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This guy says that all the calendars have been wrong, and therefor the Last Supper took place on the day reported in the Gospels.
Next he’s going to prove that the value of pi is an even 3.
Hank Sims will be guest host with Dennis tomorrow morning. Among the guests will be Estelle Fennel for the second hour, presumably to discuss last Tuesday’s BOS meeting.
Clif will be on just before 8:00 to discuss the meeting as well.
Unfortunately I’m out of town and will have to listen in later on the archives.
My mother-in-law Toby passed away nearly a year ago and had apparently asked that I receive these buttons, most of which are Norman Thomas campaign offerings. But there are a few mysteries, and I know there are a few lefties around here who may have some insight.
I think you can make the jpeg pretty large after two clicks, which helps cut through some of the clear plastic glare from the scanner.
The buttons originally belonged to my wife’s grandfather, Joseph Glass, who was a labor attorney who ran for various NY offices on the Socialist ticket, but I don’t have any buttons from his campaigns unfortunately. The first button is probably the oldest or the second oldest, as James Mauer was his running mate in 28 and 32. We’ve already located one online sale of an identical button for $75.00. It’s probably the most valuable, though I have no intention of selling any of them in my lifetime. My kids can decide what to do with them when I’m gone.
But the “No AEF” button may be older. I can’t think of anything it stands for other than American Expeditionary Forces, presumably those which were sent into the Soviet Union just after WWI. Does anybody have any other ideas?
I am assuming that the Don’t join Jim Crow Army button (two of them in the bunch) was associated with the effort led by A. Phillip Randolph to desegregate the military, and may have been generated for the intended March on Washington?
The lower right corner button is difficult to read. It reads “Unite May Day for Peace and Security.” Security? Post-war, during, or pre-war? The other May Day (1937) button reads “unite labor against reaction.” I know the political definition of “reaction,” but I’m wondering about the specific context.
Opposition to the New Deal?
I don’t know who Thomas Nelson was, but I have one of his campaign buttons.
Oh, there’s one which opposed Roosevelt’s third term put out by a group calling itself “the Constitutionalists.” But I’m not familiar with any applicable Constitutional provisions to prohibit a third term at the time. Presumably the button was associated with the 1940 Thomas campaign (with running mate Maynard Krueger), but it probably could have been generated by Republicans as well as
socialists.
The “Keep the US out of war – boycott Japanese goods” also has me curious as to the timing and the precise meaning. It doesn’t say “the war,” and I don’t know how long we were trading with Japan before we were attacked. And I’m not certain how the boycott would keep us out of war. Seems like it would make war
with Japan more likely. But I don’t know the context. Did it have something to do with “cash and carry” policies?
And I have no clue as to what the “Ford Drive” was or what was meant by “my dollar is paid.” The button contains the year dates 1937 and 1938. Was it a labor drive?
The button in the lower left corner reads “there’s a U (you) in the United Nations.” The left doesn’t celebrate the UN anymore really. Was the SP gung-ho about it at the time?
I would be grateful for any information about these buttons. If anyone can point me to anything written by or about Joseph Glass, who died in the early 80s, I would also be grateful for that.
Thanks to John Rogers for scanning them for me. I was having problems.
Press release from the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee
RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE GENERAL PLAN UPDATE April 13, 2011
Whereas, further residential development in timber and agricultural land disrupts wildlife habitat, contributes to global warming, and reduces acreage available for resource production;
And, whereas, such conversion of resource land to residential use raises its value as real estate making it more costly for productive use;
And, whereas, ongoing urban sprawl onto productive resource land requires the extension of roads, drainage, fire, police and other public services paid for by the general public;
And, whereas, a General Plan Update that actually protects resource land and economizes public services while infilling established urban areas that can efficiently be served by public services has been developed through an orderly process of representative government with expert preparation by planning staff and open public hearings by the Planning Commission, both under the direction of the elected Board of Supervisors, for over a dozen years;
Therefore, be it resolved, that the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee strongly urges the timely adoption by the Board of Supervisors of a version of the General Plan Update that most effectively restrains further residential development of prime resource land and promotes efficient infill of urban areas for the benefit of the entire community now and in the future.
From the Mateel Community Center:
What: 27th annual Reggae On The River
Where: Benbow Lake State Recreation Area (Garberville, CA)
When: Saturday & Sunday, July 16-17, 2011
Why: Internationally renowned celebration of reggae & world music!
For immediate release:
Reggae On The River Talent Announced/ Local Outlet Tickets Now Available
On the weekend of July 16th and 17th, 2011, the Mateel Community Center is proud to present the 27th annual Reggae On The River at Benbow Lake State Recreation Area in southern Humboldt County, CA. An internationally renowned showcase of the best in reggae and world music, this year’s event will feature two stages (an ROTR first!) and is shaping up to be a good one.
Though the full line-up is not totally complete, a list of the confirmed acts so far includes Ky-Mani Marley, Gramps Morgan, Seun Anikulapo Kuti & Egypt 80, J Boog, Tony Rebel, Queen Ifrica, Bushman, Gondwana, Rootz Underground, Annette Brissett, Perfect, Clinton Fearon, Army, HR, Edi Fitzroy, Pashon Minott, Indubious, Zili Misik, SILA, Sahra Indio, Native Elements, The Alliez, The Impalers, Jah Sun & Ishi Dube w/ Redemption Band, Jade Steel, and Ambush, with several acts still TBA.
Weekend passes are currently available online at www.reggaeontheriver.com and at the usual local outlets in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties. Advance tickets are advised as this event sells out. Single day tickets will go on sale June 15th if the event is not sold out by this point.
