I think the only version of that song that I've heard is the one by Townes Van Zandt.
I think Peter LeFarge's original is really powerful. Because he was Native American, his anger is much more direct.
I suppose I came to it through Johny Cash because I heard the song on this good collection of music which influenced him.
As for the article, I'm not sure there's much to say about it, but thanks H-G for posting it -- it genuinely made me feel depressed and pissed off and I wanted to share.
I'm sure the OP is right, but I thought the alcoholism myth went like this: "Asian people lack some enzyme that helps them digest alcohol, so they get bright red cheeks. Native Americans are more closely related to Asian people because their common ancestor came over on the Siberian bridge. Therefore Native Americans' high level of alcoholism is related to the enzyme thing."
Hasn't someone found that rats in interesting, non stressful cages are unlikely to get addicted to heroin even if they have it freely available?
Except why wouldn't Asians have higher levels of alcoholism then. Unless the landbridge was directly responsible.
4: That's why you need a marketing department.
are Asian people without the enzyme more likely to be alcoholic, though?
Nearly related: one reason given for the Mongol empire not lasting very long is that before conquest, the Mongols only had alcohol for a few weeks a year when there was an excess of mare's milk (and they drank it all without stint during their Althing-equivalent), and afterwards they were too close to the dread grain-growers who softened them up with refined spirits until the noble horse empire fell apart.
I thought the just-so story was that Europeans had spent dozens/hundreds of generations getting hammered constantly, while Native Americans hadn't (pre-contact), thus et cetera.
8 could be either nature or nurture, though -- no genes for an enzyme or no cultural habits that control drinking.
Playing quarters was a culture habit that helped control drinking because of all the time spent waiting and watching.
Now I wonder if anyone's arguing that Europeans who could naturally handle alcohol reproduced more successfully. I know someone's arguing that yer 18th- and 19-th c gratification-delaying pale people had so many more successful children that the current high-SES group is actually genetically superior.
I've heard both the genetics story and the one in 8, and the latter one is (to me) just confusing. Making booze is not hard! Not even remotely! ("Take something sweetish; leave it alone for a while") And once a group does it it tends to catch on because boy howdy are we ever into that as a species. The former one isn't much better, I think, because the defective gene that causes Asian flush has to do with breaking down the chemicals that you get after the first set of enzymes break down the alcohol and it's not clear why alcohol leaving more poison behind in your system is going to make you alcoholic. (The level of drinking in some of the East Asian countries is especially impressive to me given how many members of that society have a (unique) negative reaction to alcohol that other groups don't have. Way to commit to it guys!)
11: You'd think it would be the opposite though, right?
If there is a gene for being able to frequently consume alcohol without developing alcoholism, I've got it right here. Laydeez. Or one for self-delusions. Either way, happiness.
Pretty interesting. The genetics story was just one that I "knew" though who knows from where. In retrospect I guess it's just another chapter in the 500 year story of inventing reasons for whiteys not to care about native lives.
8. Native Americans did make their own alcohol pre-contact, although probably just fermented beverages, not distilled liquor.
The relation between the gene causing ALDH2 deficiency and alcoholism in Asians is complicated. Its prevalence is roughly equal in Korea, China, and Japan, but Korea has a much higher rate of alcoholism ithan either of the other two. Japanese alcoholics are 25 times more likely to lack the defective gene, so it clearly does protect against alcoholism to some extent, but this must be overridden by the macho drinking culture among Korean men. Anecdata: my ex turns bright red after a single small glass of beer. The embarrassment was enough to stop him drinking any more if he was out with me and my friends, but not if he was drinking with work colleagues, where drinking was mandatory however personally uncomfortable that might make an individual.
I turn bright red after a couple of beers. But I flush easily in general.
To 12, well, not all ecosystems have much sugar, much of the year. The colder and dryer it is the harder it is to get, after all (and the more likely you are to need all the calories directly as food). I think fermenting protein-rich food safely is a lot harder.
and 13, I remember it as coming awfully close to explaining that the drunken Irish had a lot of children who starved in ditches but the drunken bourgeois English were indoors like rich prudent people and their children had children, etc etc, plus also a few aristocrats were debauched unto destruction. Familiar as a novel, touchy as sociology.
I only know the song because, I believe, I downloaded it from Nick S's blog lo these many years; I have Peter's version and Townes'.
I think fermenting protein-rich food safely is a lot harder.
Yes, but one sip of beerf and you'll never go back.
, but one sip of beerf and you'll never go back.
