Things could soon get interesting in the Peachtree State. Or maybe not.
Representative John Lewis, one of the lions of the Civil Rights movement, and a genuinely great American, has died.
With his death, Brian Kemp, the Trump suckup who is governor of Georgia, may find his 15 minutes of fame. It will be up to him to decide whether to fill Lewis' House seat.
It's a tricky situation. Kemp is Constitutionally bound to hold a special election for the seat, but the Constitution doesn't specify how soon the election is to be held after the seat becomes vacant. (Article I, §2,4)
Kemp could in theory table the special election and let the clock run out until the November general election. He could plead that it could take months to set up a special election, which among other things would require printing a great many absentee ballots due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Neither Trump nor Kemp was a fan of Lewis. He was Black, popular, and powerful, and to their alligator brains that was three strikes. It could be to the Republican advantage to leave the seat empty for a while.
But does Kemp want to leave the 5th District unrepresented for any significant length of time? It's a Black majority district, and such precincts have historically not been of interest to Southern governors. But . . .
The 5th is not just any district. Located in the north central part of the state, it includes the capital Atlanta and its suburbs, the headquarters of the CDC, the headquarters of several major corporations, and Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a major airline hub. Its population of some 760,000 are largely educated professional types who are unlikely to sit still and let the governor mute their voice in Congress.
It doesn't apply directly to the subject here, but this striking sentence is in Article V of the Constitution: "no State, without
its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the
Senate." So why shouldn't what's good for the Senate not be good for the House? Sounds like a good question for the good folks in the 5th District to ask.
And there's always the old favorite: "No taxation without representation." Well, OK, there's no tax involved here. But no action that could affect the 5th should take place without representation. Keep that in mind, Sycophant Kemp.
RIP, John Lewis. Please assure Dr. King that we're still carrying on the best we can.
--- Diogenes, 7/18/2020
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U.S. Constitution
The voice of the people
18 July 2020
17 July 2020
Take your stinkin' paws off my rights, you damn dirty ape!
The Ape-in-Chief is trying to monkey with the Bill of Rights. We all have to act to stop him. He still has 27 weeks in which he can do tons of damage.
When James Madison wrote that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," he meant to ensure that news and information important to the public could reach the populace freely, untrammeled by political spin or falsehoods, and without government censorship.
For Madison, "press" meant newspapers. Today it means print, broadcast, and digital media, but the idea remains the same. We the public have the right to straight-up and factual news and information about facts that concern us, and the government has no right to prevent us from getting it.
COVID-19 is, or should be, a subject of interest to everyone who draws breath. Until Tuesday the best place to find detailed information about it was CDC.gov. That was the date (Bastille Day, ironically) when the Department of Health and Human Services, at the behest of the Gorilla-in-Chief, ordered information from the nation's hospitals to be sent to HHS (and some to the White House!) instead of CDC. The next day that information disappeared from the CDC website.
The initial announcement about this displacement of data said tellingly that the data would be in a database inaccessible to the public.
Did that last bit get your attention? The Executive Branch of the government was planning to sequester information about public health, keeping it from the very public who need to have it.
Then, surprise! Two days later the information is back at CDC.gov. There's a lot of speculation about what happened to it in the interim, ranging from the data being bugged so the administration can tweak it at will to HHS personnel realizing they couldn't deal with the data inflow, let alone analyze it.
Of course the data never actually went away. One portal to it was closed, but it's still out there on lots of news, public health, and university websites.
So no harm, no foul, right? Wrong! The fact that the data never went away is irrelevant.
We've not returned to the status quo ante. We've seen an open attempt on the part of the administration to withhold important public health information from the American people. My personal feeling is that they failed because they're so tightly enclosed in the Trump bubble they didn't realize just how accessible the data is.
They will try again, and they will keep trying to deny crucial information to the American people. This administration is capable of acts we can't even imagine.
As election day comes closer and the unpresident becomes ever more desperate, he will become more dangerous. As I've said before, the people have to move to stop him. Our most direct route to accomplishing this is by keeping heavy pressure on our members of Congress to act in some meaningful way to contain DJTrump.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.¹
--- Diogenes, 7/17/2020
¹ Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist, 1852.