For more information on the 27th annual Reggae On The River visit http://www.reggaeontheriver.com or call (707) 923-3368 and be sure to make your plans soon to join the festival fun on the weekend of July 16 and 17.
Earlier in a thread below I reported on a move by the Democrats to force conservative Republicans to be honest about their budget. The majority of Republicans had intended to play to the Tea Party by voting for a budget bill which was even more wacko than the one they eventually passed. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer noticed the trend earlier in the week when the conservatives were to offer up the wacko bill for a vote. The idea was that a number of conservatives could vote for it and say they gave it the college try, and then pass the less goofy bill as a sign of their willingness to compromise.
Hoyer came up with a strategy which is outlined through this link. The short version is that at the last minute he had a number of Democrats switch their votes from “no” to “present.” The rule is that the bill passes with a majority of those actually voting, and even with the Blue Dogs refusing to participate, they had enough to send the Republican leadership scrambling in a panic and had to convince a number of Republicans to change their votes from “yes” to “no.” They narrowly averted a political disaster. But Representatives David Dreier (R-CA), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Buck McKeon (R-CA), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and others are going to have to explain their last minute change of vote to their constituents, and if they face Tea Party primary challengers who are true believers, they may have a problem.
Via the earth itself, and then via the water.
The recording has been sped up 16 times. First comes the roar of the earthquake sounds “propagating through the earth’s crust,” then you hear a second roar of the sounds “propagating through the ocean.”
The SF Chronicle’s John Carrol covers the “darker side of the Catholic Church,” specifically Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
His point, basically, is that the Roman Catholic priest pedophilia scandal is way overblown, and it’s all the fault of the church’s enemies, including those who are “pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy.” He does not describe the mechanism by which these enemies mounted their attack on the church, but he does allege that if the church held other, more liberal views, the whole pedophilia thing would have been played down.
“Played down” is exactly what Donohue thinks should have happened. It’s not that big a deal, particularly since it all happened a long time ago, and besides, it’s been fixed now. I am paraphrasing.
Then there’s this charming paragraph: “The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight. They weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study [conducted in 2004 by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice] that most of the victims have been adolescents and the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape). The Boston Globe said of the John Jay report that ‘more than three quarters of the victims were post-pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.’ In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.”
I don’t really have anything to add. Read the whole thing, and if you can stomach it, read the ad itself.
House Speaker John Boehner (R) had to be rescued by the Democrats he had excluded from budget negotiations in order to meet his end of the bargain he had struck with Obama and Senate Democrats. In the end he did not want to go down with the Tea Party ship which has possibly cost the Republicans all the independent support they enjoyed last fall.
This will probably be a knife-fight. There won’t be any of that wimpy “soul searching” the Democrats engage in when they run into these situations. Of course, only about 80 Democrats voted for it, as the Progressive Caucus views as insane any cuts which would impact employment during a tenuous recovery. But apparently the Tea Party folk crunched the numbers, and there really aren’t many cuts after all. Apparently, it mainly just takes the discretion out of spending, but uses surviving balances in existing accounts to offset the “cuts” in the bill. There will be additional cuts realized in future years, but by that time revenues will be up and the deficit hopefully decreasing, so the Democrats will have opportunities to refund those programs and maybe even hasten the decline of the deficit if they can find the balls to finally let the Bush tax cuts expire in two years.
The total amount of cuts this year? 350 million.
Obama played Boehner and he’s probably not going to cave as easily in future negotiations.
Addendum: Maybe it’ll help for Republicans to know that <a href="Nathan Johns , Dennis Mayo , Carla Ritter , Jesse Stills , Rita Lane , Sara Baker “>they are responsible for creating half a million jobs since January. Good job Eric Cantor!
The Dissent article is a month old, so the facts are a bit dated, but the question remains relevant. Maybe nuclear power, if we employ it at all, should be relegated to totalitarian, or at least authoritarian, regimes.
A sample:
JAPAN’S CURRENT troubles could plausibly be said to stem from one of the foundational principles of the liberal worldview. Liberal democracy—and this, after all, is the very reason why many of its advocates regard it as the only legitimate form of government—is an individualistic creed.
What exactly this individualism amounts to is subject to much debate. But liberal individualism does seem to include at least two distinctive claims. First, liberal democracies are supposed to protect individuals against the potentially life-threatening demands of the collectivity. Whereas other regimes would happily sacrifice one of their own to serve the common good, liberal countries recognize that they cannot legitimately ask their citizens to make vast sacrifices from which those same citizens will never profit. Second, liberal countries think that the coercive power of the state is only justified insofar as citizens have—tacitly or explicitly—consented to them. Thus, what liberal countries can ask their citizens to do is limited by what their citizens can reasonably be said to have agreed to.
Both of these claims seem to offer an initial explanation for why the Japanese response to the evolving nuclear crisis has been so tepid. An authoritarian regime might simply have made some of its citizens sacrifice their lives for the collectivity. This is what happened at Chernobyl: the Soviet Union felt no need even to inform its citizens of the dangers they faced by continuing to stay at the plant, trying to stop it from melting down.
The article would make a great chapter in Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom.
So what do you think? Does a liberal democracy have the right to demand the ultimate sacrifice? Not just potential death as in when you enlist. But certain death – for the greater good? Can a liberal democracy with values reinforcing individual autonomy adequately address crisis of such nature? The author believes so, but is a little vague on the method of obtaining the sacrifice. A system of voluntary sacrifice offers no guarantees.
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