Beerf is barf, people! It's barf!
In the 70's, there was an interesting and equally improbable flip side of the myth, to the effect that Asians could genetically handle opium as a social drug in their opium dens, but Whites and Blacks degenerated into hopeless addicts.
I prefer spending the evening with a good bottle of swine.
Hasn't someone found that rats in interesting, non stressful cages are unlikely to get addicted to heroin even if they have it freely available?
Indeed! (referenced in the OP and described in the linked article).
I know someone's arguing that yer 18th- and 19-th c gratification-delaying pale people had so many more successful children that the current high-SES group is actually genetically superior.
I wouldn't think that would be enough generations to matter in terms of genetic selection.
But, one important caveat to the OP is that, to some extent what counts as "alcoholism" is culturally determined (for example). So it's possible that a significant part of the discussion of drinking among Native Americans (or Irish) is the standard, "we're fine, but those people over there are weak and can't handle their booze." (Incidentally, I think I've linked to this song before (from 1880) in which two Irish immigrants complain about how the Italians are taking their jobs and one of their advantages is that they are better able to control their drinking).
But part of why this story matters to me is that there's a reservation just outside of the town that I live in and yet, I interact with almost no Native Americans. In the previous thread Frowner wrote, "I think about how I ought to be a better anti-racist than I am, because I want to be and I have a [vague, nebulous] vision of a racially just society; and yet, I know that I am constantly doing things that are both invisible to me because of my socialization and reinscribing racism." and I'm sure that describes my own vague relationship with the local tribe.
So, in that context the myth about Native Americans being genetically susceptible to alcoholism matters because it's just one more bloody example of the ways (both subtle and explicit) in which people don't want to admit or take responsibility for just how cruel the history is.
But part of why this story matters to me is that there's a reservation just outside of the town that I live in and yet, I interact with almost no Native Americans.
I recently watched McFarland, USA with a bunch of other families, which is a (reasonably charming) feel-good white savior movie, with a whole lot of cultural tourism for Exotic Poor Latino World, USA. So I'm sitting around with a bunch of middle and upper class families, watching an Exotic Movie (but not bad), in a setting which is essentially Heebieville, minus the middle class, which are the parts I basically never go to. Argh.
I just finished reading Empire of the Summer Moon,* about the destruction of the Comanches and other Southern Plains tribes, and it was unbelievably sad. You already know how awful and sad the story is, but every additional fact you learn is so crushing.
*The book itself was surprisingly racist, and I would only give it a qualified recommendation.
16: From what I can remember, though, distilled beverages/drinking straight liquor a bunch only took off in Europe (or at least most of Europe) around the same time as they were colonizing the Americas, though. So it was mostly fermented beverages there as well.
19: You mean cold and dry like Russia/Poland? I mean, you don't literally need something full of sugar, even, if you have grains, fruit, or some but not all vegetables you can just boil those and you're set. I mean, if we're talking starvation conditions or, I dunno, arctic circle stuff then there's a serious challenge. But otherwise we have a lot of ways of getting a bowl of sweet watery stuff to start fermenting. (It's basically what we do to things to make them more edible in the first place.)
Also I suppose in extremis you can even ferment stuff like milk and use that. I mean, it has always sounded kind of gross to me, though I guess if it got all yogurty it wouldn't be as bad. But it's not unknown.
I had heard that the introduction of cheap booze (that is, gin) to England in the 18th century produced huge levels of alcoholism. Most people hadn't had much access to high-proof booze before.
If you look at the engravings and such it's usually the poor and downtrodden who are stinking drunk. (Not always, I think Hogarth did some of UMC types.) Don't know if that's evidence for the OP or evidence that 18th century cartoonists picked on the poor.
a (reasonably charming) feel-good white savior movie, with a whole lot of cultural tourism for Exotic Poor Latino World
I recently watched Spare Parts and would recommend it -- utterly predictable and often formulaic, but still quite satisfying.
29: I heard something similar, to the point of serious concern about overall social stability.
Now every culture is always already going to hell in a handbasket, but if you take at a typical US fraternity house as what happens when hard liquor suddenly goes from mostly unavailable to freely available and then extrapolate it to society as a whole it's pretty terrifying.
Cultural standards of "don't get completely hammered all the time even though it's lots of fun" take a while to evolve and depend on people being able to get more done while not hammered, so if the man is keeping you down anyway you may as well get drunk.
Or something.
