Glenn Kirschner – -Donald Trump compromises our national security & then . . . ruminates on being Speaker of the House.
The Lincoln Project – Vision
Thom Hartmann – Will Trump’s Mouth Cause MORE Deaths?
Columbus Day … from Full Frontal … with Deb Haaland
Deaf Cat Loves Riding Around London With Her Dad
Beau – Let’s talk about Trump, troops, and truth….
Yesterday, I saw Virgil (who returns all greetings, spoken and unspoken.) We played Scrabble, getting very liberal, even multilingual, especially the last game. But it’s all in fun. After I got home and posted my safe note, I was listening to tha radio and heard something I certainly never dreaned it was possible, and I’m not 100% positive how it was done. I heard four snare drum rolls (2 sets of 2) played by a classical guitarist, on the classical guitar. It was in an orchestral piece, transcribed for guitar, which starts with a little fanfare of two drum roll and then repeats it later. It was a piece I’m familiar with, so though they didn’t sound exactly like drum rolls, I recognized immediately what they were meant for. No transcription ever sounds exactly like the orchestral piece anyway, so I thought they were pretty darned good. My best guess is that he knocked or slapped the guitar through the open strings – but that’s quite a feat , since the parts of the strings that are directly over the sound box of the guitar are mostly over the sound hole.
I apologize for not making a graphic for Indigenoua People’s Day. The reason was that – there are so many tribes – all over the Americas – and every single one of them has rich cultural traditions and images – and every single tribe also survived over 2000 years by living sustainably. Even just in my corner of the United States there are multiple tribes with multiple traditions. And I didn’t want to leave anyone out, nor did I want to fall back on stereotypes, many of which are not even respectful. So I’ll just wish you a happy indigenous people’s day and leave it at that.
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TeenVogue – The Supreme Court Must Protect Domestic Violence Survivors By Overturning the Rahimi Decision
Quote – When I was a young girl living in South Carolina, my mother, Patricia Ann, was shot and killed by an abusive dating partner. He murdered her in front of my three younger sisters — who were 10, 11, and 12 at the time — with an sawed-off shotgun. He was a convicted felon who should never have had access to the firearm he used to take our mother away from us forever. My sisters and I are grown now, but we still feel her absence every single day…. The Fifth Circuit’s decision in Rahimi is putting domestic violence survivors living in the Fifth Circuit in danger right now. I know firsthand that this is not an abstract exercise. If the decision is not reversed, domestic violence survivors face the prospect that their abusers can arm themselves immediately. This ruling is a potential death sentence for countless women and families.
Click through for article. If you had the idea that TeenVogue was a shallow, ditsy publication all about clothes, makeup, and maybe a little sex, hold that thought – for when you are around MAGAts. For the sake of democracy, never let them find out how woke it is. It is stepping in where schools and scared parents fear to tread – has actually been doing so for some time.
Colorado Public Radio – Colorado’s Black history — and future — go on display in a new unlikely center of Black culture: Boulder
Quote – [A] new exhibit at the Museum of Boulder, called “Proclaiming Colorado’s Black History,” gives the community and the state another chance to reflect on the past, celebrate the accomplishments of those who have persevered, and create joy for the future. The exhibit opened Sept. 29, and the museum plans to have it on display for two years. It comes shortly after a documentary released in 2022 called “This Is [Not] Who We Are,” which explores “the gap between Boulder’s progressive self-image and the lived experiences of its Black citizens,” and the opening of the university’s new Center for African and African-American Studies, which is meant in part to help build community…. Adrian Miller, the lead curator of the new Museum of Boulder exhibit… is conscious of the specific cultural moment when this exhibit is opening, three years after massive protests for racial justice, and amidst a celebration of Black culture in Boulder centered around the football coach.
Click through for story and some pictures. CPR calls Boulder “unlikely” on the basis that Boulder is like 90% white and only 1% black. But the thing is, the main University of Colorado is there. And one of the things Republicans hate about education, especially higher education, is that academics tend not to shy away from research, from finding out truth, and then from sharing that truth. My only issue with this being in Boulder is hoping that fact doesn’t turn out to limit access.
