Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Capitalism, Communism, Democrat Corruption, Economics, History, Humor, Law, Police, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, Seattle WA | Tags: CHOPs Autonomous Six Blocks, Communist Kshama Sawant, Murder in Paradise
There are times when you look out upon the passing scene — and think if you could just give them all a spanking and send them to bed without any dinner, it might settle them down a bit. These attacks on our national history and the statues there to remind us, are so ignorant and mindlessly destructive that it is thoroughly disgusting.
There has been a drive-by shooting at the CHOP site on Capitol Hill in Seattle, one 16 year old young man dead, a 14 year old hospitalized. Essentially though, most have moved out. The East Precinct police station is due to be reoccupied next week. The CHOP protesters got some national attention, but not the kind they were hoping for, and when it gets violent with people killed, it isn’t just fun and games any more. Seattle’s feckless Mayor Jenny Durkan had protesters appear at her own house, and she takes it a bit more seriously now.
Seattle’s communist City Council member Kshama Sawant cheerfully blamed “Capitalism’s Brutality” for the murders in CHOP’s autonomous state that Seattle’s government allowed to exist contrary to the law. Sawant and other council members were expected to vote Tuesday on whether or not to repeal a tax on companies like Amazon and Starbucks that the council intended to combat a growing homelessness crisis.
Seattle does have a statue, a 16 foot tall bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin, but he is privately owned, and rests on private property, so he will continue to inspire the residents of Fremont. The statue was created by Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov. It was completed and put on display in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1988, the year before the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
In 1993 the statue was bought by an American who found it lying in a scrapyard, and brought it home to Washington state, but died before he could carry out his plans for displaying the Soviet era memento. Since 1995, the statue has been held in trust waiting for a buyer for the last 25 years on a prominent street corner in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, unwanted and unloved?
Senator Mitch McConnell weighed in on the civil unrest in the country today, pointing out that “a large statue of Vladimir Lenin remains untouched while protesters topple memorials to Thomas Jefferson” and George Washington. Does look, though, in some of the pictures, as if someone has painted Lenin’s hands suitably red.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, Freedom, King County Washington State, Law, Police, Politics, Progressivism, Taxes, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Bellevue Square, Bellevue Washington, Looting and Protesting
The world is changing around us, and we often don’t notice until we are suddenly confronted with the evidence. In this case, I think I mentioned that BLM protesters turned up in downtown Bellevue, doing their protesty thing, fists raised to indicate how serious they were.
The presence of Bellevue Square, the most affluent mall in the Seattle area, brought potential looters up from South Seattle. And they promptly found looting far more interesting than just plain old protesting. The Square had been closed and locked down for Covid-19, but they knew the stores were all there with luxury goods inside.
We could see, online, bystanders watching while looters came out of the square carrying wastebaskets and garbage cans piled high with loot. Today, however, everybody has a camera. And as the looters came out, bystanders were taking their pictures.
Bellevue police have arrested 23 looters identified so far, from the photos taken by bystanders. They have recovered tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise, as well as alcohol, tobacco, weapons and drugs. Gosh, who knew that while you were getting the clothes for the new school year for free, someone was taking your picture. And the Police Chief even spoke to the crowd to express his sympathy for the George Floyd protest. Didn’t impress the protesters at all. Of course the protesters were far more interested in the looting than in the protesting. Do follow the link above for the King 5 coverage.
I’m appalled that it was allowed to go on so much. If you want some kind of change, act like a grownup, express your objective clearly with evidence, to the people who can make the legal changes which you advocate. Running around with fists raised shouting vulgarities is more plain childish than effective. And looting is simply theft and will be punished by law. Hope you all get significant terms in jail.
Filed under: Africa, Asia, Australia, China, Foreign Policy, Freedom, History, Japan, Literature, Politics | Tags: Best Books Ever, Great Writers, Sea Stories
I recommended a few books a few days ago to add to your knowledge. There are many kinds of reading, thrillers, histories, mysteries, westerns and romances, among others. If you are still locked down, or avoiding going out, you are likely to need more reading just for pure pleasure. To get lost in a book.
At the very tip-top of my list is Patrick O’Brien. with seventeen novels described variously as “the best historical novels ever written”, “the best sea story I have ever read,” books you will keep to read again and again. The series is about the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey R.N. and Stephen Maturin. ship’s surgeon and intelligence agent against the thrilling background of the Napoleonic wars.