"Beer before liquor never sicker" works for cultures overall, I'd guess. When the "go have a cheap strong pint after work" norm suddenly encounters "pint of gin for the same price (or lower)" you're going to end up with serious social trouble.
I drink beer and have a whiskey (or a Rusty Nail) before heading home. It's fine. The problem comes when you drink vodka or gin or anything clear.
I had heard similar things about US consumption pre-Prohibition, but a quick Google seems to indicate that per capita alcohol consumption isn't much different now than it was then.
As the hubbub about that "alcohol consumption by decile" chart shows, the hardcore drinkers disproportionately influence the stats. It wouldn't be strange for an alcoholic to drink 4-5 times the per capita number at a minimum.
"alcohol consumption by decile" chart
Looking, is this what you're thinking of?
The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week. . . .
As Cook notes in his book, the top 10 percent of drinkers account for well over half of the alcohol consumed in any given year. On the other hand, people in the bottom three deciles don't drink at all, and even the median consumption among those who do drink is just three beverages per week.
I heard something similar, to the point of serious concern about overall social stability.
I wonder if it could have really been that serious considered Prince Frederick seized on it as a way to make himself more popular than his father King George II.
25.2: facepalm.
28.2: No, I mean environments colder and dryer than the breadbaskets of Eastern Europe. In which animal husbandry is still on the natural cycle because that's when there's adequate forage; and when foaling is seasonal, so will excess milk be.
Like heebie, I had only known "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" as a Johnny Cash number. The Peter LaFarge version is raw, and hurt, and angry. Very powerful.
In Ontario, Canada, the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) used to have a "drunk list" that was informally or colloquially known as the "Indian list." No kidding, I actually knew this term ("Indian list") when I was a very young child (way back in the mists of time...). Purveyors of hard liquor were expressly forbidden to sell their "spirits" to anyone on that list. The ugly racism of Ontario's "drunk list" is a topic that remains to be explored.
Wow, I had no idea. Fascinating.
http://www.puncheddrunk.ca/interdiction-unequal.html
25: The connection between cultural loss, social destabilization, addiction makes me wonder if the status of the Irish as a colonized people is related to high rates of chronic alcoholism. The clan structure, Gaelic language, and other elements of traditional culture took a serious beating in the 1800's, assisted by mass emigration and the capture of many public institutions by a repressive church. Seems not so different from aboriginals.
Related: A great piece in the Toronto Star about the recent heroin epidemic in Massachusetts. Apparently families are rejecting stigma and coming forward for help at a pretty high rate. I wonder if this reflects an understanding of addiction that comes from the Irish experience with hooch.
This is all Elizabeth Warren's fault.
Also, if historical trauma and social dislocation were triggers for alcoholism, the Jews would be in deep shit.
This post made me remember some difficult things.
When I was a teenager I spent some time living on the streets, in and out of trouble. Mostly in. I knew maybe a dozen native kids my age; We didn't much care about race, just teased sometimes, I was welcomed into their families homes on two reservations, and it Hardly ever came up. We had some good times, some hard times, and helped each other where we could.
After a few years I managed to leave that life behind, along with everyone I knew in it, and everywhere I'd been. I've often wondered what my life would look like if I'd had the strength to leave the life without burning every bridge I could find.
Anyway, fast forward, and now I'm a middle aged white professional and you'd have to look pretty hard to see anything distinguishing me from that crowd. This made me realize I don't think I've talked to anyone living on reservation, or even knowingly to anyone native, in nearly 20 years.
Fuck.
Average of the top decile is such a ridiculous measurement. The usual sensible statistic is the bottom of the top decile, that is the tenth percentile.
Average of the top decile is such a ridiculous measurement. The usual sensible statistic is the bottom of the top decile, that is the tenth percentile.
Average of the top decile is such a ridiculous measurement. The usual sensible statistic is the bottom of the top decile, that is the tenth percentile.
Ok... No more commenting from the newsblur app.
The connection between cultural loss, social destabilization, addiction makes me wonder if the status of the Irish as a colonized people is related to high rates of chronic alcoholism.
I'm pretty sure you are not the first to wonder.
Signed,
Just Plain Jane's Irish Emigrant Ancestors
35
That's the one. If those numbers are accurate, the top decile drinks nearly a fifth of booze a day.
I don't claim any special knowledge here, but I'm reminded of something a TA of mine, who happened to have gone to HS with me, and was Ojibwe, talked about how she was watching a video of George Wallace ranting about whatever, and being struck by the fact that this arch-racist and supporter of white supremacy, was speaking an Indigenous language. (In that the names of cities and states and rivers were all in one of those languages.) So, you know, resist, and stuff.
