Democrats as socialists

I am so tried of reading letters to the Times News that call Democrats socialists.  I have decided to explain the different kinds of socialism to the letter writers.  I’ll define Marxist socialism, utopian socialism, and democratic socialism.  I will explain that none of these labels apply to the Democratic party today.  I will try to do this in simple one-syllable words so even MAGA followers can understand it, and I will recommend they do some research before making wild and silly claims.  I will explain what “research” means.  

I’m too tired tonight from the drive back from Maryland, but I’ll work on this tomorrow.

Wicked

We are in Salisbury, MD.  We took a hike in the Pokomoke River State Park, ate lunch in an old tavern in Princess Anne, and drove to a skipjack port on Chesapeake Bay.  Tonight it was either “Gladiator” or  “Wicked.”  We decided on “Wicked,” and I’m sure we made the right choice.     

We also heard that Trump plans to start up the XL Pipeline that runs through Nebraska.  We’ll see about that.     

French Resistance Fighter Dies at 100

Her name was Madeleine Riffaud, and she joined the Resistance in 1940 when she was a teenager.  At one point during the war she was captured, tortured, and sent on train to the Ravensbruck concentration camp for execution, but she escaped on the way.  In 1944 she and three comrades attacked a train, forcing the Germans to retreat into a tunnel.  They then persuaded a retired engineer to detach the locomotive, leaving the Germans inside the tunnel.  Eighty German soldiers surrendered.

She eventually became a poet and a journalist, supporting the North Vietnamese in their fight against the French colonialists.  She met Ho Chi Minh in 1966 and had a long term relationship with the Vietnamese poet Nguyen Dinh Thi.  

She downplayed her heroism.  “I refuse to be a symbol.  I was just a young girl caught up in history.”

She also said, “The essential was not to give in.  When you resisted, you were already a victor.  You had already won.”

Ms. Riffaud’s obituary, by Sam Roberts, was printed in today’s New York Times, p. B10.  The emphasis is mine.

Note:  I will be spending Thanksgiving in Maryland on the Eastern Shore.  I often have trouble posting on trips, so don’t be surprised if I don’t post for the next two days.  Enjoy the Holiday.  

A letter to Henry Firearms

 Dear Advertising Department 

Please remove my name from your catalog list.  I certainly have no problems with firearms.  I own a number of them, including rifles and handguns.  What I do have problems with is a company that gives money to and supports the National Rifle Association.  That is a group which opposes red flag laws, has no problem with unregulated gun sales, and lobbies against what reasonable people consider common sense gun laws.  

I noticed you do not offer bump stocks or “assault style” weapons in your catalog.  Why a company that looks reasonable and responsible would support the N.R.A. is a mystery to me.  I am so tired of this kind of nonsense.

It will be mailed tomorrow.

It's best not to eat turkey on Thanksgiving

Most of the approximately 250 million turkeys eaten by Americans annually are raised in large factory farms.  When the turkeys get bird flu, the companies are bailed out by the U.S. government.  Hormel Foods, the nation’s largest turkey producer, received over $100 million to pay for infected turkeys.  Why we have to pay that is unclear to me.  Can’t the company get insurance?

Since most Americans like white meat, the turkeys are specially bred.  As they mature in their indoor factory sheds, they soon lose the ability to walk.  These “broad-breasted whites” are ready for killing in as little as three months.  Their leg bones are too immature to carry their weight.  They end up sitting on the floor litter, which is full of manure.

I’d tell you to eat chicken, but many of the chickens in supermarkets today are also bred to have large breasts and are unable to walk by the time they are slaughtered.  

One thing you might do if you insist on eating meat on Thanksgiving is to go to a local butcher you know who processes chickens or turkeys raised the old fashioned way.  

Some material in this post is from Peter Singer, “What a Lame-Duck President Could Do for Lame Turkeys,” New York Times, (Nov. 24, 2024), p. 6 SR.  Dr. Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton.

The Rich Get Richer...

Item 1:  “From the 2017 census to the 2022 census, there was an 8% decrease in farms owned by families or individuals, a 4% decrease in partnerships, and a 9% increase in corporations.”

     See Alissa Cowell-Mytar, “Corporate Farm Ownership on the Rise,” Lancaster Farming, (Nov. 23, 2024), p. A14.

Item 2:  “The net worth of the word’s 10 richest people rose $63.5 billion the day after the election, the biggest daily increase since Bloomberg began its wealth index in 2012.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk alone saw his wealth increase by $26.5 billion.  The gains came from a surge in U.S. stocks built on anticipation that Trump will cut taxes and regulations.  

See The Week, (Nov. 22, 2024), p. 16.

St. Crispin's Day speech slightly reworked

The day celebrates two brothers, Crispin and Crispian, who were martyred spreading the gospel.  

Five of us, two from California, one from New York, and Linda and I, canvassed the entire town of Summit Hill except for the part on the mountain and along Lentz Trail.  One day just before we started, I read to the group a slightly abridged and modified version of the speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”  

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, 

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that canvasses with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, 

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in Carbon County now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks

That canvassed voters with us upon St. Crispin’s day.