Food For Thought
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I don’t think much about scalping, not even in the colloquial sense of demanding exorbitant prices, and getting them because the goods in question are not available elsewhere. So I suspect that most people don’t think much about scalping either. But, since tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples Day, and scalping is associaed with indegenous people in the Americas, I thought it a good opportunity to bring up some real, unsanitized history in hope of helping to set the record straight.
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Christoph Strobel, UMass Lowell
For the third year, the United States will officially observe Columbus Day alongside Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 9, 2023.
In 2021, the Biden administration declared the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day.
I am a scholar of Colonial-Indigenous relations and think that officially recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day – and, more broadly, Native Americans’ history and survival – is important.
Yet, Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day should also serve as a reminder of the violent past endured by Indigenous communities in North America.
This past – complete with settlers’ brutal tactics of violence – is often ignored in the U.S.
My research on New England examines the important role that settlers’ wars against Native Americans played in their colonization of the region.
This warfare often targeted Native American women and children and was often encouraged through scalp bounties – meaning people or local governments offering money in exchange for a Native American’s scalp.
Scalping describes the forceful removal of the human scalp with hair attached. The violent act is usually performed with a knife, but it can also be done by other means. Someone can scalp victims who are already dead, but there are also examples of people being scalped while they are still alive.
Different groups have historically used scalping to terrorize people.
Native Americans certainly scalped white settlers dating back to the 1600s. Popular culture is full of examples of Native Americans scalping white settlers.
In several Indigenous cultures in North America, scalping was part of human trophy taking, which involves claiming human body parts as a war trophy. Scalps were taken during warfare as displays of military prowess or for ceremonial purposes. But just because scalping was practiced by some Native American societies, it does not mean that it was practiced by all.
Eyewitness accounts, histories and even art and popular films about the American West have perpetuated the false idea that scalping is a uniquely indigenous practice.
White settlers’ wide use of scalping against Indigenous peoples is far less acknowledged and understood. In fact, Colonists’ use of scalping against Native American people likely accelerated this practice.
Various European American colonizers also scalped Native American people from at least the 17th through the 19th centuries. It was a way to provide proof that someone killed a Native American person. Several North American colonial powers, from the British to the Spanish empires, paid bounties to people who turned in scalps of killed Native Americans.
Colonies, territories and states in what is now the U.S. used scalp bounties widely from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
Colonial governments in New England issued over 60 scalp bounties from the 1680s through the 1750s, typically during various conflicts between Colonists and Native Americans.
Massachusetts made the widest use of scalp bounties among the New England Colonies in the 1700s.
Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor issued one of the most notorious scalp bounty declarations in 1775. This declaration, called the Spencer Phips Proclamation of 1755, provides a glimpse into how this brutal system worked.
“For every scalp of such Female Indian or male Indian under the Age of Twelve Years, that shall be killed and brought in as Evidence of their being killed …, Twenty Pounds,” the declaration reads.
This reward was a large amount of money for Colonists, equivalent to more than 5,000 pounds, or US$12,000 in today’s currency. The scalp of a male Native American could fetch two and a half times this amount.
In the Colonial era, such violence was normalized by anti-Native American sentiment and a sense of racial superiority among Colonists.
And the violent trend was long-standing. As several historians point out, violence against and scalping of Native Americans also played a significant role in the conquest of California in 1846.
One historian has called California “the murder state” in the 1800s, as the scalping and massacres of Native Americans accompanied white settlers’ taking Native American land. State and federal officials, as well as several businesses, supported this genocide by paying bounties to scalp hunters.
From a contemporary perspective, the United Nations would consider the targeted killing of Indigenous women and children to be genocide.
Centuries later, California and Massachusetts have had different responses to their role in these sordid histories.
California has acknowledged “historic wrongdoings” and the violence committed against the Indigenous people who live in the state. In 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom set up a a Truth and Healing Council to discuss and examine the state’s historical relationship with Native Americans.
In Massachusetts, state officials have largely been silent on this issue. This places Massachusetts more in line with much of the United States.