The link in 50 is hilarious. I mean, the author sounds like they're soft pedaling what they're saying, because they keep going "now this is a well researched and reasonable book let's remember but...[ridiculous assumption/manipulation of numbers]".
The problem awesomeness comes when you drink vodka or gin or anything clear.
Gin and juice, bitches. God, get with the program already.
Hey, I forwarded the OP link to someone who immediately shared the information in a workshop she happens to be leading today for social workers. "Perfect timing," she reported. I made a tiny difference in the world! (She actually does work with native communities some of the time, although that's a recent development.)
Well, the basic problem was that he multiplied all the figures of what people had reported drinking by 1.97 to make them match up with alcohol sales figures. And, depending on how he was actually putting that data to use, that may have been a reasonable thing to do because it was the only way to get the math to work out, due to conflicts with the data collection process, and maybe exact figures were less important than the proportion of consumption or whatever he was trying to model. The problem came when Wonkblog cherry picked that one portion of the book, without doing adequate background investigation of the context, because it made for a nice clickbaity headline.
54: Nice! Glad to see this message getting out there.
53: I was gonna ask you: In every liberal movie or novel, some noble cop/spy/secret policeman has to say "I took an oath to defend the Constitution[...]" at some point, to prove he is sympathetic. When you guys are goofing around in the squad room or whatever, do you ever yell at each other "hey, quit giggling over your iPhones, dammit: I took an oath to defend the Constitution..."? Cause that would be pretty funny.
I had to take an oath to defend the Constitution before they would let me teach freshman comp, as did everyone else who was around the place, but to my retrospective surprise we never turned it into a cop movie.
I made a tiny difference in the world!
Yay! Thanks for sharing, glad to hear.
57: As it so happens, lately there's totally been some of those type of jokes between me and a couple other lefty cops on the downtown bike squad. I'm pretty tight with them, they came on in the same class and I was an FTO to one of them. So, last week me and those other two guys were standing around talking with one of our nutty ultra righty co workers and he starts complaining to me about how he's outnumbered with his two squad mates being liberals. I laugh and gleefully take to the opportunity to use the teo inspired line of how they might be liberal but I'm a godamn socialist. Then, in the context of asking us all how we feel about gun control he makes a point of saying he took an oath to the constitution and he would sacrifice the lives of him and his family if "they" came for his guns. (an extra funny statement coming from a single guy with a kid and two divorces under his belt) Anyways, I say something along the lines of "whoa there Officer Koresh, your people might have a different take on going with you into the flames". His squad mates laugh, his mind is not changed at all, but at least we get a new running joke out of it.
Of course the token liberal officers are on the downtown bike squad.
If "they" come for his guns? He's a police officer. Doesn't that make him one of "them"? As in, if the government decides it needs to take people's guns away, won't it do so using the police?
You have much to learn about America, young ajay.
Of course. He's thinking of the terrifying UN forces, right?
To expand a bit on that, there's a huge difference in the way right-wing nuts in the US perceive local law enforcement (good!) versus national-level authority (bad!).
65 crossed with 64. The UN is of course a fixation of these types, but it's not just that. The authority of the US federal government is also not really trusted, although they do fetishize the US Constitution without having much understanding of what it actually says.
A lot of this worldview is just delusion and paranoia, but one key factor that is very real is that local law enforcement agencies in the US actually do not have any formal hierarchical relationship to national-level agencies like the FBI or the US Marshals. Instead both derive their authority from separate delegations by the states, which are legally the fundamental units of government. (The lawyers can correct me if this is wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's right at least in broad outlines.) Therefore, in a hypothetical scenario where the federal government decides to come and seize everyone's guns in preparation for forcibly relocating them to internment camps or whatever, it's not local law enforcement that would be tasked with enforcing the policy but federal law enforcement agencies and/or the military. Less hypothetically, this sort of conflict between local and federal authorities did actually happen during desegregation; those black kids who famously had to be escorted to school in Little Rock weren't escorted by the Little Rock Police Department.
Ah, good point.
And, of course, the obligatory quote:
those black kids who famously had to be escorted to school in Little Rock weren't escorted by the Little Rock Police Department.
"It is not the job of the 82nd Airborne Division to escort kids to kindergarten" -- Condoleezza Rice.
To be fair, you'd presumably want a land-based unit for that sort of mission.
Like the 101st Airborne. But they may only do high schools.
