at every opportunity.

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The Epstein case is really something, isn't it?   I bet that guy is sitting on a lot of dirt, just waiting to use it if the price is right.  The guy was a nobody and yet he managed to hang out with heads of state, British Royalty, and the elite of Hollywood.  Something big is going on and will come crashing down, possibly toppling governments.  I remember the scandals with Christine Keeler in the 60s and what a mess that turned out to be.  But at least she was an adult, and a professional to boot, and not some barely post-pubescent teenage girl.  This is going to get very ugly and a lot of effort will be made to keep it under wraps.  We'll see.

Not to Worry, Uncle Ken

Remember the joke that was going around Gage Park for awhile? 

"The definition of "nomad" is an even tempered Italian:  I'm a nomad."

Well, I'm a nomad too.  Just because we disagree on some issues.....okay, almost all issues, doesn't mean that we don't like each other.  There are lots of sites out there where we could find people who believe the same as we do.  But what fun is that?  The fact that we are still communicating after all these years proves that we must like it.   

I have gotten along with individuals of different races in my life, "individuals" being the operative word here, it's the groups that I have a problem with.  When I see a group that appears to be mobilized against me, my first instinct is to join a group that is mobilized against them.  Later in life, I learned how to resist that impulse because, more often than not, the counter group comes with baggage that I would rather not carry.  

It's too hot to work outside today, so I took the time to look up the CCC.  Although the program was disbanded when World War II eliminated the Depression era unemployment problem, it never really went away.  Turns out there are lots of similar programs still in operation today, only on a smaller scale.  I still think it's a good idea to do something that with all those asylum seekers.  Most of them came here looking for work, and now they are cooling their heels in detention camps with nothing productive to do.  No good can come of that. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps

hawks and doves

Nobody talks much about hawks and doves these days.  It was a big thing during the Vietnam war, the hawks being for continuing the war with more vigor, the doves being for bringing the boys home.  But I don't want to start that argument again, because even though it was long ago, and to most of those born after it, it is a curious relic of the past,  But for those of us who were around when it seems almost everybody, especially those of us who were of our age, was a hawk or a dove it is now almost fifty years in the past and we go for weeks without thinking about it, but should the subject come up, Beagles, the hawk, and Uncle Ken, the dove, would be at each other't throats like we were both 21 again. 

Well it would be nice to be 21 again, but I don't want to go there today, I just want to use the terms hawks and doves to apply to oh, the categories of racism I outlined in my last post, specifically the categories III and V, the hawks being category III, and the doves being category V.  Among white people there are both categories, and likewise among blacks  There is a curious affinity between the  hawks of both races.  The hawks of both sides refer to the hawks of the other side to justify their hawkishness, and likewise the doves of both sides refer to the doves of the other side to justify their dovishness.  The hawks like to think that most the other side are hawks so there is not much sense in trying too hard to get along with them, they will just use that against us.  The doves like to think that most of the other side are doves too, so it only makes sense to get along with them better.

Well that's all I have to say on that.  It may seem like an obvious point, but I just thought it was worth bringing up.  I'm sick and tired of me and Beagles going after each other ratatat.  Oh I feel good when I tear into his (obviously false) rantings, and likewise I assume he does the same, but afterwards I am a little embarrassed at the ill will, and it seems like a big waste of time because nothing has been accomplished.

Well maybe it's the heat, at first the heat makes a body cranky, but then as the heat dome settles in a body becomes weary and does not want to fight about anything.

Well happy Friday dawgs, see you Monday when the heat dome has passed on to the east.

Racialism Defined

Racialism is the belief that the human species is naturally divided into races, that are ostensibly distinct biological categories. Most dictionaries define the term racialism as synonymous with racism.^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racialism

I don't believe I've ever heard the term before myself, so I looked it up.  I thought I knew what racism was, but I looked that up too because the distinction between racism and racialism was not clear to me.  I am having trouble copying and pasting the definition of "racism" but, if you click on the highlighted word in the above text, it will take you to it.

As near as I can tell, the difference between racialism and racism is that racialism recognizes the existence of different races, while racism also involves the belief that one race is superior to another race.  By using both terms in the same sentence, Andrew C. McCarthy seems to be saying that both beliefs  "should be increasingly irrelevant in a pluralistic society".  Sounds good to me, now all we've got to do is convince everybody else of all races.  Until we do, I'm staying in Category III.

