June, 2016 archive
Cannon Fodderers 2
Bob Chernow, Milwaukee businessman and veteran, is fed up with the chicken hawks, those politicians and lobbyists willing to send the children of others to die for the sake of short-term domestic political and personal gain (which leads to as good a definition of “unjust war” as I am likely to hear). A snippet:
But I do take issue with chicken hawks who dodged the draft or shirked their duty during war but advocated that others fight and perhaps die in war. This lack of character is prominent among many elected officials.
Read the rest.
Truth in Labeling 0
Pam Sohn searches for just the right epithet to describe Donald Trump. A snippet:
Based on his nonstop slurs, that slogan is simply code for Make America White Again.
But when his opponents and media pundits point out that his policies are squishy at best, but mostly nonexistent, the words slide right off of Teflon Don.
Follow the link to see her suggestion.
A Party of Followers 0
The Republican Party, where winning is the only thing . . . .
Muhammed Ali 0
I once saw Muhammed Ali.
It was only for a moment and he never knew my name.
At the time, my office was in 30th Street Station Philadelphia. On a break, I was wandering about the waiting room (one of the pleasures of working in 30th Street) and Ali and a small group of persons who cared about him (today they would be called “an entourage”) were waiting for a train. He was already in the early stages of Parkinson’s and you could see some of its effects.
As I read the homages to his passing, I note an absence of acknowledgement of the hate that confronted him.
He was hated in the Jim Crow South, where I grew up.
Once he revealed that he had become a Muslim and had taken the name, “Muhammed Ali,” no one in the Jim Crow South, where I grew up, was willing to refer to him as anything other than “Cassius Clay.” When he fought, in the Jim Crow South, where I grew up, the white folks rooted against him, cheered when he lost, and seethed when he won.
When he did what I consider the bravest act of his career, something I would not have had the courage to do, refusing to fight in America’s war for a lie in Viet Nam, the war for a lie of his and my generation, he was reviled as a traitor in the Jim Crow South, where I grew up.
Muhammed Ali committed the gravest crime that any black man could do in the Jim Crow South, where I grew up, for all that America is better for his being, a crime that took more courage than I can imagine.
Muhammed Ali was uppity.
Nor Any Drop To Drink, Reprise 2
Retail beverage bottled water is a con and a scam.
It is one of the pettest of my pet peeves.
H/T to reader James for the image.