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
The local/federal divide is one of the cornerstones of wacko right wing militia beliefs, that the only actual authority is the locally elected sheriff. The Oregon sheriff investigating the college shooting is part of that movement and sent a letter to Biden threatening to run off any federal enforcement officials he disagreed with.
A related thought, stemming from an article about Trump and Carson...
So, we shouldn't restrict gun purchases in any way.
- No.
And one reason is that people have the right to defend themselves and their families against a tyrannical government. And they need to be armed to do that.
- Yes.
Even if that government is acting under superficial cover of law. You can have oppressive laws, after all.
- Yes.
You're also planning to forcibly deport 10 million illegal immigrants once you get into office. Including family members who have been born in this country.
- Yes.
Any of them armed?
Was the letter addressed to Biden because of some clause in the Constitution or because he's the highest ranking white male in America?
I think maybe because he had recently given a speech about Newtown? Sheriff is also a Newtown Reuther (although now that he's in the spotlight he scrubbed his FB post and denies that's what he meant)
60: Well that's good.
Yeah, for the good ol' boys in the Posse Comitatus the federal government, the UN and the government of every other country on Earth are just a smokescreen for the plotting of international Communist conspirators.
America is a republic, not a democracy!
29/31. "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence, clean staw for nothing". It has been estimated that at the beginning of the 18th century, in some parts of London one building in every four housed a gin shop. This is a good account of the gin craze, if you're interested.
That looks more interesting than Lord Jim. Of course, it costs $6 more, so it should be.
73 is funny. I'm picturing a future Wikipedia page: "Highest ranking white male in America", which gives the list through time.
Just copy the president list but replace Obama with Biden, Lincoln with Davis, and Reagan after 1987 with Robert Bork.
or because he's the highest ranking white male in America?
We always used to know who this was, but in the future, it could very complicated.
Going back before 1789 would be interesting.
Leif Erikson:
In office: 999 through approximately 1020
Preceded by: None (office created)
Succeeded by: None (office vacant for four centuries)
While we're at it, I saw this the other day:
Can we please get the Speaker of the House out of the goddamn line of Presidential succession? The idea that someone could take out Obama/Biden and that would result in who, Jason Chaffetz becoming President is simply insane. And it's not as if a fucker like that would have the least compunction about using every ounce of power it gave him.
Today is apparently Leif Erikson Day. Nobody knows the day, of course, but as long as they put it before Columbus Day, I guess it's fine.
K-Drum (I think) noted that the Speaker of the House doesn't actually have to be a member of the House. It could be anyone. Newt Gingrich has said he'd be happy to serve.
Newt said the Republicans would have to beg him. That seems a bit much.
It might not be Chaffetz. Apparently, nobody checks to see if a Republican House leader has a mistress until right before he become Speaker.
84: Who would you prefer? Entirely down the Cabinet line? Hopefully not the protem, who I think is always the most senior majority Senator.
It should always be the same party as the president so remove Congressional offices from succession. Don't want to give nutjobs motivation to take regime change into their own hands.
Why have it fixed in law? Each President can decide his own chain of succession when he's inaugurated, and update it at will. That's the way it works in the UK - there's no fixed line of succession for the prime minister, but he writes a list of (I think) three "designated deputies" in order, for the purposes of authorising the delivery of buckets of sunshine.
I'm sure there are plenty of LEOs in the federal government who will mouth the same lines about poorly-specified jackboots taking their guns. Maybe even in ATF. Look at the contingent in ICE convinced there's some deeper law that means the president can't order them not to deport people.
67 is basically right on the law, the current rule is that Congress can't "commandeer" the local PD or state officials. What exactly "commandeer" means is pretty mysterious and derives not from any constitutional text but from musty emanations of Antonin Scalia's brain, since Congress can clearly pass laws with which State officials must comply.
"I sailed all the way to Vinland and all I got was a second-tier saga and this loust skraeling t-shirt."
88: Probably what makes the most sense would simply be for the President to designate from among a limited number of choices. That is, VP, House Member, Senator, SecState, etc. When each President is sworn in, she, identifies either the Speaker or the Minority Leader, then the Senate Majority or Minority Leader, then down the line through the Cabinet.
You could write it into the Amendment (since that's what it would take) that it's the senior member of the President's party in each body, but given 86 and other considerations*, I think I'd prefer categories to choose from, not specific roles.
*Frex, I wouldn't want to pull a brilliant legislator like Peluosi (esp. at her age) out of the House; similarly, I don't think Reid would be a good President, and he's also super-old (I just checked, both 75; I'm calling that too old. It's a really fucking hard job, and they'd be taking it on in a crisis).