Meanwhile, I've got an idea about what to do with all those asylum seekers who are waiting for their hearings to come up.  Instead of keeping them in detention camps, which can't be built fast enough, organize them along the lines of the old Civilian Conservation Corps.  Their first project can be to build their own camps or barracks, then send them out to do stuff like planting trees and establishing firebreaks in the mountains.  I'm not talking about chain gang labor, I'm talking about a reasonable amount of productive work for which they will be paid a fair wage, just like the old CCC.  Those who are not suitable for field work can be employed as cooks and other support personnel.  The CCC was probably the least controversial of the New Deal projects, I've never heard anybody say anything negative about it.  Makes me wonder why it was ever discontinued.  I'll have to look that up one of these days.

sick and tired of being sick and tired

You know what I'm tired of, not only tired, sick and tired of?  It's hearing people tell me that they are tired of something.  So what?  Get over it.  Why should anybody care what you are tired of?  I'm tired of Trump's ignorant rants, and I'm tired of hearing people talk about Game of Thrones like it is the new Shakespeare, and I'm tired of various aches and pains that come with the aging body.  So what?  Oh I guess I complain about Trump's rantings, but I think I tell why. I don't whine that I'm tired of it, like everybody ought to stop and say oh look, Uncle Ken is tired of this or that, maybe we should stop doing it.  Oh I know it's just a figure of speech, but it's a stupid one.  We ought to just shitcan it and find a more meaningful figure of speech.  Why?  Because I am sick and tired of it.

Well I spent maybe an hour probing into what is racism, and the next very morning, like a cat bringing in a dead mouse, Beagles drags in this quite from some guy he sees as his spokesman and all\of a sudden there is this new word racialist.  What the hell is a racialist?  Not a racist clearly because the esteemed McCarthy speaks of racists and racialists.  Beagles dragged this dead mouse into the ivied halls so I think it is incumbent on him to supply a definition of the word, because I am sick and tired of doing all the legwork for the Institute.

But the trope-troubled McCarthy does illustrate that point of mine that my ilk errs when it spreads the charge of racism too broadly.  See, now we've made him sick and tired of us, though I expect that he'd be sick and tired of us even if we didn't speak a word. 

I had Beagles pegged as a IV, but I see that he claims III.  According to that theory the races can never get along because one will always be trying to top the other.  It is the III's of both races that keep the races at each other's throats and I, for one, am sick of all the trouble they cause.

Beagles's voting agenda, as he succinctly expressed it a few posts ago, is that he will always vote for the republicans because the dems want to take Old Betsy from him, and nothing can ever change his mind about it, so it's not like there is much to discuss there.


I'm a bit cranky today because the dreaded heat dome is just six hours away, and even though it has not yet arrived I am sick of it, sick and tired, fucking sick and tired, fucking sick and fucking tired.

What He Said

"Like many Americans, I am tired of being lectured about racism by racists and racialists, individuals whose full-field explanation for all life’s issues is this matter of genetic happenstance that should be increasingly irrelevant in a pluralistic society." - Andrew C. McCarthy - from yesterday's link.

"Call me anything you want, just don't call me late for chow." - old army saying

" I ain't sayin' I'm no better than anybody else, but I'll be damned if I ain't just as good." - From the play "Oklahoma!" by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Uncle Ken's Category III sounds about right for me.  It's not always about race, though.  I'm just as much against Democrats as I am against Blacks or Hispanics, and Hispanic isn't a race anyway, it's a nationality.  Truth be known, I don't like most White people all that much either, and there are even some Republicans who disappoint me.  I have been in various groups in my life, but not for a long time now.  Just because I am not a card carrying member doesn't mean I can't vote for them, and I will anytime I think their agenda is closer to mine than the other guy's agenda.  

racism defined

I don't believe that all opinions are equal.  Some are more informed and thought out than others.  I think I am much better than Beagles at backing up my citations.  When I am writing something, I'll think that I know that for instannce, 79 percent of asylum seekers return for their court dates, but I am not sure so I am off to the google machine or the wiki mobile to find out if that is correct before I put it in my post, and I do that about three times for every one I put up.  If Beagles were willing to do the legwork of going through past posts he would discover I cite my sources  way more often than he does.

Beagles puts in a relevant link here though.  It is from the National Review, which is pretty conservative, but not Trumpist.  Beagles correctly notes that I do point out when one of his links comes from a right-wing source, but I believe he is mistaken when says I dismiss them, I think I go on to consider the merits of the argument regardless of the source, to the extent that I don't I am in the wrong.