Details of life aboard a man of war in Nelson’s navy are faultlessly rendered; the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging and the roar of the broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
The first, Master and Commander, was published in 1970, the last in 1995. You can get the whole series from Amazon for a hefty $240.75 or one at a time for $10.89. One of the best investments you will ever make.
Another series I recommend highly is James Clavell’s Asian Saga which begins in 1600 with Shogun, followed by Tai-Pan, 1841, Gai-Jin,1862, King Rat, 1945, Noble House,1963, and Whirlwind,1979. Clavell is an excellent storyteller. Today’s China and Hong Kong add to the interest although the books are fiction.
If you are female and do not read books about wars and battles, shame on you, but you might enjoy anything by Penelope Lively, Joanne Greenberg, or Elizabeth Spencer.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Freedom, History, Politics, The United States | Tags: An Antidote for Today, Enjoyable Reading, Recommended Reading
Here are some books I highly recommend. Your public library should have them, Amazon will, and they’ll have used books if you don’t want to spend much. If you have kids, you will want to have them around the house.
David McCullough’s 1776, a gripping narrative of the year of independence, tells the story of the men who marched with George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence. Won the Pulitzer Prize. Extensively researched not only in our own archives, but in British archives as well. It’s also the story of ordinary Americans in the ranks: farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, boys turned soldiers and the story of the Redcoats, disciplined soldiers who looked down on their rebellious foes with contempt and fought with valor.
McCullough also has a biography of John Adams, our second president, also a Pulitzer winner.
Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People by a distinguished British historian is particularly interesting in the light of the New York Times’ embarrassing “1619 Project” Johnson traces the origins of the first arrival of slaves in this country that correct the New York Times.
Two more: I particularly like John Steele Gordon’s An Empire of Wealth, which is an epic history of America’s economic power. A Free people able to experiment and innovate end up creating a country that dominates the world through its creation of wealth. It is a fascinating book, that you would enjoy.
The other is Charles E. Mann’s 1491 or what the Americas were like the year before Columbus arrived. Take that, you nutcases who are tearing down statues of Columbus because you are ignorant. Fascinating to learn that our most deeply rooted ideas of the peopling of the Western Hemisphere and the kinds of societies that had developed there before the arrival of Europeans are just wrong. Mann has followed that up with 1493 which explains the result of his arrival. I haven’t read this latter one yet.
Guaranteed good reading. Enjoy.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, History, Law, National Security, The United States | Tags: A Marxist Attack, Eliminating the Civil War, Tearing Down Statues
You may have noticed that I am more than annoyed with these attempts to use the death of George Floyd captured on film to assume that he was killed because of racism, which should naturally lead to attempts to alter and destroy the history of the United States of America by tearing down and defacing statues, eliminating anything and everything associated with the Confederacy, and anything that could lead one to value our country.
There have been cries to eliminate the Star Spangled Banner, and replace it with something better, like John Lennon’s nauseous “Imagine.”They have even succeeded in getting some members of Congress to believe that the names of long standing military bases Fort Benning and Fort Bragg must be changed because they were named for Confederate Generals.
Indeed they were, but so what? I challenge anyone to ask the next 50 to 100 people they encounter not only where these “forts” are located, but who they are named for. You might run into someone who actually knows where they are — a lot of people who have served in the military trained there, but the source of the names? Highly unlikely, and so what?
Government, aside from being necessary, is seldom popular. The folks elected might do a better job than the last bunch, but then they may do a lot worse too.
Countries have enemies. The United States of America is a big powerful. wealthy country that occupies an outsize position in the world, and is probably resented more than loved. Because of all our freedoms, our people are free to innovate, invent, and discover, which is how we became powerful and wealthy. That kind of freedom is hard for governments to give away. The people elected to government usually don’t have all that much respect for those who elected them. which is why governments rise and fall.
Our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are what must be discredited before anyone else can take over. There are still a lot of people who actually believe that Marxism is better because it makes everybody equal.
With just a little effort you can find pieces online written by American citizens who have escaped from Cuba or Venezuela warning that the current attacks on our freedom are what transformed Cuba and Venezuela into Communist prison states. The attacks on our history and our memories are not just because of George Floyd.
Our defense against Marxism and other political attacks is our own knowledge of our history and our understanding of the value of being an American. Our schools are clearly not doing a good job with the teaching of history, and many of our biggest nutcases seem to be ensconced in our institutions of higher learning. The kids who are marching in the streets and tearing down statues learned it somewhere.