If you read this on Facebook, please share it widely.
When James Madison wrote that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," he meant to ensure that news and information important to the public could reach the populace freely, untrammeled by political spin or falsehoods, and without government censorship.
For Madison, "press" meant newspapers. Today it means print, broadcast, and digital media, but the idea remains the same. We the public have the right to straight-up and factual news and information about facts that concern us, and the government has no right to prevent us from getting it.
COVID-19 is, or should be, a subject of interest to everyone who draws breath. Until Tuesday the best place to find detailed information about it was CDC.gov. That was the date (Bastille Day, ironically) when the Department of Health and Human Services, at the behest of the Gorilla-in-Chief, ordered information from the nation's hospitals to be sent to HHS (and some to the White House!) instead of CDC. The next day that information disappeared from the CDC website.
The initial announcement about this displacement of data said tellingly that the data would be in a database inaccessible to the public.
Did that last bit get your attention? The Executive Branch of the government was planning to sequester information about public health, keeping it from the very public who need to have it.
Then, surprise! Two days later the information is back at CDC.gov. There's a lot of speculation about what happened to it in the interim, ranging from the data being bugged so the administration can tweak it at will to HHS personnel realizing they couldn't deal with the data inflow, let alone analyze it.
Of course the data never actually went away. One portal to it was closed, but it's still out there on lots of news, public health, and university websites.
So no harm, no foul, right? Wrong! The fact that the data never went away is irrelevant.
We've not returned to the status quo ante. We've seen an open attempt on the part of the administration to withhold important public health information from the American people. My personal feeling is that they failed because they're so tightly enclosed in the Trump bubble they didn't realize just how accessible the data is.
They will try again, and they will keep trying to deny crucial information to the American people. This administration is capable of acts we can't even imagine.
As election day comes closer and the unpresident becomes ever more desperate, he will become more dangerous. As I've said before, the people have to move to stop him. Our most direct route to accomplishing this is by keeping heavy pressure on our members of Congress to act in some meaningful way to contain DJTrump.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.¹
--- Diogenes, 7/17/2020
¹ Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist, 1852.
If you read this on Facebook, please share it widely.
16 July 2020
Excuses, excuses
Reasons not to wear a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic:
- Trump says I don't have to. Trump lies. If he says you don't, it means you do.
- It's uncomfortable. Tell me that when you're intubated so you can breathe.
- My breath smells bad. Get a breath mint.
- My emphysema makes it hard to breathe. You're high risk. Go home.
- The governor says I don't have to. The governor is an idiot.
- I can't drink with it on. Use a straw.
- I don't like the way I look. Tell me that when you're lying in your casket.
- None of my friends do. You know what your mother would say, don't you?
- No one can make me. They can if you're in one of the states requiring it.*
- My asthma makes it feel stuffy. See answer #4.
- I feel claustrophobic. Inhale deeply before putting it on; exhale slowly.
- I'm healthy. Look up the definition of "asymptomatic."
- I can't smoke with it on. You can't smoke inside anyway, numbnuts.
- I can't tie it behind my head. Get one that goes around your ears.
- It hurts behind my ears. Give it time; you'll get calluses.
- The pandemic is a hoax. Shall I call you an ambulance now?
- I social distance; don't need one. Get the hell away from me!
- Sean Hannity says I don't need one. See answer #5.
- I cough and sneeze a lot from allergies. All the better to be wearing one.
- It's against my religion. I hope you're praying a lot.
* California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
15 July 2020
Life Matters, Part 3
We were once called the melting pot of nations for the millions of immigrants from myriad nations who came to the United States during the 19th century in search of a better life. Polish, Germans, Chinese, Italians, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, Jews, and a variety of Eastern Europeans landed in New York. After 1849 hundreds of thousands of Chinese came through San Francisco in search of gold and to work on the western railroads.