Is Trump racist?  I think so, but what does the term mean?  It's like socialism, it means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.  Both terms are like tar sticks.  you use them to tar your opponents.  Rather than make a reasoned argument you just accuse them of racism or socialism and consider that thusly you have refuted them.

I think it's pretty evident that liberals toss the term around a lot more than conservatives, and I want to go on record that I think we do it too much.  The more conservative you are the fewer people you think are racists, when you get close to the edge, the KKKs and the Aryan Brothers, I think neither one of them consider themselves racists.

I want to set up a series of categories and have a discussion of who we could call racists.

I - The sons of the old south, the confederacy, Black people are not as good as white people, not as smart, not as moral, and therefore they deserve to be slaves.  I think everybody would agree that those guys were racists.

II - The social Darwinists who believe like the sons of the old south that black people are not as good as white people, but don't believe in slavery,  Is it racist just to think that the races are unequal?  I think so.

III - The identity politickers who say maybe the races are equal, but I am a white man (or a black man), and I am going to stick up for my people.  I know the other race is going to stick up for their people so it is only just that I stick up for mine.  I still call this racist because you are favoring one race over the other.

IV - The everything is ok now guys who say ok, there used to be a lot of racism around but we've grown we've overcome all that, so there's no reason to pass a bunch of anti-discrimination bills, or to help out the poor who are mostly black.  I think these people are wrong, but I don't think I would call them racist.  It's just too strong a charge and it alienates people and I think my ilk tosses this charge around way too much.

V - People like me, who think we are all equal, and should all love each other, well get along anyway, but I think redresses of the past should be addressed.  Because black people in the past, and even in the present day have a harder climb we ought to give them a hand.

These categories are kind of arbitrary, but the morning grows late.  Where do the dawgs stand on this.  And do either of you guys think there is some kind of definition of racism in a sentence or two? 

I'm Not Complaining

I'm not complaining about school, I'm just glad that I don't have to go there anymore.  I served my time, paid my debt to society, and now I'm done with that.  I could have re-enlisted for another hitch, but I chose not to because, like Ann Landers used to say, "The sample was ample."  I do look stuff up from time to time, and I cite sources when I remember them, but I don't feel obligated to back up everything I say.  Much of what we say here is opinion anyway, and I figure that my opinion is as good as anybody else's.  When I do cite a source, Uncle Ken frequently refuses to read it or dismisses it as Trumpist propaganda.  Come to think of it, I don't think that Uncle Ken is any better about citing sources than I am, but I don't have any hard data to back that up.  Somebody should do a study about that.

Speaking of opinions, here's one I just came across.  Couldn't have said it better myself.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAEpBOX?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Beagles is full of shit because I said so

As I remember it Beagles did quite well at Gage Park High.  He was a smart guy and he didn't make any trouble, he was well-dressed and well-spoken and thus his current attitudes towards school are a puzzlement to me.  I always thought of school as a gentler kinder version of the real world.  If you worked hard on a project or studying for a test you would likely to be rewarded by a good grade, whereas in the real world while generally hard work on the job would get you a promotion, it also might get you fired because the boss might not like you, or even if you had one that did, he might be gone tomorrow and replaced by one who didn't, 

You know you've gotta learn the three R's, you're not going to get ahead in the world if you don't know how to read and write and do your sums. and it's easier to teach it to a bunch of kids at one time then to teach each one individually, and they have to give you a test to see if you know it, so I don't know what Beagles is complaining about here.  Maybe he isn't complaining, but he does sound like it's an awful lot of trouble, just to onerous to have to study up on anything and so much easier and freer to just shoot your mouth off without an idea in your head.

Well that makes things easy, Beagles is full of shit.  There, I don't have to add anything to it or say why I say that because I am no longer in school and I can do whatever I want.  Beagles, no longer under the grueling rigor of public education, is free to reply, No, I'm not, Uncle Ken is full of shit, and I can repeat what I said, and he can repeat what he said, and eventually one of us will get tired and we can examine what Old Dog has to say.


Old Dog does not post as often as the other two loudmouths in this Institute, which is seemly, makes him appear calmer and wiser, empty barrel makes the most noise and that kind of stuff.  But that makes it harder to continue his threads,  I'm still waiting to hear if he has listened to the entirety of that youtube video.  I remember once Lithgow did a thing on a Newt Gingrich press release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS5F8X11h5shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS5F8X11h5s and it was great.  Newt, we just don't get to see much of him anymore.