Filed under: Capitalism, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, History, Humor, Law, News of the Weird, Police, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressivism, Regulation, Seattle WA, The United States | Tags: Capitol Hill Organized Protest, Reoccupying East Precinct, Vacating the Terror Zone
This is all extremely weird. The national news is reporting that the occupiers of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) are vacating, moving out. Their officials say that any protesters can stay as long as they went, but they seem to be tearing up the newly-planted vegetable garden and attempting to return it to ordinary park status, except that it has been all dug up.
Capitol Hill businesses have filed a major lawsuit against the City of Seattle. The merchants said in the suit that they have suffered economic ruin because the city allowed CHOP to happen. CHOP leader Naudia Miller confirmed reports that the area is being dissembled. She added “The burden of owning a business doesn’t compare to struggles of living in a nation that’s built on anti-black racism,” directed at businesses that are a party to the lawsuit.
A local investment firm closed it’s doors and announced that they were moving to Arizona. No local news purveyor managed to take pictures of the emptied streets, if they indeed are emptied. This is a screen capture from a hard-to-find video. Perhaps after the shootings, reporters and photographers decided to play it safe. This is the same view as in previous pictures that were decorated with barriers, signs, tents, debris and more signs. They talked about setting up at Seattle Center, by the Space Needle or elsewhere. The feckless Mayor of Seattle, Jenny Durkan, was perhaps right when she called it a “summer of love” thing.
The CHOP (formerly CHAZ) has been major news across not only the country, but the world, turning the city of Seattle into something of a laughingstock, and suddenly they’re seeming to pretend that it never happened. There was a murder there, and people hospitalized.
CHOP leaders insisted their efforts are far from over: “We need every one of us to step up in a way that’s in our capacity, because we are dealing with trauma,” Miller said, adding that the only difference going forward is that Capitol Hill will no longer be a staging ground for Black Lives Matter.
Miller also spoke about everything that’s happened at the East Precinct, saying protesters’ takeover of the building was fair game after police used tear gas to disperse CHOP attendees.
“The Seattle Police Department chose that location when they terrorized people on Pine Street, and when they tear gassed people in their homes,” she commented.
The city says that the East Precinct will be reoccupied by next week. Stories about the six-block CHOP are pretty much absent from the news here, where one would think it would be big and welcome headlines. I had to really hunt to find anything.
Did they all suddenly recognize that this mess was giving Seattle a major black eye?
Capitol Hill is distinctly uphill from downtown Seattle, which is on a slight gradual slope down to the west and the water of Puget Sound, where the ferries dock. Seattle was famously built on seven hills, and some were plowed down to make them more acceptable for stores and businesses. If you assume that the CHOP area was in downtown Seattle, that’s incorrect. Capitol Hill is home to Seattle University, hospitals, schools and businesses. It slopes down on the eastern side to Lake Washington, and expensive residential areas along the lake.
Protesters have been shutting down the freeways too, or trying to. The Police keep them under control. As far as I can recall, we haven’t much here in the way of statues, or Confederate anything. Some totem poles.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Crime, Domestic Policy, Election 2020, Media Bias, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, Seattle WA | Tags: A Shifting World, Advertising, Magazines
Has the magazine industry died entirely while I wasn’t looking? Magazines are still plentiful in waiting rooms of doctors, hairdressers and barbers, and in bookstores. But do ordinary people still subscribe? I get a few specialized publications. But I grew up with Time, Life, Fortune, the Saturday Evening Post, Readers’ Digest, and Smithsonian. Times changed, and we all got computers. There used to be stories and cartoons, and interesting ads.
Now many people pay significant sums to avoid having to see any ads at all. I don’t remember ads being so objectionable as they are now. I am a reader, and I don’t want my reading interrupted, especially with something that moves and has sound. Google regularly tells me, as I delete yet another ad, that they base the advertising I see on my interests as determined by the websites I visit. They are clearly very bad at determining my interests. I have never responded to a Google ad, except to delete it. I’m still in the deleting phase rather than paying a hundred dollars to be free of ads. How about you?
The world is shifting and changing. We are occupied with the current protests and statue eradication, and not really noticing that shopping malls are disappearing, going broke, being transformed into apartments.
Post-pandemic, will our world return to pre-pandemic or has it all shifted? There is certainly more talk about more people working from home. Meetings can be held online. Offices are expensive. Here in Seattle businesses are moving out. What has driven them out is official failure to deal with protests and CHOP and consequent lack of public services and police protection. Protesters are occupying the freeways too.
