Tag: History

Who Lives in a Politburo Under the Sea?

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Patrick Starfish, it appears:

A Soviet-era star on the tower in the city of Voronezh has been given ‘Patrick’ styling, adding a touch of Bikini Bottom to the place. Would the overweight pink starfish ever have thought of traveling so far?

While social media users were quite amused with the stunt that surfaced online Thursday evening, Voronezh police were not so entertained. Now the fans of the US animated series – if found – could face 15 days in detention.

………

A poll under the photo in one of Voronezh online communities showed that most people – around 60 percent – found the stunt funny, while 39 percent say that it was an act of vandalism that shouldn’t go unpunished.

This is a beautiful prank.

1⁄4 Century

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On November 30, 1994, I married Sharon Rachel May, now Sharon Rachel Saroff.

It’s our 25th wedding anniversary.

Unfortunately for the single women of the world, I am still unavailable.

Fortunately for me, Sharon* has not (yet anyway) murdered me.

Lord knows that she has ample (no jury in the world would convict her) justification.

Here’s to women with exquisitely poor taste in men.  It’s how Saroffs find mates, I guess.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Well, this Sucks

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My old phone died today.

I had some notice, and a more up to date rugged and waterproof phone is on the way, but until it arrives, hopefully wednesday, I am using this:

At least, it allows me to make calls and get texts.

I had to spend about an hour on the phone with Sprint tech support to activate the phone, because it is too old to do hands free activation.

Sprint was fine, it just took a while to escalate to someone who knew that the heck was going on.

Once Again Da Vinci Amazes

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Subscale Reconstruction

Some wonks at MIT just did a recreation of a bridge proposal from Leonardo Da Vince, and, if their reconstruction from his notes is correct,* his bridge was centuries ahead of the state of the art:

Some 500 years after his death, researchers are still discovering just how talented and brilliant Leonardo da Vinci was. Architects and civil engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a 3D printer to create a replica of a bridge da Vinci designed, but never built. To their surprise, not only did it work, but it would have also revolutionized bridge design five centuries ago.

As the story goes, in 1502 A.D. the Sultan Bayezid II wanted to build a bridge to connect the city of Istanbul to its neighbor, Galata. One of the proposed designs came from Leonardo da Vinci, who had already made a name for himself in the arts and sciences at the time. In a letter he sent to the sultan, accompanied by a notebook full of sketches, da Vinci described a bridge that would span the proposed distance using a single, flattened arch design, supported by bases on either shore. Bridges at the time were typically made using a series of semicircular arches, and to span the distance between the two cities would have required at least 10 evenly spaced piers in between to support the entire structure. Da Vinci’s design, which would have easily allowed sailboats to pass beneath it, was radically different (and centuries ahead of its time), which is probably why the sultan decided not to take the risk. Half a millennium later, researchers were curious if it would have succeeded.

………

Not only did the bridge work, remaining strong and stable without the use of any mortars or fasteners, but the team at MIT also realized that da Vinci had even engineered a way to minimize unwanted lateral movements in the structure, which would have quickly led to its collapse. The footings on either side of the arched bridge featured designs that splayed outwards to add a considerable amount of stability. The bridge would have even survived most earthquakes, which were common at the time in that area, as the MIT researchers discovered by putting their replica on two movable platforms. It wasn’t indestructible, but it would have been an ancient architectural marvel.

There are a number of “Ifs” here:

  • Did the technology of the day allow for the construction of abutments to handle the not-inconsiderable thrust loads.
  • Does the material handling technology of the day allow for the handling of the stone blocks.
  • could the barge and scaffolding technology of the day effectively provide for the support of the structure when under construction?

My guess is that Da Vinci never looked at the nitty-gritty details involved in actually putting up such a bridge, because he was never really a details kind of guy.

*That is a VERY big if.

One Headline Says Everything About 9/11

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The 9/11 Attacks Accomplished Every Goal That Osama bin Laden Wanted to Achieve

—Paste

Osama bin Laden never planned on militarily defeating the United States, he planned to trigger a response that would lead us to destroy ourselves.

Once again, I would suggest that anyone who hasn’t read Eric Frank Russell’s magnum opus Wasp, in which a man is sent to be an agent provocateur on the planet of an empire at war with Earth, and his mission is not to collect intelligence or do damage, but rather to provoke an overreaction by the authorities:

“Phew!” Mowry raised his eyebrows.

“Finally, let’s consider this auto smash. We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and started buzzing around his face.”

“It nearly happened to me once.”

