Day: May 30, 2019

Say Good-Bye To The Last Of His Kind

Closing Thought–30May19

We all know about the WW2 Navajo “code talkers” and little is said about other Native Americans that were part of the “code talker” tradition….

We lost the last Mohawk code talker from World War Two…..

Louis Levi Oakes, the last Mohawk code talker — using the language to encode messages for Allied forces during the Second World War — died Tuesday at age 94. 

The veteran was one of 17 Mohawks from Akwesasne, which straddles the Quebec, Ontario and New York state borders, who received code-talker training while stationed in Louisiana.

Kanien’kéha, the Mohawk language, was one of 33 Indigenous languages used during the war to send encoded messages between Allied forces so enemies could not understand what was being said

At 18, Oakes enlisted in the U.S. army and served for six years as a technician fourth grade with Company B of the 442nd Signal Battalion. He served as code talker in the South Pacific, New Guinea and the Philippines.

The Code Talkers Recognition Act was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2008, requiring the secretary of the Treasury to strike Congressional Medals in recognition of the dedication and valour of Indigenous code talkers to the U.S. Armed Services during World War I and World War II.

His contributions to Allied forces efforts were also recognized by the House of Commons and Assembly of First Nations in December. 

“I only knew Levi for a very short period of time, but he meant a tremendous amount to me,” said Marc Miller, parliamentary secretary to Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations. “I can only imagine what he meant to his family and his people who had the privilege of knowing him for far longer.

 “Due to the secrecy of his mission in WW II, the extent of his contributions as a Mohawk code talker have only recently been known and honoured. My hope is that we continue to honour his memory and contributions in death much longer than we did in life.”

Oakes’s funeral takes place on Saturday in Akwesasne.

(CBC News)

We say good-bye to a hero and wish him well in the next life….and THANK YOU.

Only Certain Dems Are Welcome

I see for all their cheer leading about the Dems candidates I see they have reverted back to doing what they always do……only certain Dems are welcome on their process.

Have you heard that the high number of candidates can only be good for the party? Well do not believe it…it is the typical bullsh*t they always do and try to limit the candidates to those that meet a centrist criteria……

The process begins with the second deabte…only certain people can be included…..

The Democratic National Committee is upping the ante for its second round of presidential primary debates, doubling the polling and grassroots fundraising requirements from its initial summer debates. The parameters, announced Wednesday, are likely to help cull a crop of 24 candidates and, in the process, intensify scrutiny on Democratic Chairman Tom Perez and his pledge to give all candidates a chance to be heard. The DNC’s outline for its Sept. 12 debate decrees that candidates can participate only by reaching 2% in four approved polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28 while also collecting contributions from a minimum of 130,000 unique donors before Aug. 28. That donor list must include a minimum of 400 individuals in at least 20 states, reports the AP.

The top of the field likely would not be threatened by upping the threshold. That includes Joe Biden; Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren; Beto O’Rourke; and Pete Buttigieg. However, the other candidates, including more senators and several governors, remain jumbled at or near the lower thresholds set for the first round of debates, which are June 26-27 in Miami and July 30-31 in Detroit. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang and author Marianne Williamson have attracted significant small-donor fundraising but have yet to hit 2% in most polls. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has struggled with fundraising and might have trouble clearing 2% consistently in polls. Jay Inslee just hit the 65,000-donor mark but would have to increase his pace to reach 130,000 by the Aug. 28 deadline, and he’s also rarely checked in at higher than 1% in polls.

The DNC is at it yet again….rigging the process in favor of certain candidates.

This process will give the voter candidates that mirror the issues of Hillary and that was a loser for Dems and 2020 will be no different.

Without the so-called “fringe” candidates then the party would have NO usable policies and will have nothing to offer but a replay of 2016 when Hillary was their candidate…… she was short on policies other than her right to rule…..

The DNC is making true progressives the enemy….the operative word is “Progressives”……not those mamby pamby liberals that like to call themselves progressives…..the DNC is choosing those over true progressives.

Why would they do this?

The young voter are leaning more Left than their older counterparts…and the DNC is running scared…..

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Philadelphia in 1936. “To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”

In the 20th century, many sociologists and historians flirted with the idea that generational changes could explain U.S. politics. The historians Arthur Schlesinger Sr. and Jr. wrote about “cycles of American history,” arguing that, as the generations turn, American politics rotates inexorably between liberal and conservative consensus. More recently, a new generational scheme has come into vogue. William Strauss and Neil Howe’s theory of the “fourth turning” predicts a crisis and a major political realignment every 80 to 90 years. (Strauss and Howe were briefly in the spotlight in 2016 after Steve Bannon praised their work.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/coming-generation-war/588670/

Keep an eye on the DNC…they are showing the voter just how they will lose the 2020 election.