If you are looking you will see frequent reports of whole populations moving, People leaving the large coastal cities and heading for safer territory. Even Chicago had 100 people shot on Father’s Day. The weekend before set a record, I believe, for fatalities.
Daniel Boorstin, the late Librarian of Congress, once wrote: “In our world of callused ears and overtaxed eyes, there are many symptoms of the desperate need of people to make somebody listen, to be sure somehow that somebody is hearing. More and more people are willing to pay fees they cannot afford, to medically trained psychiatric listeners who listen, nod, and take notes. A few desperate people especially young people with great energy who find that they cannot get people to listen when they say something, decide instead to throw something.” Is that what is going on?
Filed under: Coronavirus, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Law, Police, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, Seattle WA, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Capitol Hill CHOP, Mayor Jenny Durkan, Six Blocks of Terror
Things are heating up in CHOP-land. On Sunday night, gunshots erupted in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, less than 48 hours since an earlier shooting left one man dead and a 17 year-old male shot in the arm. Thought this was supposed to be a peaceful protest place, a “summer of love” thing. It appears that Seattle’s feckless mayor Jenny Durkan will have to act in some way. But she hasn’t figured out just how yet.
Perhaps our feckless governor, Jay Inslee, who has preferred to simply ignore the whole thing, will notice that it is giving his state a major black eye in the national news media.
But what to do and who will do it? Will they reclaim the East Precinct? The Police, who have been thoroughly demonized for no reason? The National Guard? That takes an order from Inslee. The neighborhood, and the six block area of homes and small shops and the residents are reported to be becoming restless. Small wonder.
I have no idea what the revolutionaries’ original vision was, in seceding from the United States to become an independent six blocks, but they dug up a patch of the local park to plant seedlings for their kitchen garden. Presumably they thought it would take only a few days to produce fresh vegetables, who knows. A little long on revolutionary fervor, short on common sense or just basic information.
Nationwide, the statues keep being attacked, but the major offenders are gone, so they’re down to the fringe characters like Francis Scott Key. He did write the Star Spangled Banner, but wasn’t that in the War of 1812 rather than the Civil War? I’m not sure just what the objection to him is. It was a Southern Fort with the rockets’ red glare. The statue attackers are also a little long on revolutionary fervor and quite short of basic information.
If we just ignore it will it go away? Get tiresome? Fervor grow stale? I’m already sick of it all and not feeling at all charitable towards the perpetrators. Put them away for a while to cool off. It is simply posturing, virtue-signaling, but not much virtue. “Summer of Love”indeed. The police are anxious to preserve the rule of law, but the city’s Democrat management simply doesn’t know what to do, or how to do it.
Filed under: Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2020, History, Intelligence, Politics, Progressivism, Seattle WA | Tags: Accomplishing Nothing, Desperate Protesters, Ignorance of History
The brave people who are out fiercely attacking helpless statues are at it again. Not every city has handy statues of former Confederate generals, so they have to go after the lesser figures, who may or may not have owned slaves, which seems to be the latest charge. George Washington? Francis Scott Key? The Star Spangled Banner? Protesters are so monumentally ignorant of American history that they hardly know who to attack to show just how outraged they are. Outraged about what? George Floyd?
Not really. Here Victor Davis Hanson speaks about removing Confederate statues and the erasing of American History. We need to provide these unfortunates with some reading lists. How can they possibly have spent years in the classrooms of America and learned so little about our history. It’s not really the kids’ fault, but their parents and their teachers.
One of the particularly interesting websites is American Mind, which offers scholarly essays on contemporary issues. Their essays are accompanied by a notation at the top of how long it will take to read: 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 7 minutes. Can you, in your busy, busy life spend 5 minutes reading our laboriously researched and written essay? Is that not sad?
The Capitol Hill autonomous zone: CHOP, continues on. Seattle’s feckless mayor, Jenny Durkan, chooses to assume it’s just “the summer of love”. They’ve now had a shooting, somebody dead, somebody else in critical condition. They have dug up a public park to make a kitchen garden in which they have planted seedlings, perhaps unaware of just how long the distance is between planted seedling and anything actually useful for the kitchen table. Most of it seems to be mostly a matter of vast ignorance, whatever the topic. Left alone, they will soon run out of money, cleanliness, food, or energy. It’s hard to know how dependent they are on publicity, but they don’t seem to be adding adherents. But I’m not a close observer, I live across the lake.
I found this “Real History of Antifa” online, which you might find of interest.