Ignoring that, Wolf went on, “The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn’t even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap.”

………

“However,” Wolf went on, “the problem becomes less formidable than it looks if we bear in mind that one man can shake a government, two men temporarily can put down an army twenty-seven thousands strong, or one small wasp can slay four comparative giants and destroy their huge machine into the bargain.” He paused, watching the other for effect, continued, “Which means that by scrawling suitable words upon a wall, the right man in the right place at the right time might immobilize an armoured division with the aid of nothing more than a piece of chalk.”

Can We Gofundme This?

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The Youngstown Vindicator will be shutting down at the end of August, making the Ohio town the largest in the US without a newspaper:

It was in the late 1920s that the Ku Klux Klan regularly began gathering outside the home of William F Maag Jr in Youngstown. Maag owned the Vindicator newspaper, which unlike others in this once prosperous part of Ohio, had been willing to criticize the racist Klansmen.

Men on horseback, clad in white robes and hoods, would burn crosses and flaunt rifles and shotguns, in an attempt at intimidation. It didn’t work. The men of the Maag family would stand outside their home, themselves armed, refusing to be cowed, as the Vindicator continued to expose government officials who were part of the Klan.

That defiance set the tone for decades of investigative, combative reporting from the Vindicator. The daily newspaper relentlessly reported on the mafia, the government, big business and even its own advertisers.

But no more. Soon after celebrating 150 years since its first edition came news that was devastating to many in Youngstown and the wider Mahoning valley. The Vindicator was shutting down at the end of August. For good.

The Vindicator’s closure means Youngstown will soon be the largest city in the US without a major newspaper, and is the latest blow to an ailing American news industry. According to the University of North Carolina, more than 2,000 US newspapers have closed since 2004, and at least 1,300 communities have completely lost news coverage in the past 15 years. In July a Pew Research Center study reported that the number of journalists in the US declined 47% between 2008 and 2018.

………

The Vindicator became known for tackling the mafia and corrupt officials. The work of De Souza and other reporters in the late 1980s contributed to almost 70 elected officials, mafia members and businesspeople being convicted of criminal acts.

Despite the quality of the coverage, sales have declined over the past four decades. From selling 100,000 copies in the late 1970s – 160,000 on Sundays – the Vindicator is now down to 25,000 editions daily, and 32,000 on Sunday. The paper has lost money for 20 of the last 22 years, Brown said, with a family fund covering the losses. Brown hoped to ultimately sell the Vindicator, but no buyers were forthcoming. He explored a paywall, but the numbers didn’t work. Neither did making the Vindicator online-only.

Well, this sucks.

Quote of the Day

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Central to this narrative is the presentation of the difference between Trump and Obama as akin to the difference between Hitler and Gandhi. A better analogy – especially when it comes to foreign policy – would be the difference between John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who was known for dressing up as a clown at public events, and Ted Bundy, the tall, handsome serial killer who enticed his victims into his car with his charm and good looks.

—Peter Bolton at Counter Punch

He’s writing about how Joe Biden has stapled himself to Barack Obama’s increasingly dubious legacy.

It’s a wonderfully evocative turn of phrase.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

We Are in Another Game of Musical Chairs

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There is significant evidence that it is Wall Street speculation that is driving the recent home price increases.

This means two things:

  • The home affordability crisis is driven by speculation, and not from inherent value.
  • There is a crash coming, and you do not want to be left holding the bag when this happens, because eventually, they WILL run out of useful idiots.

We’re in another Tulip craze.

In a recent column, I focused on five key factors which indicate that housing markets may be topping out. Yet one other important factor may be the main reason why housing prices have not already deflated.

Investors have always played an important role in housing markets. I have written extensively about the crazy bubble years of 2004-06. Rampant speculation was one of the primary causes of the buying mania and subsequent collapse. A May 2005 Fortune magazine article described how speculators were descending on city after city in search of making a killing in real estate.

The chart below, from a 2011 study put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, shows the percentage of homes purchased with a mortgage by investors in states where the bubble was most excessive. This chart breaks down investor mortgage borrowing by the number of first liens appearing on the credit report of these investors. Notice the substantial number of investors with three or more first liens:



The chart shows that in the bubble states, more than 40% of all new mortgage originations for purchases went to investors/speculators during the wildest years of 2006 and 2007. Another chart in this same study showed that nationwide, roughly 30% of all originations were for investors. If we include all-cash investor purchases, the percentage of homes purchased by speculators was even higher.