The federal/local divide became very concrete to me during the Jade Helm nonsense. People actually wanted the state military to protect against the federal military.
I wrote a Master's paper on Galbraith's The Scotch, a memoir of his growing up in SW Ontario in the first years of the 20th century. I think he composed it while serving as Kennedy's Ambassador to India.
It was a very homogeneous society, the farmers being entirely highlanders settled there en mass in the 19th century. Drinking and alcohol-related issues, such as almost all violence, domestic and otherwise were a very big part of that culture on the eve of prohibition. The "Indian List" was a shameful resort in that society but one of the few ways available as they saw it to assist wives in distress. "Honorary Aborigine" was the heavily ironic term in common use.
Escaping that world is a theme of the book, through education as in his case—he described his alma mater, Guelph's predecessor, as "at the time undoubtedly the worst university in North America"—or through enlistment in WWI. Galbraith remembered that when this happened and the boy was promptly killed the saying would be that he'd been "tired of doing chores."
On the Senate side, there is an awful tradition of electing the longest-serving member of the majority party as the President pro tempore, third in line to be President of the United States and ahead of the Speaker of the House. This is almost always someone way too old to handle the job, and often too old even to show up for work, like Strom Thurmond when he was 99, and Robert Byrd over 90 and on his deathbed for months. Now it's Orrin Hatch, who is past 80.
Can we please get the Speaker of the House out of the goddamn line of Presidential succession?
Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the rest were great but flawed men, and one of their limitations was that they simply could not imagine Congress being taken over by people like the present bunch of cretins. If it had even occurred to them I suspect they would have quietly decamped to France under assumed names. The amendment you need is that when the President or VP becomes dead or otherwise incapacitated there should be a by-election to that office within 10 weeks for someone to serve the rest of the term.
Then the Duke of Denver then the cabinet secretaries in the order of creation.
90: I assume it was basically Cold War freakout: "We need to have the top 50 slots identified in case the Russkies nuke DC." AFAIK, before 1950 (or whenever), there was no succession other than VP and I guess Speaker. It didn't seem a relevant point, because circumstances under which all three were dead at once were roughly inconceivable.
99.last is correct. I don't know if 10 weeks is feasible*, but it's ridiculous to think that you could have 23 months of someone who's never run in a national (or even statewide) election acting as President.
*it might be in the abstract, but since our system isn't set up for any sort of irregular elections, I doubt you could make it happen, especially since it would be, more or less by definition, a crisis situation
Using executive-branch only makes sense, to preserve the election results, but I don't think anything should be based on an assessment that legislative branch leadership potential has somehow transformed irrevocably in quality compared to executive. It just so happens that the worst people are dominant in one branch and not the other at the moment. Ten years ago, the succession went Cheney, Hastert, Stevens; line-of-succession laws can't systematically ameliorate horrible Americans electing horrible people.
I was trying to figure out yesterday, what happens if someone next in the line of succession is under 35? Since the Constitution says nobody under the age limit is "eligible to that Office", my best guess is they'd be skipped, but I'm not sure. Unlikely of course in practice, just theoretical.
America is a republic, not a democracy!
I'm still trying to figure out what they mean by that, and why the distinction is so important to them. I suspect their conception of a Republic is different from mine.
They mean you can't vote away their right to have guns.
I think 91 has it right on the "they're coming for my guns" thing. I doubt the people who are really into this kind of thing have much more specific or thought out version than "bad guys!", or "authority figures", where "authority" means "over me" and not generally. The only difference I can see between people who say things like that, people who obsess over 'home invasions', people who talk about the upcoming race war, and people who are really super prepared for when the zombies show up (but ironically ha ha! check out this absurdly expensive gun I ironically have!) is the particulars of the "now I get to shoot a lot of people but I'm a hero!" fantasy involved.
I feel like there's nothing unhealthy about that kind of fantasy (generally, that is, with less emphasis on the part where you're killing people, at least), but when people start making actual concrete preparations for it they're clearly attached to it in a really problematic way. (As in, the difference between someone who kinda fantasizes about maybe sleeping with a coworker and someone who does that and also bought a separate bed for that sex, you know, just in case.)
105: I think it used to be a shibboleth for elitists, but now I think it's morphed into cover for vote suppression.
People you work with have beds in their offices in case the mood strikes them and a colleague?
I don't even have enough room for a bed. But the view makes it seem more spacious.
