starrymessenger

I suspect Tom's gonna have a bad day.

I don't think there should be commemorative monuments to the memory of Adolph Hitler. More importantly, the Germans themselves feel even more strongly about that than we do. Interesting that at the Nuremberg trials Goring claimed that in fifty years there would be statues of him all over Germany. There aren't. And of course I agree that slavery is an abomination. I can hardly think of anything more repulsive than the notion of owning another human being.But if Generals Grant and Sherman, you know, the folks who actually won the War for the Union, became the closest of friends with Generals Johnstone and Longstreet, I interpret that as really the highest personal recommendation and I will take it ahead of the opinion of later day mediocrities. General Lee killed Americans but so did General Grant. It was a civil war. They are all Americans. Ultimately all that we can say is that it puts us in the presence of all that is constant and enduring in human suffering and unites us with its secret cause. You are missing the mark in going after men of extraordinary ability and impeccabable character. A more controversial case is that of Lieutenant General Forrest, as superb a horse soldier as ever there was, anywhere, anytime. I don't know what went down at Ft. Pillow but if he did what some say, well then he's Joachim Peiper, the brilliant Nazi tank commander and a war criminal. If he didn't do it, he certainly deserves his monument.

Lanier served in the Confederate Army, but as a 19-year-old buck private, and later as a pilot on ships used to smuggle cotton past federal blockades. He wasn’t a leader, nor was he an apologist for slavery, white supremacy, or even the “Lost Cause,” which he later gently mocked as a case of mass hysteria extending from Virginia through East Texas. Paraphrasing Robert Earl Keen, Sidney Lanier was no kinda rebel, and was not remembered as such in his lifetime or after. Instead he was renowned as a poet and a musician, or in the words of Jim Henley, legendary former Lanier Middle School debate coach and 2006 liberal Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, Lanier was “a renaissance man,” one who attempted to mesh his words with his tunes, music he created on the flute, banjo, organ, piano, violin, and guitar. (Lanier once pithily described music as “love in search of a word.”) “He’s the kind of example to which we would wish all of our students to aspire,” Henley says. “Though he was a private in the Confederate Army and for four months a prisoner of war, he was not a leader in the Army. Not a general, not a decision-maker. And I’ve been reading his entire body of work, and in no case does he lament the end of slavery, and in some cases he rejoices over the end of slavery.” Here’s the thing. Despite Grady’s justified inclusion on this list of historical damnation, it seems more and more that the only mortal sin is to have sworn allegiance to the Confederacy. So long as you did not bear arms against the Union, your memory is safe, no matter if you engaged supported secession all your life and spearheaded genocidal campaigns against Native Americans (Mirabeau Lamar); owned a dozen or so slaves at the time of his death (Sam Houston); finagled to introduce large-scale slavery into a sovereign nation where it had hitherto been forbidden (Stephen F. Austin); engaged in the capital offense of slave-smuggling (Jim Bowie, James Fannin); expressed disgustingly racist views in print (Davy Crockett); fathered children with a slave woman (Thomas Jefferson); or joked that the best way to contain the AIDS crisis was “to shoot all the queers” (Louie Welch). All of those men have schools still safely named after them in HISD, as does Oran Roberts, who shepherded Texas out of the Union as president of the 1860 Texas Secession convention and later founded and led a regiment of Confederate soldiers. Why Roberts gets a pass is a mystery. - See more at: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/lanier-middle-school-name-change/#sthash.bo4BGCzT.dpuf It doesn't matter, the liberals in the Houston school district want him out Why Lanier Middle School should lose that Confederate ... www.houstonchronicle.com/.../ General John Bell Hood doubtless turning in his grave. To my mind its a national disgrace when men of stature and accomplishment are pilloried and sacrificed on the alter of contemporary political correctness by entirely secondary men and women. Is it impossible to arrive at a rational understanding of these things and to instruct all of our children accordingly? Manfred Baron Richthofen and Field Marshal Rommel were our enemies, but they were nevertheless respected and admired by the very people whose job it was to kill them. Does that mean that Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and Winston Churchill were somehow moral imbeciles? Their cause was perhaps bad (certainly Rommel's was) but history seems capable of evaluating them as professional military men and as human beings independently of the accidents of time and place.

