Kavanaugh and the Catholic Church

A lot is being made of the difference between the reactions to men accusing the Catholic Church of sexual abuse, and women accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual abuse.  Our society believes the latter but not the former.  It may very well be the anti-feminist nature of our society.  However, part of the reaction to the Church sex abuse case may be deeply rooted in our long standing anti-Catholoism. This country is hate on steroids and Roman Catholics have been targets of that hate.  Many years ago it was the story of Maria Monk, a Catholic num who wrote of sex crimes in a monastery and children being murdered.  A hoax yes, but Americans believed it.  Then there was a story of 800 Irish children being thrown down a sewer pit.  Another hoax, widely believed.  In 1924 the KKK kept a Catholic governor-Al Smith-off the democratic ticket for president, and we all know that John Kennedy had to explain why his religion shouldn't bar him from the presidency.

So for the case today of sex abuse by Catholic priests, I don't know how much is true.  I do know how easy it has been for this country to believe the worst about Catholics.  This might account for some of the difference between how we perceive the Christine Blaise Ford case and male children being abused.

US servicemen in WWI

The term "doughboys" comes from US cavalrymen's derogatory term for food soldiers.  They marched behind the troops on horses and as a result got covered in dust that resembled "adobe" which was a building material of the time.  Thus the foot solders became "doughboys".  A second theory has it that the term comes from the large button worn on uniforms that looked like lumps of fried dough.

Shotgun (weapon) was called a "trench broom" and the Germans complained it was a "violation of rules of war"

French railroads kept records of the number of US troops transported by rail and sent the AEF a bill "for their fares".  The French had a good relationship with US soldier because they drank a lot which increased the price of champaign and cognac.

Mustard gas would eat fresh (like lye) and destroy testicles of a solder jumping into a pit that had gas in it.  May be what happened to the Ernest Hemingway character in "The Sun Also Rises", Jack Barnes had become impotent in this manner.

Mustard gas (and chemical agents) wounds caused "disfiguring".  This resulted in "many American cities in 1919 and into the 1920's passing laws about being seen in public..."  Did not want to scare women and children.  Those disfigured were required to "be hooded or masked".  It was a crime for "being ugly on the public way" (Chicago term).  The American Legion founded post WWI.  Some vets excluded if they were suspected of "having ties to radical labor or bolshevist leanings...".  The vets who served in Siberia (Russia) were "particularly affected and considered "tainted by the experience".

(Source: US Servicemen in WWI)

Recent News Items/Jan 2018

From the Virginian Pilot on Jan 26, 2018...the US is sending a aircraft carrier to Vietnam, the first since the end of the war there in 1975.  China is not happy about our improving relationship with Vietnam.  Are we trying to provoke another conflict in southeast Asia?  To think that we were told that if Vietnam went communist the whole of southeast Asia would follow, and for that reason we fought a war there that killed 58,000 American young men and injured thousands more.  The policy makers now say they were wrong about our need to fight that war, but none of them went to prison and many continued to make US foreign policy.  I buy products now made in Vietnam and it just pisses me off that the country we destroyed and lost countless lives in is now a trading partner.

Our Secretary of Defense recently said that we have to prepare for war with Russia and China so must increase our defense spending to further absurd levels.

Maybe I don't know what I am really trying to say here, but the Vietnam War was the war of my age and the whole experience (like being drafted and then having that chicken hawk Don Rumsfeld telling us that draftees did nothing for the war effort), to this day just angers me.  Vietnam War veterans are the ones who really deserve our thanks.  

The Virginian Pilot recently reported on the pending sale of a concrete plant in Cape Charles, VA (on the tip of the Eastern Shore).  In 2014 the plant got a $ 1.2 million incentive "from state and local government" to enlarge its facility there and had agreed to hire 135 workers.  "The company laid off 81 workers a year later when the expansion was finished, and it closed a Chesapeake plant"

Amazon is set to gain from the income tax plan of donald trump, and I read in the news (1/23/18) that the company is planing of "no cashiers, no registers, no cash-this is how Amazon sees the future of store shipping".  (So much for the tax plan creating jobs).

Some thoughts of late.

First.  It seems the republicans and Donald Trump have a method  to the things they are saying.  For example, take the claims by DJT that Hillary Clinton's popular vote majority was based on illegal aliens voting.  Trump makes the claim on twitter and where ever he speaks; Clinton won the popular vote only because the democrats got millions of illegal residents to vote for her, especially in New Hampshire where Trump says the illegals were bussed in from Massachusetts.  Congress then determines to investigate the claim and a trump friendly congressman takes on the job.  That committee "investigates" and determines that there is no evidence to support Trump's claim.  You might think the issue is then finalized, but no.  The committee and Trump then claim that the popular vote majority for Clinton can't be proven, thus we don't know if Clinton the won the popular vote or not.  Trump claims that he won the electoral vote and no one knows about the popular vote.

Second.  Alaska has a fund called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD).  The fund pays every Alaskan citizen who can prove they have lived in the state for a year and plans to stay a yearly stipend, that is based on the oil wealth that comes out of Alaska.  In 2015 that stipend was $ 2072 (per person; family of four over $ 8000).  However, the fund only paid $ 1022 in 2016 (don't know why).  I am not be-grudging Alaskans their free loot but it causes me to wonder why Alaskan don't lose the incentive to work by getting a handout from the state.  It is also interesting to note that Alaska has just about always voted republican in national elections and republicans are highly critical of any government program that gives people "free shit".

Third.  I will have to admit that this next thought is bizarre but then again the whole issue of abortion has been batted around since 1972.  My thought is the position doctor (or nurse) might take on abortion should be influenced to some degree by where they received their medical training.  If that training came from a state university then it seems that the law on abortion should be a factor in determine one's position on the issue.  If that training came from a religious institution (like the University of Notre Dame) then a factor is determine one's position should be the moral position of that institution.

Trump

Trump makes a claim-without evidence-of wide spread voting by illegal aliens.  The GOP Congress then establishes a committee to investigate the claim.  They find no evidence to support the claim.  The committee then reports they can find no evidence one way or the other and reports it can't be determined if the claim is true, leaving some to believe (and trump to claim) that there might very well have been illegal voting but we just don't know for sure.

"Lock her up"

"Lock her up" he yelled at every campaign stop.  He said her use of e-mails could have divulged classified info to the enemies of this country.

Remember the media going ballistic over the news  that  Andrew Weiner was reading those electronic ejaculations because he was married to an aide to Hillary Clinton?  Oh, the threat to national security was beyond incredible.

Now we know that he (you know the "big fool" in the words of Pete Seeger and his "Waist deep in the Big Muddy") has personally shared classified information with several Russians who are his business partners and also officials of the Russian state.

Need I say it?  LOCK HIM UP.

Andrew Jackson and Slavery

It just happens that there has been some talk of late about President Andrew Jackson due to the comments by Donald Trump indicating that Jackson was a favorite president of his.  Trump, of course, claimed that Jackson would have somehow stopped the Civil War from happening.  "he would have worked it out" said the donald.  The fact that Jackson died some 15 years before the Civil War broke out didn't seem to bother Trump.

In a Virginia paper recently there was a article about Presidents Jackson and Jefferson being slave owners and some slave ads that appeared for runaway slaves of theirs.  Jackson's ad stated that he would pay $50 for the return of a runaway and an "...extra $ 10 for every hundred lashes andy person will give him, to the amount of three hundred".  Jefferson's ad noted the runaway by name and age and the fact that he was corpulent. 

(Source: "Cataloging cruel ads to hunt runaway slaves" by Doneen Brown of the Washington Post. In The Virginian Pilot on April 12, 2017.)