When home prices leveled off in the second half of 2006, nervous speculators in the hottest major metros began to sell in large numbers. This precipitated the price collapse which soon followed. By 2009, the foreclosure debacle was in full swing. For the next four years, investors focused on buying inexpensive repossessed properties. Most of these foreclosure sales were all-cash deals.

Contrary to a widely-held assumption, many of these investor-purchased homes were not bought by flippers. They were turned into rental units for a new type of renter — former homeowners whose house had been foreclosed.

………

Unlike the speculative housing bubble of 2004-07, the investment surge over the past six years has been largely driven by a purchase-and-rent strategy. This made a lot of sense. Rents have risen steadily as most home prices continued to climb. A report from CoreLogic stated that rents grew nationwide by an average of 3.2% in January 2019 from a year earlier. Another benefit was that the tenant retention rate of 70% was much higher than the 50%-53% retention rate for multi-family apartments, according to a recent Freddie Mac report.

………

Is there credible evidence that investor purchases of single-family homes have increased in recent years? Absolutely. Attom Data has provided previously unpublished data breaking down home purchases by owner-occupants and absentee owners, i.e., investors:



You can see in the table above that the percentage of homes purchased by absentee owners rises consistently from 2016 through the first half of 2019. According to these numbers, more than one-third of all home purchases in 2019 have been made by investors. Yet even with this increase in investor purchasing, the volume of home purchases in most major metros has been declining. That is a major red flag.

Indeed, had it not been for the aggressive buying by investors in the past two-and-a-half years, home prices would have already slumped in these metros. If you do not find this suggestion plausible, remember that it was the pullback by speculators/investors in 2006 and their dumping properties onto the market that started the housing collapse.

Look out below.

Tweet of the Day

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Re the crime of Hiroshima: In one of the cruel ironies of history, defeating global fascism in World War Two required the help of a state with a rich history of ethnic cleansing, genocide, forced labor, imperialism, and mass violence. And then it also required the Soviet Union.

— Tarik Cyril Amar (@TarikCyrilAmar) August 7, 2019

Read up on the Bengal Famine if you have any questions.

Clearly, Reagan Would Have Supported Trump

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In a conversation with Richard Nixon in 1971, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, described African UN representatives from as, “Those monkeys from those African countries, damn them.

I always knew that the Gipper was an enthusiastic supporter of racist and racism, launching the 1980 Presidential campaign with a speech about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were assassinated.

His entire career was about dog whistling to racists.

Now we know that he was a bigot and a racist.

Rot in hell Ronnie, rot in hell.

Ukrainian Court Rules Against Naming Streets After Nazis

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But the government of Kiev plans to appeal:

A court in Ukraine issued an injunction against the naming of two streets in Kiev after nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

The district administrative court of Kiev ordered the municipality to undo the 2016 renaming of two main streets for Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych on Tuesday.

But Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on Wednesday wrote on Facebook that the city will appeal the ruling, the Regnum news agency reported. In the meantime, the streets in question will be renamed Moscow Avenue and another will be named for Nikolai Vatutin, a Soviet general who was killed in 1944 by soldiers from Shukhevych’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA.

Bandera and Shukhevych were two of Ukraine’s several Nazi collaborators. Some were SS volunteers and mass murdered Jews and Poles, and are now celebrated as anti-communist heroes in Ukraine and by its government.

Several collaborators? More like tens of thousands, and now the Ukraine is glorifying them.

Yes, this sort of crap does effect my view of the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

Well, This Sucks

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Mad Magazine is shutting down:

I just heard from a friend of mine who is in a Facebook group with a MAD writer that, after the next two issues, MAD will no longer be publishing original material. Instead, it’ll publish reprinted material until it’s subscription responsibilities are fulfilled and then the magazine will cease publication.

An alternate report has it just becoming reprints of old material, which is pretty much the same thing.

This is what happens when publications get bought up by large media conglomerates.

They Are Concentration Camps

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From any reasonable historical perspective, the ICE detention facilities are concentration camps, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stated. (Above link to a Jewish historian saying same)

The Germans adopted the term “Concentration Camp” for their camps, which were better described as death camps, because it put a civilized gloss on what was a barbaric enterprise.

This week, conservatives weaponized Jewish suffering to divert discussion from the massive human rights abuses occurring at our border.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the man who called torture “enhanced interrogation,” scolded Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for using the term “concentration camp” to describe the growing civilian detention system, including the reopening of Fort Sill, previously a Japanese American internment camp, to hold children.