This is true even as Massachusetts, under the leadership of then-Gov. Charlie Baker, put a special emphasis on genocide education in the school curriculum.
The legacies of violence and scalping are deeply rooted and can be observed in numerous parts of U.S. society today.
For instance, various communities, including Lovewell, Maine, and Spencer, Massachusetts, are named after scalp bounty hunters. Locals are often not aware of the history behind these names. Such town names, and the history of violence connected to them, often hide in plain sight.
But if you look closely, from the writings of early Euro-American colonizers and American literature to popular sport mascots and state and town seals, the brutality wrought upon Indigenous people remains at the forefront of U.S. culture more than five centuries after it began.
Christoph Strobel, Professor and Chair of History, UMass Lowell
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, let’s do what we can to dissociate scalping from being associted only with “savages” (or maybe stop thinking of savages as different population groups from our own and instead defining it on the basis of actions only.)
Incidentally, tomorrow is also still Columbus Day too. So in tomorrow’s video thread I’ll share a video (an old one from 2019) made for Full Frontal and featuring Deb Haaland.
The Furies and I will be back.
Glenn Kirschner – Jim Jordan wants to be House speaker? A better fit for Jordan would be indicted Trump co-defendant.
The Lincoln Project – Broke
MSNBC – ‘This is nuts’: Former Rep reacts to ‘McCarthy’s spectacular fall’
Puppet Regime – Kim Jon Un: Swiftie
Stray Puppy Gets Rescued And Can’t Stop Jumping For Joy
Beau – Let’s talk about some paintings in Russia…. [Note fm JD – this is NOT about art]
Yesterday, the radio opera was “Jephtha,” by George Frideric Handel. (If you want to use the German form, that’s Georg Friedrich Händel, and the King quite possibly did, since I don’t believe he learned English, but everyone else used the English form.) Jephtha is an oratorio based on the Bible, and it was presented as one in this live recording from September 2022 by Music of the Baroque. It’s one of those old Dude-in-dire-straits offers to sacrifice the first living thing he encounters if divinity will save him, and that turns out to be his child – in this case, his daughter. Scholars differ in this case as to whether the sacrifice involved death or instead a lifetime commitment to serve the temple. There is some evidence for either. Handel went with the service one, complete with an angel to command Jephtha to resolve it that way, which isn’t in Jodges, but does recall the Genesis story of Abraham and Isaac. It’s late Handel, likely the last thing he wrote, and his compositional skills were just fine, as was his hearing, but his eyesight was going, and he had to stop writing when he could no longer see the page. I don’t know how anyone who didn’t know that could deduce it, though. The music is definitely accomplished, beautiful, and baroque.
If I wait for all the other juicy Beau videos to be posted before posting this one from yesterday, it will be too late. It might not even get seen. So here’s a link to the video on events in the Middle East from the dude some of his viewers are starting to call “Beaustradamus.” Off to see Virgil now – will comment later.
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Robert Reich (Substack) – Capital vs. labor under Biden
Quote – Today, this struggle takes the form of giant corporations that have monopolized their markets and workers who are trying to organize labor unions. This is why you’re hearing so much about the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department going after Amazon and Google, respectively. (They’re also going after Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Kroger and Albertsons, and a wide range of other giant corporations and proposed mergers.) And why you’re also hearing so much about strikes — the UAW, writers and actors, nurses, workers at Kaiser Permanente, Starbucks baristas, and others. And about attempts to organize Amazon and other anti-union companies.
Click through (to Substack) for full article. Yes, you are hearing about Biden supporting labor. But you are getting it piecemeal rather than as an overarching theme, and you are not hearing about the basis of the struggle, nor about the meaning of the struggle. This is a good, solid look at all of that. You might even want to bookmark it.
Democratic Underground (sheshe2) – Joe Biden: According to a new book
Quote – According to a new book by Franklin Foer, Joe Biden isn’t just the president of the United States, he is the West’s father figure, whom foreign leaders call for advice and look to for assurance. Foer writes: “It was his calming presence and his strategic clarity that helped lead the alliance to such an aggressive stance, which stymied authoritarianism on its front lines. He was a man for his age.”