All were discriminated against and persecuted until they found niches in American society. All but one race ultimately assimilated. The Chinese were considered too alien. Their culture, dress, physical appearance, cuisine, religion, language, and several other factors worked against them. They were denied immigration for 61 years by a string of measures beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Members of one foreign ethnic group, however, had been here long before all others. The institution of slavery had been established in 1619 with the arrival of 20 African captives in Jamestown, Virginia. Of all the peoples who came to these shores, only Africans came involuntarily, only Africans were forced into slavery, and only Africans were bought and sold as chattel in marketplaces.
Black lives matter and Black deaths matter. Not because they are inherently more important than those of other races, but because they have been disregarded for so long. For more than two centuries millions of African men and women lived, worked, and died in appalling conditions, first in the American colonies and then in the American states. Few of their names are known.
Emancipation brought an end to enforced slavery, but the plight of Black people, particularly in the South, was little improved. They continued to be harassed, beaten, taunted, persecuted, murdered, raped and lynched well into the 20th century. Systemic victimization, frequently by police, continues today, due in no small part to the rabble-rousing rants of the Racist-in-Chief, DJTrump.
We must learn that if we are to have a truly just and equal society we have to acknowledge the pain, torment and misery our ancestors visited on generations of ancestors of our Black sisters and brothers.
Black lives do matter, We have to speak it.
--- Diogenes, 7/15/2020
If you read this on Facebook, please share it widely.
All were discriminated against and persecuted until they found niches in American society. All but one race ultimately assimilated. The Chinese were considered too alien. Their culture, dress, physical appearance, cuisine, religion, language, and several other factors worked against them. They were denied immigration for 61 years by a string of measures beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Members of one foreign ethnic group, however, had been here long before all others. The institution of slavery had been established in 1619 with the arrival of 20 African captives in Jamestown, Virginia. Of all the peoples who came to these shores, only Africans came involuntarily, only Africans were forced into slavery, and only Africans were bought and sold as chattel in marketplaces.
Black lives matter and Black deaths matter. Not because they are inherently more important than those of other races, but because they have been disregarded for so long. For more than two centuries millions of African men and women lived, worked, and died in appalling conditions, first in the American colonies and then in the American states. Few of their names are known.
Emancipation brought an end to enforced slavery, but the plight of Black people, particularly in the South, was little improved. They continued to be harassed, beaten, taunted, persecuted, murdered, raped and lynched well into the 20th century. Systemic victimization, frequently by police, continues today, due in no small part to the rabble-rousing rants of the Racist-in-Chief, DJTrump.
We must learn that if we are to have a truly just and equal society we have to acknowledge the pain, torment and misery our ancestors visited on generations of ancestors of our Black sisters and brothers.
Black lives do matter, We have to speak it.
--- Diogenes, 7/15/2020
If you read this on Facebook, please share it widely.
14 July 2020
Life Matters, Part 2
The Grand Dragon and High Wizard of the Kaka Klan, a.k.a. Racebaiter-in-Chief DJTrump, says we shouldn't think that all whites are racists.
No, we shouldn't. Not any more than we should think all Blacks are criminals and all Mexicans are rapists and murderers, which he not only believes, but on which he built a political campaign.
As I said in my "True Confessions" post yesterday, I am the product of a racist culture, which I have struggled all my life to cast off, yet I still have to ask myself if I am a racist.
Certainly not in any overt way. Individuals of many ethnicities have passed through my life as teachers, friends, colleagues, students, and lovers. As far as I have been concerned, they are just human beings, period.
At the same time, I occasionally have a twinge of something ugly when I meet certain Black men on the street. I can't consciously say what it is. It's almost as if I perceive an aura of threat. Like Jimmy Carter, who admitted to committing adultery in his heart, I feel I'm committing some kind of hate crime in my subconscious.
These passing encounters are always anonymous. I have no doubt that if I were introduced to the same men socially I wouldn't feel a thing. I can only think what I experience is some nasty thing bubbling up from my early years.