Since then, Jews have split on whether it’s appropriate to use “concentration camp” outside the context of the Holocaust. There are those who find the term too emotionally charged, or who believe the sheer scale of the Nazi Final Solution bars any possible comparison.

Though I disagree, I understand. My father turned seven on June 22, 1941, the day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. I was raised with the story of how my grandmother saved my dad and aunt with her quick thinking and a cramped spot on a cattle train leaving Odessa for Siberia. Those who remained were shot. As a Jew, I bear witness to the memory of those who did not survive.

I’m also a legal historian, and my research on genocide and crimes against humanity has made clear that while the Holocaust is unique in its scale and implementation, the perpetrators and motivations are not. Genocide is a human crime, not a German one. In the wake of World War II, human rights laws were written in the hopes of preventing future tragedies, not for labeling the past.

You can also listen to George Takei, who spent much of the World War II in US concentration camps:

I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2019

I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss this with a relative who spent much of WWII in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines, but I hope to.

First Rule of Being in a Hole: Stop Digging

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Awkward!

When Joe Biden talked about how civility allowed him to work with white supremacist Senator James Eastland early in his career, he neglected that they were working together to resegregate schools:

Joe Biden was a freshman senator, the youngest member of the august body, when he reached out to an older colleague for help on one of his early legislative proposals: The courts were ordering racially segregated school districts to bus children to create more integrated classrooms, a practice Biden opposed and wanted to change.

“I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s Committee meeting in attempting to bring my antibusing legislation to a vote,” Biden wrote on June 30, 1977.

The recipient of Biden’s entreaty was Sen. James O. Eastland, at the time a well-known segregationist who had called blacks “an inferior race” and once vowed to prevent blacks and whites from eating together in Washington. The exchange, revealed in a series of letters, offers a new glimpse into an old relationship that erupted this week as a major controversy for Biden’s presidential campaign.

Biden on Wednesday night described his relationship with Eastland as one he “had to put up with.” He said of his relationships with Eastland and another staunch segregationist and southern Democrat, Sen. Herman Talmadge of Georgia, that “the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win — we were able to beat them on everything they stood for.”

But the letters show a different type of relationship, one in which they were aligned on a legislative issue. Biden said at the time that he did not think that busing was the best way to integrate schools in Delaware and that systemic racism should be dealt with by investing in schools and improving housing policies.

………

Biden’s Wednesday remarks sparked one of the sharpest intra-Democrat exchanges of the campaign, when Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), one of his 2020 rivals and an African American, criticized both Biden’s work with segregationists and the language that he used in describing it.

On Wednesday, Biden called Booker. Biden’s campaign also distributed talking points to supporters emphasizing that Eastland and Talmadge “were people who he fundamentally disagreed with on the issue of civil rights.” Late Thursday, the former vice president met with a small group that included black members of Congress, one of the participants said.

………

It was in that context that he courted the support of Eastland — at the time the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — as well as other senators.

In one letter, on March 2, 1977, Biden outlined legislation he was filing to restrict busing practices.

“My bill strikes at the heart of the injustice of court ordered busing,” he wrote to Eastland. “It prohibits the federal courts from disrupting our educational system in the name of the constitution where there is no evidence that the governmental officials intended to discriminate.”

“I believe there is growing sentiment in the Congress to curb unnecessary busing,” he added. The Senate two years earlier had passed a Biden amendment that prohibited the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from ordering busing to achieve school integration.

“That was the first time the U.S. Senate took a firm stand in opposition to busing,” Biden wrote. “The Supreme Court seems to have recognized that busing simply cannot be justified in cases where state and local officials intended no discrimination.”

In later letters to Eastland, Biden continued pushing his legislation.

“I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s Committee meeting in attempting to bring my antibusing legislation to a vote,” Biden wrote on June 30, 1977.

The next year, he continued to push for antibusing legislation and again wrote to Eastland.

“Since your support was essential to having our bill reported out by the Judiciary Committee, I want to personally ask your continued support and alert you to our intentions,” Biden wrote on Aug. 22, 1978. “Your participation in floor debate would be welcomed.”

It’s not just his decades long opposition to school desegregation, it’s his demagoguing crime bills and the war on drugs, etc. as well, and that ignores his record as the Senator from MasterCard.

We really do not need another sh%$ show candidate running against Trump.

As if There Wasn’t Enough Political Sh%$ Going Down in Iowa

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It also appears that the state is drowning in literal pig excrement as well:

It’s probably not an accomplishment state officials will want to boast about, but Iowa out-performs the rest of the country when it comes to producing sh%$. Not “sh%$” in any metaphorical sense, but literal fecal waste.

