Good Morning
Just a side note, most of the links today are items I had saved for Sunday. But with the earthquake in Nepal, and then the quick Goodfellas post, I just decided to share them with you today.
Now, on Monday….we had to go to our local Banjoville courthouse to visit the tax office and take care of the car tags. Well, what do you think happened? The damn place was closed.
Why?
Why was it closed?
Because we live in the fucking South were they don’t forget and they hold grudges forever. The kind of grudges that get laws passed so that they make it illegal NOT to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day.
Yup, it is against the law to work on Confederate Memorial Day.
Fiddle-dee-fuck-a-doodle-doo!
Check this out:
Did Confederate Memorial Day close government offices in your state today?
In Cullman County, Alabama, a local government vote stirred up 150 years of angst when Revenue Commissioner Barry Willingham wanted to keep the local courthouse open on Confederate Memorial Day.
For years, on the fourth Monday in April people showed up to the courthouse to buy car tags and fishing licenses, unaware that it was closed for the state holiday, which is officially observed in Alabama, Willingham explained. Businesses, schools and even offices in neighboring counties stay open, Willingham said, so people complained about the local government not doing the same. He understood their frustration.
“It’s not a prominent holiday,” said Willingham, who was born and raised in Cullman County, about 50 miles north of Birmingham. “I don’t think Microsoft adds Confederate Memorial Day to my Outlook.”
Usually, the holiday passes largely unnoticed, even by the local press.
But that didn’t happenthis year. County officials voted to stay open on Confederate Memorial Day and instead close Cullman County’s government doors on Good Friday, a day when there’s less demand for county services. After that vote, people told Willingham and his colleagues that they “ought to be ashamed of dishonoring our Confederate veterans,” he explained.
“It’s still going to be a holiday, ain’t no way we can change that fact,” he said. “We’re just not closing the courthouse.”
Alabama closes its government offices today in observance of Confederate Memorial Day, along with Mississippi and Georgia. On May 10, South Carolina government offices will close in observance of the state holiday.
Of the 11 Southern states that made up the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, few agreed on what date was best for remembrance once the war officially ended in 1865. Shortly after the war was declared over, a group of women in Columbus, Georgia, gathered for the first Confederate Memorial Day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers and rededicate themselves to the memory of those men and the war they fought.
I mean, how many generations have to pass before the regular memorial day will do? You know the one that covers all the wars?
Today, dates of state observance are scattered from April to June and are loosely associated with the Confederacy’s surrender to Sherman on April 26, the death of Stonewall Jackson on May 10 or the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on June 3. This year, Texas celebrated Confederate Heroes Day on Jan. 19. That also happened to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In Mississippi, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann issued a proclamation to tell state employees and officers they had the day off, in accordance with a 1972 state statute.
“I believe observance of Confederate Memorial Day is set by statute,” said Nicole Webb, spokeswoman for Gov. Phil Bryant, referring to the 1972 measure. “Elected lawmakers at that time would have voted on the issue. I know other states also observe it.”
This year, Georgia’s government officials have prioritized Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday, along with Christmas Day and Thanksgiving. However, there seems to be more reluctance to talk about why the Capitol and state agencies close in observance of the holiday 150 years after the end of the Civil War.
When the NewsHour asked Brian Robinson, the communications director for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, via e-mail for comment about why it was important for Georgians to remember Confederate Memorial Day, Robinson simply wrote “no thanks.”
Can you believe this shit? Confederate Memorial day has the same fucking priority as Christmas and Thanksgiving?
I have no words, other than the flowery ones that have been spewed above.
In connection to this:
John Wilkes Booth Loomis Has a Nice Ring to It – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Naming your kids after John Wilkes Booth. Now that takes some hate.
Dozens of Lincoln’s enemies honoured his assassin in the same manner as the Devrees family. A quick search via the Federal census records on the Ancestry website reveals roughly a hundred American families who appear to have named children after Booth in the post-war years. Unsurprisingly, about 90% heralded from the southern states, but a small handful, like the Illinoisans, were northerners – probably ‘Copperhead’ opponents of the
Union cause seeking solace in small acts of defiance. Most of the northern Booths came from counties close to slaveholding areas – places where sympathies for the Confederate cause ran deep – and I haven’t found a single instance of a postwar New Englander (citizens of the old antislavery heartland) sharing a name with Lincoln’s killer. Notably, in borderlands like Missouri – where neighbour clashed with neighbour and the Federal government fought to contain dissent – the practice was particularly common. Some of the records leave little to the imagination when it comes to the parents’ political loyalties (John Wilkes Booth Sharp, born in Georgia, circa 1871), but others (Washington Booth Stamton, born in Baltimore, circa 1871) hint at an attempt to induct Booth into a pantheon of American heroes. The true heir to the father of the republic, the latter implied, was the actor-assassin, and not the martyred president.