I have been victimized by Blacks, roughed up by white cops, and spat upon by Asians. I hold no grudges about those incidents, and I certainly have developed no racial hatred. I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing. Perhaps people in Generation X or Z are truly color blind. I certainly hope so.
Our so-called leaders, however, are largely Baby Boomers. I hate sharing a generation with them. It is they who fire up the racists, who have hate in their hearts and who pulled out every dirty trick in the book to scuttle the Obama presidency because they couldn't stand the fact that America had elected a Black president.
It's because of their hatred that we all must understand why Black lives matter.
Tomorrow.
--- Diogenes, Bastille Day, 2020
No, we shouldn't. Not any more than we should think all Blacks are criminals and all Mexicans are rapists and murderers, which he not only believes, but on which he built a political campaign.
As I said in my "True Confessions" post yesterday, I am the product of a racist culture, which I have struggled all my life to cast off, yet I still have to ask myself if I am a racist.
Certainly not in any overt way. Individuals of many ethnicities have passed through my life as teachers, friends, colleagues, students, and lovers. As far as I have been concerned, they are just human beings, period.
At the same time, I occasionally have a twinge of something ugly when I meet certain Black men on the street. I can't consciously say what it is. It's almost as if I perceive an aura of threat. Like Jimmy Carter, who admitted to committing adultery in his heart, I feel I'm committing some kind of hate crime in my subconscious.
These passing encounters are always anonymous. I have no doubt that if I were introduced to the same men socially I wouldn't feel a thing. I can only think what I experience is some nasty thing bubbling up from my early years.
I have been victimized by Blacks, roughed up by white cops, and spat upon by Asians. I hold no grudges about those incidents, and I certainly have developed no racial hatred. I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing. Perhaps people in Generation X or Z are truly color blind. I certainly hope so.
Our so-called leaders, however, are largely Baby Boomers. I hate sharing a generation with them. It is they who fire up the racists, who have hate in their hearts and who pulled out every dirty trick in the book to scuttle the Obama presidency because they couldn't stand the fact that America had elected a Black president.
It's because of their hatred that we all must understand why Black lives matter.
Tomorrow.
--- Diogenes, Bastille Day, 2020
13 July 2020
Life Matters, Part 1
All lives matter. African-Americans have lives. Therefore black lives matter.
Nice little syllogism, that, proving the facts of a major national issue in eleven words.
Logically speaking it's a sound argument with a valid conclusion. I never thought it would lead me to a long silence, let alone a crisis of conscience.
Recently the editor of Vox Populi called me out for a post I had submitted on this subject. It was, she declared, superficial and inadequate to the importance of the question.
She was right.
I am a white man of the Baby Boomer generation. I was raised in a middle-class racist family in an all-white, very small mostly racist town in a largely racist Midwestern state. By racist I mean that people of other races, ethnicities and nationalities were habitually spoken of disparagingly. A variety of epithets were used, depending on the background of the subject. I don't think anyone wished harm to any of those they spoke of--it was just the language one used.
My thoughts and speech echoed those of my family until I was about 13 and had a personal view of segregation during a visit to the South. My most persistent memory of that trip is of the "Colored only" and "White only" signs. They were everywhere: On drinking fountains, public restrooms, theater entrances, swimming pools--I clearly remember an arcade in an amusement park where side-by-side pinball machines were racially labeled.
It troubled my naive teenaged brain. I decided to experiment and started using "Colored" facilities whenever I could. Nothing happened. But I learned there could have been serious repercussions had I been "colored" and used "white" facilities. I could only ask why skin color made such a difference--and I'm still asking.
It's easy to say "Black lives matter." We can shout the slogan, wave it on a sign, wear it on a T-shirt, put it on our Facebook page, and feel virtuous. But do we mean it? Do we feel it? Or are we just being politically correct?
We need to remember that throughout much of American history black lives didn't matter. Or didn't matter much. After long debate in the Continental Congress on how to determine the number of persons in each state for the purposes of representation and taxation, it was decided that each Negro, i.e. slave, would count as 3/5 of a person.