Chris Jones, a research engineer and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Iowa, IIHR (UI’s hydroscience and engineering center), has done the math, and published the results on his blog about water quality. Iowa, with a population of 3.2 million, produces more than twice the amount of fecal waste per square mile than California, which has almost 40 million people.

But what’s propelled Iowa to the top of the sh%$ list isn’t people, it’s pigs.

Last year, Iowa hit “peak pig,” with 23.6 million pigs, the most ever recorded in any state. When Iowa set that record in August, North Carolina, the state that ranks second in swine, only had 9.4 million. And pigs, Jones explained on his blog, produce much more waste than humans.

(%$ mine)

Between the chickensh%$ politics of the caucuses, and the real sh%$ of the pigs, I do not want to be downwind of the state.

Rather ironically, this actually mirrors a Will Rogers quip regarding the juxtaposition of the Chicago stockyards and the Democratic Convention made many years ago.

Nostalgia

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I remember the Summer of 1973, when John Dean was testifying before the Watergate committee.

At the time, I would rather have watch cartoons, or Ultraman, but we had one TV, and my mom was determined to follow the hearings, so I watched a lot of testimony, Dean, Halderman, Erlichman, Porter, etc.

Needless to say, John Dean’s testimony about Trump’s obstruction of justice was a trip down memory lane:

The star witness of Watergate took a turn as the star witness for House Democrats’ inquiries into President Trump on Monday. And in doing so, he laid out a compelling series of parallels between the two situations.

Former White House counsel John Dean acknowledged at the start of Monday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing that he wasn’t there as a “fact witness.” Instead, he noted in his opening statement several ways in which he sees the report of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoing Watergate.

Dean didn’t run through each of those verbally during his testimony, but his written statement lays his case out in detail.

The most obvious parallel Dean noted involved himself: It concerns the role of the White House counsel. Just as he was the most significant witness against Richard M. Nixon, former White House counsel Donald McGahn has emerged as the most significant witness in the Mueller investigation. McGahn didn’t technically flip on Trump, as Dean did when he pleaded guilty in Watergate, but as Dean pointed out, “McGahn is the only witness that the special counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn ‘a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House.’ “

I’m not sure that the outcome will be at all similar, Nancy Pelosi is no Carl Albert, after all.

Nope, No Racism Here: Republicans in Maine Are pro Confederacy

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The great state of Maine has adopted a new state ballad, which I guess is in addition to the state song.*

It honors the 20th Maine volunteer infantry regiment, which is best known for saving the Union at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

It appears that some Republicans in the state are objecting, because they feel that the song is insufficiently considerate of the sensitive feelings of the traitors on the other side:

With Governor Janet Mills’ signature today, the “The Ballad of the 20th Maine” became Maine’s official state ballad.

The stirring anthem recorded and performed by the band The Ghost of Paul Revere tells the story of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which fought for the Union Army under General Joshua Chamberlain in the American Civil War. The regiment is best known for its brave defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

………

The bill to enshrine the ballad was sponsored by Rep. Scott Cuddy (D-Winterport) and passed without objection in both chambers. It did see some initial opposition in the legislature’s State and Local Government Committee, however, where two Republicans raised objections that the song’s unabashedly pro-Union message may be unfair to the South.

“I find it a little bit, we are united states, we are not Union, we are united states. And I find it just a little bit – I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean – to say that we’re any better than the South was,” said Rep. Frances Head (R-Bethel) during a May 1st public hearing on the bill.

“I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the civil war period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in,” said Rep. Roger Reed (R-Carmel), who specifically praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. “Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.”

Let me translate:  “Great Christain men,” means let’s keep those n*****s from getting uppity.

………

Reed eventually voted in favor of the ballad legislation. Head voted against it.

They may represent a minority position, but the statements of these Republicans show just how far the Myth of the Lost Cause, a systematic effort to rehabilitate the racist legacy of the Confederacy, has spread. These objections were raised in Maine, which contributed a largest number of Union soldiers in proportion to its population of any state.

The American Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery. That’s the “state right” that Confederates were seeking to defend. To ignore or elide that history doesn’t just denigrate the sacrifices of our ancestors, but bolsters the resurgent white supremacist movement we’re seeing across our union today.

This is a feature, and not a bug of the modern Republican party and the myth of the lost cause serves their political agenda, even in Maine, where the 20th saved the Republic.

F%$# their bigoted small minds.

*Which is called, interestingly enough, State of Main Song.