Filed under: Crime, Democrat Corruption, Election 2020, History, Law, National Security, News of the Weird, Police, Politics, Progressives, Progressivism, Terrorism | Tags: George Washington Defaced, Portland Oregon, The 1619 Project
Every time you think you have seen it all, something else pops up. In this case, it is protesters in Portland, Oregon who last night dismantled a statue of George Washington, after they wrapped Washington’s head in an American flag and set it all on fire. George Washington?
The statue was created by an Italian-American sculptor, Pompeo Coppini, and was installed in Portland’s Rose City Park neighborhood in the late 1920s. Many years ago I lived about ten blocks from there, though I had never been to that park. It seems like an odd place for a George Washington statue. It was also defaced with spray paint.
Sprayed on the statue was the number “1619“. That suggests massive historical ignorance, which unfortunately is more common than anyone would like to admit. The 1619 date would seem to be a reference to the New York Times’ embarrassing 1619 Project attempting to rewrite the nation’s history to make it ever so much more racist, and useful.
Democrats have been chafing for years by being reminded of the Civil War, and being on the wrong side. They were terrified that would lose their Black votes. Then they elected the First Black President, which absolved them of any previous errors. And now a policeman put a black man in a neck hold, and the man died, though from the neck hold, a heart attack or a drug overdose is not clear, the world exploded in anger, started looting, and attacking statues. Just how attacking a statue of our First President and Founding Father accomplishes anything is somewhat unclear, but it seems to be the most popular solution, after looting.
This seems to be how the common saying “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!” may have arisen.
*An appropriate phrase for the headline, borrowed from Hillsdale College.
Dame Vera Lynn was the British songstress who kept Britain’s spirits alive during the worst early days of the Second World War, when the soldiers were going off to war and their families and sweethearts were left behind.
She has died at age 103, and deserves a special place of honor, which she has in the hearts and minds of Britain. Here’s her most famous song, although there were many, including “the White Cliffs of Dover”. This was filmed in 1943. Makes me cry every time.
mage: Getty, contributor
Filed under: Africa, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2020, England, Freedom, Law, Media Bias, Police, Politics, South America, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: Changing History, Fixing the Civil War, Pelosi's Pandering
Democrats are apparently terrified that Donald Trump might win re-election this fall and subject them to another four years of terror. Their immediate focus concerns the vote of Black Americans. They have already shown that they will kneel in abject humility on the floor of the United States Congress, draped in what they consider to be African apparel to show their plaintive agreement that “Black Lives Matter,”and encourage Blacks to vote for them.
Not enough. Nancy Pelosi is now attempting to demonstrate that Republicans are the “white supremacy” party and Democrats deeply oppose the side of the South in the Civil War of 1861, by removing four portraits of former Speakers of the House who once served in the Confederacy.
Well, it’s a little difficult to blame it all on Republicans when one recalls that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which became effective on January 1, 1863. The reproduction shown above was from 1864 and is in the Library of Congress.
History is a record of what happened. Sometimes new evidence is discovered that alters our understanding, but in general we’re stuck with the evidence of what really happened. Human nature is not all sweetness and light. We are human beings, some good, some bad and some really dreadful. No saints. Do remember that most families have trouble getting along,
Most of us don’t know enough history. Our public schools are clearly doing a lousy job, and if we have kids, we need to help them to get interested. The general knowledge of history, American history and world history is lacking. Knowing how we screwed up in the past sometimes helps us to avoid doing it again, but we cannot remake the past. What happened, happened.
Slavery was at one time common. Muslims ruled the slave trade in Africa, and marched captured Africans north, and to the Atlantic coast to ship to the Americas. Most of the slave trade went to the sugar islands and South America rather than to the Southern States. American Indians kept slaves. When they warred with another tribe, those captured were kept around to do the scut work, rather than killed when the fight was over. That may be the origin of much of slavery. Britain stamped out the slave trade. They set the Royal Navy to eliminating the Atlantic slave traffic, which they did.
Look at all the changes in society that have made slavery unnecessary, aside from being disgusting, of course. Most of the slave trade in the South was because of the cotton crop which the British needed for their fabric mills, and the South needed for income. Farm work today has become heavily mechanized, though there are some things that still must be picked by hand. Farm equipment is truly astonishing these days, and the elaborate machines are something to behold. And we are just at the beginning of the age of robots and computer printing and there are plenty of enthusiastic applicants for the Space Force. The more we know about our own history, the better it will help us to avoid bad mistakes in the future.
American Elephants 