It was a bit off.  Three of us were women so the “brother” thing didn’t quite ring true.  We were also out the week following the actual St. Crispin’s Day.  The English won; we didn’t, although I’m sure we moved the needle up a few percentage points.  

It is truly an inspiring speech in any case.

The working class doesn't "get" Democrats

I know, I know.  You have heard over and over how the Democrats ignored the working class, don’t understand the working class, don’t appeal to the working class.  Turn that around.  Bob Casey’s votes in the Senate have benefited the working class for years.  

Along comes David McCormick, former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, moving in from Connecticut to run as a supporter of Trump.  Do you know what hedge funds manufacture?  Unemployment.  Do you know where hedge fund CEOs move factories?  To China.  Do you know what allies from other hedge funds and securities trading did for the McCormick campaign?  Dumped in millions of dollars. 

If you are a member of the working class and you voted for McCormick for Senate, please shut up about the Democrats not getting the working class.  You have no fucking idea who is on your side.

Rez Ball

LeBron James is the producer of a Netflix film entitled “Rez Ball.”  It is the story of a Navajo Reservation high school boys’ basketball team and the difficulties the kids and their female coach overcome to get to the New Mexico state finals.  

It may be somewhat cliche (you know the big game will come down to the final seconds, and you can guess who will win), but the film also shows the poverty on the the Rez and the tight Indian community.  It features the fast running basketball for which Native American players are famous.

Four stars.

Birthright citizenship

After the Civil War three amendments were adopted.  The 13th ended slavery.  The 15th said that the right to vote could not be denied on account of race.  The 14th was a long one.  It contains a clause that said states can’t make or enforce laws that abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the U.S.  That was later used by the Supreme Court (not the current one) to apply most of the Bill of Rights to the states.

The 14th also contained a definition of citizenship.  It’s the first sentence.  “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

President Andrew Johnson opposed the 14th Amendment.  He said that if it were adopted, even Chinese could become citizens.  Right he was.  The 14th says if you are born here, you are one of us.  Doesn’t matter where you came from.  Doesn’t matter who your parents were.  Doesn’t matter if you are Jewish or Catholic or Muslim or atheist.  You are one of us.

It’s called “birthright citizenship.”  Trump and many in the Republican Party have pledged to get rid of it.  

Linda buys a VW Beetle

It’s a 1962 model, light green, 55,000 miles, and in great shape.  I have a feeling we won’t drive it to California, and we will have to relearn what was once called “standard shift,” but we can drive it in Halloween parades or to Weissport for ice cream.  It doesn’t have seat belts or a radio or a port to charge a cell phone, but it does run and it has air conditioning.  (You roll down the window.)  It also will have an antique license plate.  It arrives on Thursday.  

I am not a car guy, but the whole thing is interesting.  We can practice shifting gears in one our fields.  

Songs from the Great Depression

Tonight, in a depressed mood, I listened to an album entitled “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime:  American Song During the Great Depression.”  The album included songs like “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore” by Woody Guthrie, “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham” by the Delmore Brothers, and “All In Down and Out Blues” song by Uncle David Macon.  

Yesterday the Times published an article about all the rich people who had backed Trump in the belief that he would make them richer.  Case in point–Elon Musk.  And he probably will.

I’ve read so many articles that said that the Democrats should appeal more to the working class, to people who haven’t made it and aren’t about to.  That should be easy for me.  I have never liked rich people.  Most of them seem to be parasites.  Hedge fund managers, CEOs who never set foot in a distribution center or a production line or used a wrench or loaded a truck, financiers, crypto bros, guys who make a living moving money around, Harvard-trained attorneys...I dislike that whole crowd.  It’s almost visceral.

Congratulations to Senator-elect Andy Kim

The U.S. has a Korean-American population of about 1.8 million.  Not a huge number; most of them live in California, New York, and New Jersey.  Now New Jersey voters have elected the first Korean-American to serve in the U.S. Senate.  

Some voters still do the right thing.  It should be noted that New Jersey voters also supported Kamala Harris over Don Trump.  People in eastern PA often look down on our New Jersey neighbors, but I really like them.

Buyer's Remorse

Quite a few Muslim and Arab voters sided with Trump as a rebuke to the Biden Administration’s siding with Israel in its war in Gaza.  A guy named Rabiul Chowdhury, a founder of Muslims for Trump, thought that a former ambassador to Germany would be made Secretary of State.  Samraa Luqman of Dearborn and a co-chair of the Abandon Harris campaign, said she thought anything was better than Biden officials.  Whoops.

Trump’s picks include Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the  UN, Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and a pro-Israeli golfing buddy Steven Witkoff as special envoy to the Middle East.  All are hawks who completely back Israel.

In fact Huckabee says there is no such thing as the West Bank.  It is Judea and Samaria, names used by right wing Israelis.  He says there is no occupation; the West Bank simply belongs to Israel.

Evidently the Muslims in Michigan who voted for Trump hadn’t done their homework.  

Some of the info for this post is from Jonathan Weisman, “Israeli Right Likes Trump’s Team; Many U.S. Muslims and Jews Don’t,” New York Times (15 November 2024), p. A9. 