Interesting. Looks like the nature and legal implications of the compact between the states and the federal government can be hotly debated. I wonder if, theoretically, they are the only players here. Could a local majority within a state succede from the greater commonwealth or not? Is an original "founding" county, township or municipality merely a creature of the state of which it is a part? Does the answer depend upon its whether its powers are entirely delegated, whether its admission at the outset was consensual and like questions? And did I understand Justice Scalia's exclusion for a (presumably unanimous) consensual withdrawal from the Union and revolution to suggest that "revolution" was somehow "legal", and is that the theoretical underpining of the second amendment? And is there a distinction to be made between revolution and succession? I also found the author's suggestion that the pres be limited to a single term interesting. Foreign Minister Lavrov recently commented on the two term limitation as an operational flaw in the American system of government.

Link? Thanks

I think some of what you are saying makes sense. Bernie Saunders would not turn the US into a communist country. Heck I don't know that communist countries are communist anymore. Even the Ruskies now understand that Bolshevism was a mistake that set them back 70 years. I live in Canada where we have socialized medecin. In a way I dislike it because when I require medical attention I want the best and I want it immediately, but thats only because I can afford to pay for it (or for private medical insurance). Most people couldn't do that given the costs. At the end of the day the medical services available to all here are very good even if at times you have to wait your turn in line. And although we dont have a two tiered system as a practical matter I do have the option of going to the States and simply cracking a cheque. I would rather do that than live in a place where people who need them are denied medical services because of their inability to pay and if that accounts for my relatively high rate of personal tax I'm ok with it. I'm not familiar with every plank in Bernie Saunders platform but what bothers me is that he inspires no confidence as Commander in Chief and appears to be very weak generally in the matter of foreign affairs. I think we live in a crowded world with lots of things going on affecting US and western democratic interests. I find it interesting that for some countries foreign policy has a very prominent place in the national agenda. I'm not sure it does or ever has (Woodrow Wilson and FDR notwithstanding) in the US. Republican candidates have a lot more to say about it than Bernie this time around but what they say (certainly the front runners anyway) makes little or no sense and is clearly just used to activate support amongst certain of their constituents. I'm very disappointed by the parsity of Democratic contenders for the nomination. It reeks of cronyism and moral bankruptcy. I think it could possibly bite HRC in the ass, but if things boil down to a contest between Bernie and The Donald, I really feel Americans are being short changed. I think I have even amongst my acquaintances Americans who are a clear cut above any of these characters.

The Man from Maine is certainly one of your most admirable persons. There were a number of staff officers on both sides of incredible valour and quality.

That's interesting. Happy to hear that many Southerners regarded slavery as a dying institution, it is after all an abomination. The Brits abolished it in 1833, though that did not stop them from buying the cotton they needed. I've often wondered whether and how long it would have taken before people came to their senses and slavery died out naturally in the South, thus avoiding the most painful and traumatic event in US history. So many brave and noble men dying under both flags. Virginia didn't grow cotton, unless I'm mistaken, and wasn't the election (or perhaps nomination) of Lincoln the catalyst for succession because that precluded the westward expansion of slavery? Cotton was big, big business given the needs of the industrial revolution and very profitable considering the insignificanf, ahem, production costs. I also wonder as a legal matter how the validity of succession is regarded given the second amendment. Did the South have an argument that holds water?

Thank you. I know about Ewell, just misspelled.Yeah, couldn't read between the lines when Generall Lee said "if practicable".

As I understand it he was probably not pro slavery as such, though of course he was not an abolitionist either. What we know for sure is that he was a brilliant blue-eyed killer who hated Yankees. Maybe for him the conflict was more about state rights than slavery with slavery itself a secondary or incidental issue. If so, he may have been mistaken in that belief. I don't think his involvement in the John Brown affair is evidence of anything in that regard. JMO but when Frederick Douglass later told people to "agitate" I don't think he had what John Brown did in mind. More like what Dr. King did a couple of generations later. Good thing for the Union he went down at Chancellorsville. Unlike General Ewing, himself a capable commander, there is little doubt General Jackson would have taken that hill on day 1 at Gettysburg.