These families, in preserving the memory of Lincoln’s killer, were writing a history of the Civil War in which liberty was the victim rather than the victor. As late as the 1890s the odd new-born in the South was given Booth’s name, though the practice seems to have become less common after the restoration of white supremacy in the 1870s. This may be a result of changing enumeration practices, but it might owe something also to the late nineteenth-century “reconciliationist” remembering of the Civil War as a noble struggle between two valiant adversaries, and not as an ideological conflict over slavery, race, and citizenship. The first professional historians writing around the turn of the century cast Lincoln as a magnanimous commander-in-chief whose slaying served as an excuse for the imposition of a supposedly Carthaginian peace on the Confederacy.
Booth here was no longer the defender of liberty but a man whose rash crime ushered in the phantom horrors of Reconstruction. It might have been unwise to use his name.
On Baltimore:
Baltimore police commissioner: ‘The city is stable’
But the baseball games are being played in an empty stadium…A Brief History of Pro Sports Played in Empty Stadiums | Mental Floss
On Monday and Tuesday, the Orioles canceled their scheduled games at Camden Yards against the White Sox due to safety concerns related to the protests in Baltimore. But making up games over the course of the long and crowded MLB season schedule is difficult, and so, yesterday, the team announced an unusual solution—one that has never been used in the history of the game. Wednesday’s game at Camden Yards will still be played, but no fans will be permitted to attend. That’s right, the teams will play today in front of an empty stadium—intentionally.
According to a tweet from MLB’s Official Historian John Thorn, this is the first time such a solution has been used to accommodate extenuating circumstances. But thanks to the wacky promotional tactics employed in the Minor Leagues, it’s not the first zero attendance game.
Baltimore vs. Ferguson: This Is What Happens When Police Show Restraint – The Daily Banter
Jon Stewart slams Wolf Blitzer’s ‘shock’ over Baltimore: ‘Ferguson was just a few months ago’
Hours after being called out by a Ferguson activist, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was the butt of the joke on the Daily Show on Tuesday night, as Jon Stewart hammered him for acting shocked about the unrest in Baltimore.
“Elvis leading a herd of orthodox Jewish unicorns through a city street — that would be hard to believe,” Stewart said. “This sh*t happens all the time. Ferguson was just a few months ago, and you were talking about it.”
To prove his point, Stewart showed footage of Blitzer acting just as apoplectic over the protests in Ferguson last November.
“I am worried about you,” Stewart said. “Do I need to get [Adam] Sandler to go over to your house and just run sh*t by you every morning?”
Overall, Stewart said, reporters have failed to pick up on the recurring nature of urban protests in the US, with Baltimore and Ferguson taking their place among manifestations of turmoil like Watts, Los Angeles, and Miami, among others.
“These cyclical eruptions appear like tragedy cicadas,” he said. “Depressing in their similarity, predictability, and intractability.”
Which brings me to this image someone posted on Facebook:
Tacky yes, but it sure as hell makes a point.
Updates on the earthquake:
Kathmandu daily exodus may reach 300,000 as residents flee chaos | World news | The Guardian
Nepal earthquake: Relief starts reaching remote villages – BBC News
The post-earthquake tragedy in Nepal keeps getting worse – Business Insider
Nepal earthquake: death toll could reach 10,000, says PM | World news | The Guardian
- More than 5,000 are confirmed dead and 6,500 injured
- Nepal’s PM says death toll could more than double
- Foreign Office investigating reports of British death
- Authorities struggling to cope despite aid efforts
- Jason Burke in Kathmandu: what the victims share is poverty
- Read the latest summary
All the talk of earthquakes, this article from a couple of weeks ago seemed to be foretelling, even if it was discussing our country. Half the US Faces Earthquake Risk
This hazard map by the U.S. Geological Survey reveals earthquake ground motions for various probability levels across the United States.
Credit: USGSPASADENA, Calif. — Earthquakes threaten roughly half the U.S. population, a new study finds.
More than 143 million Americans live in earthquake-prone regions in the Lower 48 states, according to research presented here Wednesday (April 22) at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America. If you include Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, that number rises to about 150 million U.S. citizens, said lead researcher Kishor Jaiswal, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) contractor.
In a previous estimate prepared in 1991, officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said 75 million people in 35 states were at risk of earthquakes.
Now, more people are living in quake-prone areas than a quarter-century ago, Jaiswal said. The USGS has also learned more about earthquake hazards. The nation’s most recent national seismic hazard maps are much more detailed than the 1996 version, Jaiswal said. [Image Gallery: This Millennium’s Destructive Earthquakes]
You can read more about the risk and see a larger map at the link.
Some information on the horrible situation in the Mediterranean:
No military solution to boat migrant crisis: U.N. chief to paper | Reuters
Captain used gun, stick to keep African migrants in line, authorities say – LA Times
A look at same sex marriage vs. women’s reproductive rights: Why the U.S. Is Going Forward on SSM and Backwards On Reproductive Rights – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Many great points from Pollitt here. Two points are particularly worthy of emphasis. First, the extent to which SSM meshes better with traditionalist conceptions of the family:
Marriage equality is about love, romance, commitment, settling down, starting a family. People love love! But marriage equality is also about tying love to family values, expanding a conservative institution that has already lost most of its coercive social power and become optional for millions. (Marriage equality thus follows Pollitt’s law: Outsiders get access when something becomes less valued, which is why women can be art historians and African-Americans win poetry prizes.) Far from posing a threat to marriage, as religious opponents claim, permitting gays to marry gives the institution a much-needed update, even as it presents LGBT people as no threat to the status quo: Instead of promiscuous child molesters and lonely gym teachers, gays and lesbians are your neighbors who buy Pottery Barn furniture and like to barbecue.