I too wonder what particular song wormed Old Dog's ear.  Their was a spate of pop pseudo Irish music that was popular in the late sixties.  The most egregious of these was The Unicorn by The Irish Rovers.  I said pseudo because I don't think that's what they listen to over there.  I like the Chieftains

I Don't Hafta

The difference between school and the Institute is that, in school, they tell you what to learn, how to learn it, when to learn it, when to complete it, and then they grade you on how well they think you learned it, and I don't hafta do any of that stuff here.  My esteemed colleagues may do that stuff here if they want to, but they don't hafta any more than I hafta.  So there!

We have discussed this thing about minorities before.  I got nothing against minorities as long as they remain minorities.  It's when a minority threatens to become the majority that it makes me nervous.  I don't blame the minority for wanting to become the majority, I think that's just human nature, but it's also human nature to want to remain in the majority if you already are.  Why would anybody want to be in the minority if they didn't hafta?

What Uncle Ken said about the Mueller Report is inconsistent with what I have heard about it.  It was my understanding that no evidence of collusion was found, but that there was plenty of evidence of obstruction of justice.  I suppose it doesn't matter because they ain't gonna do nothin' anyway, just talk about it forever.

the answer man lays his burden down

I wonder what Beagles has against school.  Oh sure, I hated it through high school, but that was mostly I hated people telling me what to do all the time.  I was not a good student at the U of I, on probation half the time I was there, and not really paying much attention to what I was supposed to be learning especially when I got to have a social life, and then those sixties.  I was a better student when I took those data processing courses at the junior college in Champaign, and then some programming courses in Austin.  Edukashun school was awfully boring and irrelevant, but then it was run by people who were like my high school and grade school teachers.  The good thing about school is there is discussion which the self-taught scholar never gets.

I couldn't disagree more, could not disagree more, really could not disagree more with Beagles about just tossing stuff out to see what becomes of it, especially since it is then up to me to put in all the legwork of grueling internet research, and anyway who just says something without thinking about it?   A person should have facts and reasoning behind everything they believe, else why should anybody listen to them?  The unexamined life, as has been stated before in these annals, is not worth living.

 Nevertheless, if the present trend continues, we will end up being a minority in our own country. I think this is what Beagles is primarily about in his arguments about immigration, his talk of laws and rights is just so much window dressing, this is all he is concerned with, like the way George Wallace blabbed on about state's rights, when what was really behind it was white people not wanting to have their kids sitting next to black kids in school..

And I'll disagree with Old Dog about topics that are too thorny and complicated, why that is perzackly what makes them interesting.  Remember we went to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. 

I read the first half of the Mueller Report, and although it wasn't badly written it was a bit slow, lots of footnotes and stuff like that, and most of the material was in the newspapers in more easily digestible form.  When it all began my ilk was enthusiastic because we thought it would prove collusion and thereby set the skids under the big orange baby, but while it did confirm the former it had no effect on the latter.  Even before Barr's snappy two step of deception it became apparent that the forty percent don't care about collusion, and if the forty percent are not on their side the republicans remain toadies.  That YouTube video looks interesting, but it's hard for me to just sit still and watch something for that long.

I get earworms all the time.  I think the main culprit is those tv commercials where they slap a dash of a popular 60s or 70s song into their commercial.  You don't even notice it at first, and even when the earworm has wormed its way in it's hard to recall where that song came from.  I generally try to force another song on top of it, and even if that song becomes an earworm, at least it is a song that I like.  Easy From Now On as sung by Emmylou Harris works most effectively for that.

The Hungry Hordes

Okay, that thing about MS-13 was a bit of a stretch, possibly a flashback to my Bircher days.  Nevertheless, if the present trend continues, we will end up being a minority in our own country.  Of course, nothing says that the present trend has to continue.  Last I heard, the numbers went down a bit in June after breaking the record in May.  At this rate, we will only get about a million of them this year.  But what about next year, and what about the millions that are already here?  I have said more than once that my problem with the illegals is that there are way too many of them.  That's why they are getting such "shameful" treatment you know.  The facilities are over crowded and the staff is over worked.  I heard on the news today that our guys are planning to erect another tent city and hire 50 more immigration judges.  Better than nothing, but too little too late in my opinion.

I have said before that I reject the liberal guilt position that says we should pay for the sins of our predecessors.  Whatever our government did in the past is not my fault and, if it happened in my lifetime, I probably voted against it anyway.