Dead bear in our driveway

Last night our next door neighbor phoned and said there was a dead bear in our driveway.  We grabbed a flashlight and ran out, and there was a dead bear in our driveway.  Our neighbor was also there; she said a guy had stopped at her house and said he hit a deer.  His truck was damaged, but he thought he could drive to his home about a mile away.  She came out to see if the deer was still there and found the bear.  

Linda thought it weighed between 400 and 500 pounds.  It certainly looked big.  It had no evident wounds.  Our neighbor said she had already called the Game Commission, and they were sending someone out to pick it up.  This morning it was gone.

We like bears.  We don’t even care that our suet feeder and seed feeders are occasionally damaged by bears.  They aren’t dangerous, and they are magnificent animals.  It was a sad occasion. 

Does canvassing do any good?

I was part of a team of five people who canvassed Summit Hill.  All of it.  Canvassing is not easy.  You run into unfriendly dogs and people, you are up and down porch steps, people don’t answer the door, and in Summit Hill it is colder and more windy than most of Carbon County.  I often wondered if any of it did any good.  The problem was that we didn’t have a control group.  

Or so I thought.  It turns out we did.  It was called New Jersey and New York.  Trump improved his performance by more than ten percentage points in those two states.  In Pennsylvania, where a small army of canvassers worked [two of the members on our team were from California; one from New York], Trump did three points better.  

Canvassers can move the needle a few percentage points.  That’s what we were attempting to do.  We evidently did that.  The problem was that the voters cared more about inflation and immigrants than they did about electing an obviously criminal incompetent and unqualified candidate.

Info on the statistics was taken from Campbell Robertson, “Ground Game in Pennsylvania Was No Match for Groundswell of Grievances,” New York Times (14 Nov. 2024), p. A17.

Attorney General Matt Gaetz?

This is getting good.  Matt Gaetz as Trump’s Attorney General.  Wow.  And a Fox News guy as Secretary of Defense.  This is turning into a confederacy of dunces.  So far I’m enjoying this.  And Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as advising on efficiency?  It gets better every day.   

Missouri backs abortion rights

Missouri was the first state to restrict abortions after the Dobbs decision.  The restrictions were major.  Then, on November 5th, Missouri voters passed an amendment to the state constitution guaranteeing abortion rights.  They did this while also voting for Trump.  The same thing happened in Montana and Arizona.  Voters in Florida also backed abortion rights by a majority, but they needed 60% to pass the referendum, so it didn’t work.

The amazing thing to me is why would the same voters who back abortion rights then turn around and vote for Trump.  There is some kind of disconnect there.

Teaching democratic values

I live next to a one-room school museum owned by the Palmerton Area Historical Society.  The school contains copies of old primers, some of which have stories about Dick and Jane.  I recently looked at one entitled “School Friends,” published in 1940 and revised in 1951.  The author was Lois G. Nemec, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin. The book was part of “the democracy series.”

The two-page preface contains this message and list:

As we survey conditions in the world today, our American way of life becomes increasingly precious and important to us.  The hard fact remains, however, that our democratic way is being sharply challenged both at home and abroad.  Because of this American citizens must not only understand the meaning of democracy but also know how to assume its responsibilities.

.....

In planning the Democracy Series, the editors and authors, after careful investigation and conference, selected fifteen salient characteristics of democracy as follows:

1. Respect for the dignity of the individual
2. Broad opportunity for the individual
3. Economic and social security
4. Freedom to seek the truth
5. Freedom of speech and press
6. Universal education
7. Majority rule, minority rights
8. Justice for the common man
9. Freedom of religion
10. Respect for the rights of private property
11. Individual responsibility as a citizen of a democracy
12. Development of the social virtues
13. Intellectual honesty
14. Living together as good neighbors
15. World understanding and co-operation with other nations

Do students read?

According to an article in today’s New York Times by college professor Jonathan Malesic, students no longer read books.  He says that in 2011 he assigned nine books to a class, and the students responded to the challenge.  Now, given the reluctance to reading, he doesn’t assign any books.  He points out that students are often angling for jobs in finance or consulting or tech, and reading isn’t really necessary.  In addition, universities don’t promote the idea of humanistic learning.  Employment is the goal.

I’ve been out of the college teaching business for about 14 years.  I know that students always groaned when required to read The Grapes of Wrath or the rather thick Norton Anthology of American Literature.  I’m fairly certain, however, that most of them did most of the assigned reading, and many of them read for pleasure.  

I hope Dr. Malesic is exaggerating.  I hope colleges are still producing readers.  I can’t imagine a life without reading.  It would be so shallow and depressing.

Deporting people from Illinois?

When the Trump administration starts its mass deportations, there is justifiable fear that all kinds of people will get caught in the roundups.  Gov. J. B. Pritzker is worried about this and stated:  “You come for my people you come through me.”

We need more officials like that.

Missouri protects abortion rights

If I remember correctly (and I am too lazy to look it up), Missouri was the first state to pass Draconian laws to limit abortion after the Dobbs decision. 

On Tuesday the voters of Missouri passed an amendment to the state constitution enshrining the right to abortions.  They were not the only state to do so.  It’s not over.