Reproductive rights, by contrast, is about sex—sexual freedom, the opposite of marriage—in all its messy, feckless glory. It replaces the image of women as chaste, self-sacrificing mothers dependent on men with that of women as independent, sexual, and maybe not so self-sacrificing. It doesn’t matter that contraception is indispensable to modern life, that abortion antedates the sexual revolution by thousands of years, that plenty of women who have abortions are married, or that most (60 percent) who have abortions are already mothers. Birth control and abortion allow women—and, to a lesser extent, men—to have sex without punishment, a.k.a. responsibility. And our puritanical culture replies: You should pay for that pleasure, you slut.
Lemieux quotes other points at the link, so go and take a look.
More on Women’s abortion rights: I am pro-abortion, not just pro-choice: 10 reasons why we must support the procedure and the choice – Salon.com
On the 2016 Election front:
Carlson: Leave The Modern Tribalism Of The Left And You’re Stoned To Death | Crooks and Liars
When a black female decides to “support the candidate who supports the Constitution,” it’s pretty obvious where she’s getting her ideas, especially when that candidate supports the right to discriminate against her. The camaradarie of other young Rand Paul supporters who like the idea of the Libertarian “hero,” must be pretty awesome.
I don’t understand it….
Somehow, 19 year old Zuri Davis, has been brainwashed to believe that her constitutional rights are being “taken away.” Fox and Friends has to show their diversity, and Zuri, as an African-American Rand Paul supporter, fills that niche. This girl, who doesn’t want to be put in a box, said,
“It’s sad that we’re still getting caught up on subjectivity.”
The subjective nature of a candidate with a well-known history of White Supremacy is of no concern to Davis. She wants to defend the Constitution, while ignoring those trivial matters of equality for both women and minorities.
Encouraging her to agree with his insane rhetoric, Carlson throws out this zinger:
“Well, the modern tribalism of the Left demands that each person choose a group and then agree with everything that group agrees with. Then, anyone who leaves that group, is STONED to death. (Do) You reject that?”
Gee, Tucker, does she reject the notion of punishing someone to death by biblical savagery? Since when has the Democratic Party employed such tactics? Zuri says that she just wants diversity of thought. You know, that G.O.P. diversity? It’s the collective idea of denying that there’s ever been an issue of White Supremacy. Apparently, she also wants someone who’s not afraid to deny science and who has no problem shushing a woman who is getting out of line. Should a woman be raped, probably because she was asking for it, she should be have no rights if she wants an abortion. Mr. Small Government wants to control all the uteri, Zuri Davis’ body included.
More at the link.
Did you see Hillary’s speech this past week? Addicting Info – Hillary’s Fiery Speech: Religious Beliefs Must Change For Social Justice (VIDEO)
And I guess there was some squawk about The most troubling thing about Russian hackers reading Obama’s unclassified emails – Business Insider
And while at BI: What it’s like to live on food stamps – Business Insider I will give you a hint, Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t know how to do it….big surprise there.
This next link is interesting, an essay on putting an innocent man in jail. Alabama man convicted of wife kill with bogus evidence – NY Daily News
The film Goodfellas is not the only thing celebrating its 25th anniversary this year: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 25th anniversary | Uncover California
Someone asked me what my thoughts were on the Atlanta teaching scandal. I have to say I think it was a shitty thing, and wrong on so many levels, but I also feel that Jon Stewart hit it just right. You can see his segment here:
Jon Stewart takes on Atlanta’s teaching scandal | Political Insider blog
Video clip direct link here: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/x4vg3f/fraud-city
Let’s end this with pictures of rainbows, but no Elvis or Jewish unicorns: Manhattan rainbow | Today’s Image | EarthSky
…and how about a video of a Monkey dropkicks young man after the guy flashes the finger – NY Daily News
Looks like he picked the wrong monkey to mess with.
Newly posted security camera footage, purportedly from the monkey-laden city of Shimla in Northern India, shows a primate teaching a young man a lesson: Animals don’t like being flicked off, either.
A couple of guys walk past the monkey in a market area of the capital city of the Himachal Pradesh state and the former British Raj summer capital in the video.
But, rather than passing by the animal like other pedestrians in the video, one of them motions at the monkey, causing it to jump up on a crate for a better view.
The simian bears its teeth at the young man, who, undeterred, appears to raise his middle finger at the animal. That’s when the monkey leaps toward the human and lays him out with a swift push and two-legged primate kick to the torso — an attack the video shows once in real time and again in slow motion for good measure.
Now that is one smart ass monkey!
What are you all reading about today?
Here are more images of relief posters…
Click to view slideshow.