We also need to consider that black deaths matter. How many of us remember that the first person to die in the struggle for American independence was an escaped slave named Crispus Attucks, who was given a hero's burial in Boston? How many slaves lie in unmarked graves throughout the South? How many were innocent victims of lynching? How many were never mourned?
I for one cannot come close to imagining how alienated African-Americans must feel from American history. It has been common knowledge for a very long time that many, if not most, of our Founders were slave owners. We even know some intimate details of slave/master interaction thanks to Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings.
The journals of the Continental Congress are full of matter-of-fact debates about how to treat "negroes" (the world is usually not capitalized)--not as people, but as property. Samuel Chase of Maryland, a signer of the Declaration and member of Congress for 20 years, put it plainly: "The negroes are wealth,"¹ i.e. chattel.
How do we reconcile the fact that some of the greatest men in the early history of our country contributed to its most infamous institution? Were they hypocrites, or pragmatists, or did it enter their thoughts at all?
Does the greater good offset the injustice?
--- Diogenes, July 13, 2020
¹ A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: Journals of the Continental Congress, July 30, 1776: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?hlaw:2:./temp/~ammem_Jvz3::
Nice little syllogism, that, proving the facts of a major national issue in eleven words.
Logically speaking it's a sound argument with a valid conclusion. I never thought it would lead me to a long silence, let alone a crisis of conscience.
Recently the editor of Vox Populi called me out for a post I had submitted on this subject. It was, she declared, superficial and inadequate to the importance of the question.
She was right.
I am a white man of the Baby Boomer generation. I was raised in a middle-class racist family in an all-white, very small mostly racist town in a largely racist Midwestern state. By racist I mean that people of other races, ethnicities and nationalities were habitually spoken of disparagingly. A variety of epithets were used, depending on the background of the subject. I don't think anyone wished harm to any of those they spoke of--it was just the language one used.
My thoughts and speech echoed those of my family until I was about 13 and had a personal view of segregation during a visit to the South. My most persistent memory of that trip is of the "Colored only" and "White only" signs. They were everywhere: On drinking fountains, public restrooms, theater entrances, swimming pools--I clearly remember an arcade in an amusement park where side-by-side pinball machines were racially labeled.
It troubled my naive teenaged brain. I decided to experiment and started using "Colored" facilities whenever I could. Nothing happened. But I learned there could have been serious repercussions had I been "colored" and used "white" facilities. I could only ask why skin color made such a difference--and I'm still asking.
It's easy to say "Black lives matter." We can shout the slogan, wave it on a sign, wear it on a T-shirt, put it on our Facebook page, and feel virtuous. But do we mean it? Do we feel it? Or are we just being politically correct?
We need to remember that throughout much of American history black lives didn't matter. Or didn't matter much. After long debate in the Continental Congress on how to determine the number of persons in each state for the purposes of representation and taxation, it was decided that each Negro, i.e. slave, would count as 3/5 of a person.
We also need to consider that black deaths matter. How many of us remember that the first person to die in the struggle for American independence was an escaped slave named Crispus Attucks, who was given a hero's burial in Boston? How many slaves lie in unmarked graves throughout the South? How many were innocent victims of lynching? How many were never mourned?
I for one cannot come close to imagining how alienated African-Americans must feel from American history. It has been common knowledge for a very long time that many, if not most, of our Founders were slave owners. We even know some intimate details of slave/master interaction thanks to Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings.
The journals of the Continental Congress are full of matter-of-fact debates about how to treat "negroes" (the world is usually not capitalized)--not as people, but as property. Samuel Chase of Maryland, a signer of the Declaration and member of Congress for 20 years, put it plainly: "The negroes are wealth,"¹ i.e. chattel.
How do we reconcile the fact that some of the greatest men in the early history of our country contributed to its most infamous institution? Were they hypocrites, or pragmatists, or did it enter their thoughts at all?
Does the greater good offset the injustice?
--- Diogenes, July 13, 2020
¹ A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: Journals of the Continental Congress, July 30, 1776: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?hlaw:2:./temp/~ammem_Jvz3::
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