This makes the most sense.

I'm sure there are always many things that stand to be improved and therefore should be improved. My comment was simply that the IRC and regulatons will in this day and age, and for the future, inevitably feature both volume and complexity and therefore that simplification and reduction in the burden of tax administration is not really an argument for the flat tax, whatever its merits or demerits may be. The real issue is a much more difficult and substantive one, namely what principles should govern and determine the right rate (or rates) of tax, as the pages of this thread indicate.

Hume would say that 51% is not mob rule but quite simply by definition the rule of the majority. But I know many if not most Americans feel differently about it. Seems to be in your national DNA viz the second amendment. Thou art a stiff-necked people.

When/if he's not concussed we have a very good power back. One that is a lot faster than Eddie ever was and costs a lot less.I like Eddie, especially because of what he did to the guy with the imaginary girlfriend in the championship game - hit him like a truck. Can't blame him if he doesn't really want to play football (there are only so many immortals) but he should look after himself regardless. If he dies of a heart attack (heaven forbid) at least no one will blame the game of football.

One argument would be that "punitive" rates of tax can be justfied only in times of legitimate national emergency. The government confiscates, expropriates and requisitions private property in time of war for example. The trick is arriving at a consensus on what constitutes a "punitive rate" and a "national emergency". I guess the politicians ultimately inform us. One characteristic of a national emergency is that it is by its nature temporary. Once it passes punitive taxes too should be in the rear view mirror. In Canada (and in other British dominions) the Income Tax Act was introduced in Parliament and passed in 1917 as a "temporary" war measure. Didn't quite work out that way tho.

Anything north of 50% and I start tearing up the cobblestones.

Wasn't saying Pres Obama had a good foreign policy. That's a different question and, well, kettle of fish. Only that from what little I know Saunders's foreign policy seems to = the vacuum nature abhors.

Re Wall Street and the big banks in particular I get the impression that candidates on both sides say things, just about anything, just to cater to certain constituencies. Makes it hard to know what they actually think or whether they think at all. Hillary brandished Volcker over and over to appeal to main street as a check against "big banks". But Volcker doesn't break up big banks, it just prevents them from persuing quantitative proprietary trading strategies. Its also is basically pointless legislation that fails to target the real problems that just about brought down the world financial order in 2008. Institutional prop trading was never a problem. The problem was bank ownership of securitized mortgages in a real estate bubble. Mortgages are typically not a "trading asset". They are the most conventional of retail banking assets. At first the banks were smart enough to sell them to suckers but then they started investing in them because the spreads or mark to market gains were attractive on paper. The real problem was the failure of bank risk managers and government regulators to identify the risk based on their naive willingness to accept the opinions on credit worthiness of the rating agencies. Breaking up big banks like Saunders would like to do isn't going to solve the problem either if lots of smaller banks are doing the same (wrong) things. So Hilary appeals to main street and associates herself with Obama's "legacy" except that Volcker was hardly a shining moment of his administration.

Naysayers can say what they like about him but there aren't many bald men who need a haircut. What I don't get is how a man for whom foreign policy is an empty space can be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

Is sitting on a ball a turnover?

Why is that a touchback? Down at the 2?

I've got no dog in this fight but if he said that (whether he took it back or not) he is not a serious person and he deserves to be whipped. We don't live in Russia.

Gotcha.

Just for my information, has Bernie Saunders proposed a 90% net income tax?

No doubt I am oversimplifying things. But are we quibbling. Saudi Arabia is also home to it in its most primitive aspect and Saudi Arabians, like Bin Laden, amongst its principal exponents. My point was that the people who run the country are not to be confused with them. If they were one and the same there would be an official policy for the extermination of all Shia Moslems, even Saudi citizens, since fundamentalist Wahhabism regards non-conforming Moslems as more contemptible than infidels, and clearly they don't do that. Besides the extremists in Saudi Arabia are a threat to the Royal Family and their mortal enemy. Hardly surprising that "official" Wahhabism looks to distinguish itself from them. OTOH, note that the Saudis are in no hurry to eliminate ISIS because they are a Sunni bulwark against Shia Iran and therefore they serve their regional interests.