Now this is interesting: under the 1947 Succession Act, even if succession falls to a cabinet secretary, the House can afterwards elect a new speaker who can bump them.
America is a republic, not a democracy!
I'm still trying to figure out what they mean by that, and why the distinction is so important to them
It means it has high levels of Corruption, and they're allowed Conscription but not Recycling. Oh, and the Senate will never block a war, not even if it's an act of aggression.
Well you can't sleep in the same bed you have sex in. It's unsanitary.
104: There's no rule saying that a dog can't be Secretary of Commerce!
That's why bedrooms have a lever that you pull to flip the bed so the sex side is up or down, depending.
I love looking out the window of my office while it is raining. It's just the best gray-washed sky. The stupid sun was out yesterday, but today is better.
116: Ditto. It is truly beautiful out right now. My view looks south towards Mount Washington and the buildings on the crest are barely darker silhouettes against a uniformly gray sky.
53: can't we all just get along? gin and juice is great but bourbon is also great. greyhound? a delicious intoxicating beverage. rum and coke? also delicious and intoxicating. fuck scotch, though. I don't want my booze to be tea strained from the balls of people mummified in peat. separately, I don't want my booze in any fashion. y'all can have all the alcohol.
115: I guess, if you call a revolving floor/ceiling a "lever".
118: They don't actually put peat in the booze. They roast the malt using the peat as a fuel source.
it's ridiculous to think that you could have 23 months of someone who's never run in a national (or even statewide) election acting as President.
I don't know. Ford wasn't a great president, but aside from pardoning Nixon, not all that bad.
I don't want my booze to be tea strained from the balls of people mummified in peat.
Burning the peat removes the ball-stain.
121: The highest ranking Nebraska-born person.
I know you try to hold that over Iowa, but they've still got James T. Kirk.
118: With alameida, of course, and would legalize pot and bring back prohibition for alcohol. For the transition, Wiki says peyote helps in treating alcoholism.
29: I have been waiting. From Wiki
In the early 19th century, Americans had inherited a hearty drinking tradition. Many types of alcohol were consumed. One reason for this heavy drinking was attributed to an overabundance of corn on the western frontier, which encouraged the widespread production of cheap whiskey. It was at this time that alcohol became an important part of the American diet. In the 1820s, Americans drank seven gallons of alcohol per person annually.
It is actually part of my understanding of American history that the widespread sales of distilled spirits with the surplus of grain and inadequate transport was nearly determining for social and political events in the first half of the 19th. The urban nation was fucking drunk, and everything from Poe to Jackson's duels to Native American oppression to Texan independence and possibly the Dixie intransigence was influenced by the level of constant intoxication.
Only thing worse than a racist is a drunk racist.
127.2 is a strong point. Johnny Appleseed wasn't helping people make pie. Hard cider is as American as corn whiskey.
55
Well, the basic problem was that he multiplied all the figures of what people had reported drinking by 1.97 to make them match up with alcohol sales figures. And, depending on how he was actually putting that data to use, that may have been a reasonable thing to do because it was
I admit I only skimmed the article in 50, but I think you're still giving him too much credit. As I understood it, he got his figures by multiplying everything by 1.97, including the roughly 30 percent of people who reported never drinking. 1.97 times zero is still zero, so one end of the chart was nearly doubled when the other end wasn't touched.
The data he had might have been an interesting way to talk about the problems with surveys - we know that X amount of alcohol is produced in the country every year, according to the industry figures, but people report drinking only half that much. What's wrong with this survey that it missed all the heavy drinkers? Or if people lie about their drinking in surveys, what else do they lie about? It does not, however, seem like an interesting way to figure out the liver condition of the top decile of drinkers.
105: I think it's supposed to be "the federal government is an illegitimate usurpation of authority, states are supposed to be able to make decisions about voting rights and seperate but equal accommodations for themselves."
It does not, however, seem like an interesting way to figure out the liver condition of the top decile of drinkers.
Whats not clear to me is that he ever claimed that's what the data did. I think it was Wonkblog that made that leap.
105: I think it's supposed to be "the federal government is an illegitimate usurpation of authority, states are supposed to be able to make decisions about voting rights and seperate but equal accommodations for themselves."
Yeah, that's what it means, clearly. But what do republics and democracies have to do with it?
My inkling is that calling it a republic basically provides license to manipulate the rules of democratic institutions, because its NOT A DEMOCRACY after all. But I don't have enough understanding of how the meme originated and spread to understand if that is the full picture, or if there is some deeper wingnut theory behind it.