I have heard of that earworm thing, but I don't remember ever being troubled with it.  I'm guessing that the Irish group Old Dog mentioned is either the Irish Rovers or the Clancy Brothers, two of my all time favorites.  If you're going to be obsessed with music, you could do worse.  

Earworm infestation

Hey Old Dog, get us started on another subject.

You've discovered my secret plan, Uncle Ken.  I was satisfied to watch you guys go back and forth on a few topics, like health coverage and the border situation, to the point of mental exhaustion and frustration, and then I'd casually stroll by and yammer about something completely unrelated and, possibly, off the wall.

I'm not saying that those issues aren't important; they are, but those topics are too thorny and complicated for me to fully understand; they are puzzles with missing pieces.  There are a few things that I know for sure, though.  The treatment of those illegals is shameful, bordering on the criminal. and the long term effects will not be good.  Some of those folks will probably get the asylum they seek and our government is creating a new class of disgruntled (future) citizens.  In some ways, I think that Trump has already overthrown the government.  He is following his own rules and Congress does nothing to hold him accountable for anything.  The Mueller Report has had no effect but maybe something toxic will come out of the Epstein investigations; there's a lot of wacky business and political connections associated with that guy.  It's crazy that nobody knows how that guy has made all of his money; he's got a lot of it but it's source is unknown, and rumors abound.  Apparently Epstein got that sweet deal years ago because Acosta was told to leave him alone because Epstein belongs to "Intelligence."  I think this was from the newspaper research in Florida years ago but if Epstein was part of an intelligence network the nations(s) involved were not specified and blackmail should not be ruled out.  This is tin foil hat territory, boys.

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The brief mention of the Mueller Report reminded me that Uncle Ken bought a copy but I haven't heard anything about it yet; I'm sure he's read it by now.  There were online copies available, for free, but I figured the hell with it; wallowing through a government report is not my idea of a good time.  But I now have a real good idea of the Report, at least the second half of it that deals with obstruction of justice.  Some guy wrote a play, kind of, based on the Mueller Report, and it's terrific.  It's titled The Investigation: A Search For The Truth In Ten Acts, and you can find it here.  A strange bit of theater since most of the dialog is exact quotations from the report but worth viewing, in my opinion.  It certainly helped me understand that there was a lot of obstruction of justice and it's worth it just for John Lithgow's performance in reading Trump's words; the guy can certainly chew the scenery and he captures the essence of Trump brilliantly.

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Does Mr. Beagles honestly believe that it's likely that MS-13 will be pounding on his door?  If it comes to that it is likely that he will be outnumbered (MS-13 prefers machetes and knives, or so I've read) and all of his efforts will have been in vain.

If those hungry hordes from Central America had guns, they might be able to resist evil in their homelands instead of running away from it.

Sounds good except for the fact that the United States is responsible for much of that evil.  More than one government has been toppled to support US business interests; our record is not clean and we should assume responsibility for past misdeeds.  If we destabilized and wrecked their country the least we can do is offer them a safe haven.  Unlikely, I know.

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Did you guys ever get an earworm, a tune that sticks in your head, that just won't go away?  I've had a couple for the past week, courtesy of an Irish group and their songs from the mid Sixties.  Not only do the songs stay in my head but I keep listening to them, too.  And these aren't songs written in the 60s; most are from decades earlier, as early as the 20s.  I remember liking the songs when I first heard them way back when but this is ridiculous.  I'd name the group but earworms can be contagious and I don't want to drive you guys to distraction.

I Don't Need No Stinking Research!

This is not school, it's supposed to be fun.  Sometimes I look stuff up if I want to know more about the subject, but sometimes I just throw it out to the Institute and see what comes bouncing back.  I seem to remember that was how people conversed before the internet was invented.  Of course in those days you had to get dressed and go to town to engage people in conversation, unless you were into long telephone conversations, which I never was.  The internet is more convenient and, if you do want to look something up, it's right there.

When I first brought up the census question, I didn't remember what the objection was but, the more I thought about it, it came back to me, although I still didn't think it was valid.  If you remember, I also didn't think there was any valid reason to put the question on the census in the first place, just as I don't think there's a valid reason to ask us about our race or ethnicity.  The original purpose of the census was to determine legislative representation and, in my opinion, that's all it needs to do.