Click through for DU article. Ordinarily I wouldn’t run just a book review, or if I did I would at least cite the original source for the review. But I don’t have and haven’t seen the book, and the original source is Xitter, and I just thought the DU article had good news.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Trump files frivolous motions to dismiss his criminal cases; divulges nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago
The Lincoln Project – Biden Warns about MAGA
PoliticsGirl – One of these things is not like the other…
Founders Sing – We Are Cowardly (CC in lower left)
Rescued Kitten Becomes One Of The Girls
Beau – Let’s talk about Newsom’s pick for Senate….
Yesterday, now that we’re a week into October, Wonkette posted a link to the 20 Most Haunted Places in the World (not a Substack site.) Many of them, maybe most, are quite beautiful – if I were a ghost there, I’d likely stay too. Also, here’s a link about an incident from World War II which demonstrates just how dangerous classified informmation can be in the wrong hands (and mouths.) Finally, I received an email from Eric Swalwell advertising a closeout price on a Kevin McCarthy Catnip Toy: “While Kevin’s on his way to the litter box to try and salvage the mess he’s made of the GOP, our team’s throwing Kevin the celebration he deserves: A clearance sale. Our Kevin McCatnip toys are now marked down to just $15, so you can watch your cat bat Kevin around the living room the way you’d like to!” Tomorrow, I’ll be seeing Virgil, and will post when I get home as always.
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Grist – How does climate change threaten your neighborhood? A new map has the details.
Quote – If you’ve been wondering what climate change means for your neighborhood, you’re in luck. The most detailed interactive map yet of the United States’ vulnerability to dangers such as fire, flooding, and pollution was released on Monday by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University. The fine-grained analysis spans more than 70,000 census tracts, which roughly resemble neighborhoods, mapping out environmental risks alongside factors that make it harder for people to deal with hazards. Clicking on a report for a census tract yields details on heat, wildfire smoke, and drought, in addition to what drives vulnerability to extreme weather, such as income levels and access to health care and transportation.
Click through for article and map. I see the South is expecting below-freezing temperatures this weekend, except for Florida’s peninsula, whereas I’m expecting some warming. Go figure. I actually seem to have made a pretty good choice of where to live in view of climate change – not that anywhere is perfect, of course. Literally the entire world is endangered.
Wonkette – Jimmy Carter’s Solar Panels And The Mellow Allman Brothers Climate Paradise That Could’ve Been (OK, some of that headline may not be scrupulously fact-checked.)
Quote – Reagan reversed the clean energy initiatives Carter had put in place, a far more concrete rejection of renewable energy than the symbolic removal of the panels. Solar panels would return to the White House eventually. In 2002, the National Park Service installed solar electricity and water heating systems elsewhere on the White House grounds, although the George W. Bush administration chose not to publicize that. In 2014, Barack Obama installed a photovoltaic system on the White House roof. And in 2017, Jimmy Carter installed a solar farm on 10 acres of his peanut farm; it provides about half the electricity for Plains. Carter, who’s now in hospice care at home, celebrated his birthday quietly at home with Rosalyn, his wife of 77 years, and with his children and grandchildren. I’ll assume the party was lit by solar, too.
Click through for full article. In 1976 none of us who weren’t scientists were all that accurate on what the answers were – and what they weren’t – and the scientists weren’t telling – or at least, not the truth. Jimmy was trying. Ronny rejected it all. I’ll go to my grave beliebing that the 1980 Presidential election was a catastrophe and a creator of more catastrophes – and I think I”ll be correct. I’ll for sure be in good company.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – More plea offers extended by DA Willis in Trump’s Georgia RICO case; let the dominos fall
The Lincoln Project – About That Impeachment Hearing
MSNBC – Biden discusses efforts to ‘ease the burden of student debt’
Liberal Redneck – McCarthy Ousted
Child Raised By 5 German Shepherds
Beau – Let’s talk about Texas, Montana, and 2 cases about rights….