Today proves that we need to ban post-secondary schools.
Maybe Baker v. Carr is going to be under attack?
Also, if historical trauma and social dislocation were triggers for alcoholism, the Jews would be in deep shit.
The shittiness of Manischewitz saved them.
God chose the people, not the cultivar.
But I don't have enough understanding of how the meme originated and spread to understand if that is the full picture, or if there is some deeper wingnut theory behind it.
As I said above, it definitely started as a WF Buckley-type thing to say, expressing distaste for boobocracy etc. Basically standing up to the egalitarianism of the New Deal coalition by claiming elitism as a core American value.
Then it was just hanging around on the right side to be picked up in the furtherance of whatever cause; it's now specifically applicable to vote suppression, but it's useful for all sorts of things.
136 IIRC it got a lot of workout by right wing apologists during the Bush v. Gore decision.
Assuming a standard fear of death (e.g. unwilling to drive on the Schuykill Expressway), is the medical area near Penn a reasonable commute from more residential areas. It looks like you would be within a reasonable walk of both trolley routes and the bigger trains, but I can't tell.
Also, that is one hell of a song.
It really is.
Since I wrote the post I've been thinking about exactly why it makes a difference that he was one of the people photographed raising the flag at Iwo Jima. I don't know how much of a difference it made to Ira Hayes*, but it makes a huge difference to the song.
Partially it's just the enormous contrast between the fame of the image and literally dying in a ditch. Part of it is the implicit claim of, "we are not just on the margins."
But it's also just a tribute to the power of an iconic image. For whatever reason, it does matter, listening to the song, to know that the person we're hearing about is pictured in what the AP called, "quite possibly the most reproduced photograph" of all time.**
* from wikipedia: "Referring to his alcoholism, he once said: 'I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me.'"
** One other interesting, oddly symbolic, thing I just realized looking it up on wikipedia, Ira Hayes is the person in the photograph who is reaching for the flag pole but not actually touching it.
I didn't know the Hayes story, but always assumed the hands not touching the pole, always attracting attention, had just let go of it as it straightened.
Is the image from a film sequence or a still only?
always assumed the hands not touching the pole, always attracting attention, had just let go of it as it straightened.
That's my assumption as well.
Anyway, once in a while one encounters an email that makes one wonder if he should move to Philadelphia.
I think the photographer took several shots? I'm pretty sure I've seen slightly different versions that look as if they were seconds or partial seconds apart.
Was it about how Chikara, the professional wrestling organization, is based there?
The famous photograph is a still photograph. Standing slightly behind the photographer was a cinematographer, who also captured it on film. From the (ridiculously detailed) Wiki writeup, it seems unlikely that any other still photos were taken.
You know, of course, that it was actually the second flag raised, etc. Not a PR reënactment, though: apparently Forrestal wanted the first flag for a souvenir, and the Marines who raised the first one weren't willing to part with it, so they took down the first and raised a second.
PS - It's hilarious to me that the caption to a photo of the original flag in its museum case feels obligated to explain why there are only 48 stars.
Holy Moses, there's a whole controversy about who's really in the photo. Don't worry, Ira's not in doubt. In fact, Ira had his comrade leave his name out at first because he didn't want to sell war bonds.
94: That is, VP, House Member, Senator, SecState, etc.
WHAT ET CETERA? I'M IN CONTROL HERE!
42: You guys can't be alcoholics! What would your mothers say?!
In the UK, strictly speaking, the Prime Minister has no more legal power than any other minister to advise her Majesty -- the PM just happens to be the one who generally shows up to say what Cabinet has decided. So in principle I assume that the the Secretary of State for the Environment could exercise all the powers of the Ministry if they were the only one left (including the power to advise HMQ to make more Ministers). So the question of succession isn't as critical, because it would be very hard to wipe out all of Cabinet all at once - it's only the weird cases where the PM has to make decisions themselves quickly (like whether or not to blow up the world) that you'd need a designated successor.
There problems always make be think of Kotsko's puzzle about how you make more bishops if all the bishops are wiped out, although they are of course much less serious.
So the question of succession isn't as critical, because it would be very hard to wipe out all of Cabinet all at once
Though soooo tempting to try...
Kotsko's puzzle about how you make more bishops if all the bishops are wiped out...
Well you see Timmy, when a priest and a nun love each other very much. And get drunk on sacramental wine...
In mediaeval England, "making a bishop" was slang for fucking with the woman on top.