You know, just because I read a few articles from the New York Times on my news app, doesn't mean I have to read the whole damn paper, which is another thing the internet is good for.  I honestly never had heard of that dead guy, although I have heard a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth about gerrymandering.  Michigan passed a ballot proposal last election that is supposed to make gerrymandering go away, but I think all it will do is take the power to gerrymander away from the state legislature and give it to a panel of unelected bureaucrats.  Big improvement!

People had health care before Obamacare was passed, and they will still have it if Obamacare is repealed or amended.  The only thing that changed is the way the bills are paid.  One way or another, the people who can afford to pay will always be subsidizing the people who cannot afford to pay.  Before insurance was invented, doctors charged their paying customers more to make up for the people they had to treat who couldn't pay.  There also were free government hospitals and charity wards that were supported by the taxpayers.

No, we don't need our guns to obtain healthcare, but we do need them to fight off MS-13 when they come banging on our doors demanding tribute.  If those hungry hordes from Central America had guns, they might be able to resist evil in their homelands instead of running away from it.

yet more answers from the answer man

I kind of hate getting into these political discussions with Beagles because it seems like a waste of time.  I don't change his mind on anything and even though I often admire my own prose and cogent arguments I realize that only three people in a nation of 372 million people will read it.  That's not one in a million, that's one in a hundred million.  Kind of makes me want to buy a lottery ticket and not linger under that tree in the rainstorm.

The Republicans, as responsible citizens (Har), should have a healthcare plan because people will still need healthcare even if they abolish Obamacare.  How do they plan on dealing with that?  Oh, I'm remiss, Beagles has already supplied the answer.  Nothing is more important in the destiny of our nation than a heavily armed citizenry.  I guess we can shoot our way out of our health care problems.

What I said was democrat/migrant vote and what I was referring to was those migrants who have become citizens and are likely to vote democratic.  The problem is not so much that naturalized citizens wouldn't respond to the census, as that non-citizens, the majority of whom are legal, will be spooked by having to declare that they are not a citizen.  Beagles may not believe that but the Republican party certainly does and that's why they want it put on the census.

By seminar I was referring to The Institute.  The Institute is a sort of a seminar, but I should have just said Institute.  The thrust of the paragraph is that I was peeved that Beagles claimed that he did not know why people objected to the citizenship question, but then one post later admitted that he did know that.  It just didn't seem very honest to me. I speak of his mysterious news feed because he claims to not know so many basic facts,  Here is the article about the dead guy that he claims to know nothing about, but it was in the NY Times which is in his newsfeed and is pretty common knowledge.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html

We were talking about squirrels maybe a week ago.  One Christmas I got my squirrel-hating mother a book on squirrels.  What prompted the author to write it is that he bought a bird feeder and the squirrels kept getting into it.  After every foray he would make some modification to keep them out and when he got home from work they had figured out a way around it.  Eventually he gave up and wrote that book on them because he realized that he had to work forty hours a week but those squirrels had 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to devote to breaking into the feeder.

I feel that way when arguing with Beagles.  I have to do all the research and he just sits there and writes whatever pops into his pretty little head at the moment.  It's just not fair.

Hey Old Dog, get us started on another subject.

We Don't Need No Stinking Plan!

I can't speak for the Republicans, but maybe they don't have a plan because they don't want no plan.  Their efforts so far have been expended towards opposing socialized medicine, so why would they have a plan to support socialized medicine?  Trump said that he had a plan, which mostly involved keeping certain provisions of Obamacare, like pre-existing conditions, while scrapping other provisions, like the individual mandate.  I didn't read it, if it was ever indeed published, but it sounded to me like what I said before, he wanted to patch up Obamacare and re-brand it as Trumpcare.  I personally like the Canadian system, but I would never vote for any Democrat, even if they proposed the exact same thing for us, because the Democrats want to take away our guns.  I might vote for a Republican who proposed the Canadian system, all other factors being equal.

I am a little confused by Uncle Ken' references to "the migrant vote".   Non-citizens aren't supposed to vote, although I read someplace that California is considering allowing them to vote in local elections.  It wouldn't surprise me if they were voting in Chicago, since they even let dead people vote there, but I haven't read that they were.  Are they?  Anything's possible, but I find it hard to believe that a recently naturalized citizen would be spooked by the word "citizen" on a government form.  Even if their command of English is limited, they must know that they are indeed citizens now.

