August 2015 Stock Market news

In an article in The Record on Sunday 8/23/2015 it was noted that because gas prices have fallen, consumers have more money in their pockets.  But, to the dismay of businesses, those consumers are opting to "pay off debt instead of going shopping".  It seems to me that the business community wants to pay as little as possible for labor while also wanting those with less to spend what little they do have on the products of the business community.  It proves that the economy will be in the crapper until the consumers have some real reason to begin to spend again.

The South and the Civil War

I have made comments on this forum in the past about the coming of the Civil War with the intention of showing that the South had no reason to secede and by doing so only managed to bring down destruction on themselves.

Another example of this concept is one of the compromises from the Constitutional Convention in the 1780's.  The "three fifth's compromise" is always noted for his disparaging comment about African-American slaves; three-fifths of a person.  I think another way of looking at this compromise is the advantage it gave to the slave holding southern states.  The compromise involved the counting of persons (in a census) for purposes of representation in Congress and maybe more importantly in the Electoral College.  The south got votes for a population they considered property and not able to vote, hold office or have any privileges of citizens.  That plus the Constitution gave the south the ability to import more slaves for twenty years after the signing and then to continue to count slaves who were "bred" on the plantation, many times by the owners themselves.  This gave the south more electoral power than they deserved and a greater influence on passing legislation.  

My original position that the South had few real reasons to withdraw from the Union as they were basically in control of the debate over slavery and all other issues that may have derived from slavery.

Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

President Harry Truman, after the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki, created this commission to "study the health impact on survivors in order to better protect Americans in case of attacks".  The commission's doctors examined those injured by the bombing and suffering from radiation poisoning by photographing them, taking blood samples and semen samples.   However they "...did not treat them".  I hate to make the comparison, but it almost sounds like Nazi doctors conducting experiments on prisoners of war to see how long they would live under certain conditions.  That was considered a war crime at Nuremberg after WWII for which we executed German officials.

(Source: The Virginian Pilot on 8/9/15.  I did not record the writer or title of article)