 "Beagles claimed in his earlier post that he didn't understand why anybody objects to the citizenship question on the seminar, but in his later post he admits that well, maybe he did hear something about why they object on those mysterious news apps where he browses.  Then I have to assume he is equally aware of the memo of the dead guy who wrote to the reps that is why they ought to do it, and that is why they have done it, and that is why the supreme court, though Trump-loaded, has rejected it, so I don't think I have to say anything more here." - From Uncle Ken's last post

I can't seem to make much sense of this paragraph.  What seminar?  What dead guy?  As for my "mysterious news apps", there is nothing mysterious about it.  It came pre-installed from Microsoft and, as far as I know, everybody who is using Windows 10 has one.  All they do is reprint articles from a wide range of sources, some more reliable than others.  I avoid the extreme ones like FOX and MSNBC, and I seem to remember that most of the articles on immigration that I have cited came from the Washington Post and the New York Times.  

the answer man answers again

Trump never had a healthcare plan beyond telling people that they would have the best healthcare ever in the history of the planet.  I was speaking of the Republicans, who are theoretically responsible, as the party who are constantly bleating about healthcare but in like fifteen years have come up with no plan of their own.  The mandate goes to the government not the insurance companies.  I suppose in a sense it increases insurance participation which is a boon for the insurance companies, but it's also a boon for government revenue and for getting some money out of uninsured freeloaders.  I quite agree that the insurance companies have driven up the cost of healthcare.  So I reckon then that Beagles is planning on voting for one of the more progressive democrats if they win the primary.

Beagles claimed in his earlier post that he didn't understand why anybody objects to the citizenship question on the seminar, but in his later post he admits that well, maybe he did hear something about why they object on those mysterious news apps where he browses.  Then I have to assume he is equally aware of the memo of the dead guy who wrote to the reps that is why they ought to do it, and that is why they have done it, and that is why the supreme court, though Trump-loaded, has rejected it, so I don't think I have to say anything more here.

Of course that citizenship thing on the ballot (useless though it may be as Beagles points out) is meant to keep the migrant/democrat vote down.  Why else would the Republicans put it in? 

I reckon Beagles feels pretty secure in his citizenship in the swamp, but immigrants, even those who may have recently become citizens, fear the rhetoric and the actual raids that pick up everybody in the vicinity make them nervous and that's why they shy away from anything that mentions citizenship as the Republicans know full well (see above).

Do the dawgs remember when going to their physicals being asked if they were a commie or maybe just planning on overthrowing the government?  Well the thing was, even to our eighteen year old minds, it seemed a little silly, I mean if I am a commie or intent on overthrowing the government aren't I going to lie on that?  In Catch 22 there was some character that everybody disliked so they made up so loyalty oath which they would never let him take.

It seems to me that classism is more of a leftist thing, working class vs ruling class, it requires a bit of theory, whereas populism is simpler, throw the bums out, but in essence, yeah they are quite similar.

Clean Repeal

I seem to remember that Trump had a healthcare plan, which is why he was not able to persuade Congress to repeal Obamacare.  What most of the Republicans wanted was a "clean repeal", and what Trump wanted was "repeal and replace".  All he was trying to do was patch up Obamacare and re-brand it as Trumpcare.  In my opinion, Canada has the best plan of all, but nobody in the US seems interested in copying that.  I am against the individual mandate because it's a sweetheart deal for the insurance companies, and they're the ones who drove up the cost of healthcare in the first place.

I have read that putting the citizenship question on the census might discourage illegal immigrants from contributing to the count.  The thing is they're not supposed to be here in the first place, so send them back where they came from and they won't need to be counted.  The legal immigrants shouldn't have anything to worry about because they are here legally and, yes, they should be counted.  As far as I know, the proposed question just asks if you are a citizen, it doesn't ask non citizens if they are here legally or illegally, so I still don't understand why Trump or anybody wants it put on in the first place.

The citizenship question on Michigan's ballot request slip is another useless thing.  Since only citizens are supposed to be registered voters, what's the point of restating the obvious?  Before they give you your ballot, they check your name against their list of registered voters anyway, which is why they have you fill out the slip in the first place.  Be that as it may, I don't see how the citizenship question would keep the migrant vote down, unless Uncle Ken is suggesting that non-citizens should be given voting rights.

Something has been bothering me about this populism thing, and I finally identified it.  Populism is just another word for classism, and I don't believe in classism.  I know that lots of people do, but it's just a social thing that is not mandated by any law in this country.  I am an American, I ain't got no class.