Enjoy the ride!

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

 

The Civil War Fades

I live in the South and the last home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis is right down the road from me…..I was talking with a guy that works at the home which is now a museum and he complained that the tourist were not flocking to the site as they once did….

And then I read a news report on the Civil War…..

Museums and historical sites are making changes to appeal to a broader audience in the face of declining interest in the Civil War. Data from the National Park Service shows that its five major Civil War battlefield parks drew 3.1 million visitors in 2018, down from about 10.2 million in 1970. Gettysburg, the best-known battle site, had about 950,000 visitors last year; that was 14% of its draw in 1970 and the fewest visitors since 1959, the Wall Street Journal reports. In response, museums and sites are trying to present a fuller picture of history. Often, they focused on “who shot who where,” said one history teacher, “with no explanation of why people were there shooting each other.” The American Civil War Museum that just opened in Richmond includes information on slavery and the war’s effect on civilians. In response to the narrative that slavery wasn’t a core issue in the war, its director says the museum is taking the war’s history “back from the crazies.”

The number of Civil War re-enactors also appears to be dropping. Louis Varnell competed with several military-memorabilia shops when he opened his near Chickamauga Battlefield in Georgia in the 2000s; now, only his remains. People who were interested in reenacting Civil War battles in costume are now too old or are more interested in reenacting as Vietnam War troops or cowboys, he said. “Cowboy re-enacting is where bitter, jaded Civil War re-enactors go,” Varnell told the Journal. A Civil War reenactor in Georgia said, “The younger generations are not taught to respect history, and they lose interest in it.

This American war seem to be more popular in Europe than it is here at home where t was fought.

The younger generations find nothing romantic about this war…they see it as a time when the US was divided and the only way it could solve its division was with a war…..the perfect American answer.

News Line: North Korea

The news around North Korea these days is about the missiles it recently fired off…..this gave South Korea and Japan a bit of a start….after some months of test free days……and then the US confiscated a tanker bound for North Korea….but the best part is the war of words coming from Bolton and then being slapped down by Trump…..

Kim is not mincing his words….he thinks one of Trump’s adviser is a “deformed” individual…..my bad…”defective”……..

North Korea on Monday called U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton a “war monger” and “defective human product” after he called the North’s recent tests of short-range missiles a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The statement by an unnamed North Korean foreign ministry spokesman came as President Trump continued his visit to Japan for meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in which the nuclear standoff with North Korea was expected to be high on the agenda.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-john-bolton-war-monger-defective-human-product-missile-tests/

But through everything our dear beloved leader thinks that Kim is a man of his word and trusts him without waver…..and yet he is finding himself all alone on this situation……not Japan or South Korea views it as Trump sees it……..

President Donald Trump is isolating himself from allies and even his own advisers on North Korea, eager to insist that his denuclearization efforts will be successful going into his 2020 reelection bid.

The widening gap was apparent Monday morning when Trump disagreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint news conference when asked about recent North Korean missile tests.

Abe had called the tests of several short-range ballistic missiles “quite a regrettable act” that violated a United Nations Security Council resolution, echoing language that Trump’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, had used on Saturday.

But the president on Monday, at the end of his short trip to Japan to meet the new emperor, insisted that he was not “personally” bothered by the tests and was “very happy with the way it’s going” in his efforts to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Notably, Trump said he did not think the tests violated the U.N. resolution.

“My people think it could have been a violation,” Trump said. “I view it differently.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/27/donald-trump-north-korea-1345034

I think Trump is putting too much stock in his celebrity to ink a deal……but we will see.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-denies-north-korea-launched-ballistic-missiles-contradicting-japan/2019/05/27/3b02431a-7e38-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html

But with all the rhetoric let us be sure of one thing…..

John Bolton accused North Korea’s recent tests of short-range missiles of being a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, but on Monday President Trump said he views the tests differently. Reporters are asking the State Department to reconcile this into a single position.

State spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said that “the entire North Korean WMD program is in conflict with the UN Security Council resolutions,” saying that the US was focused on ending the WMD program.

The short range missile tests don’t appear to have had anything to do with WMDs, as Trump pointed out. Bolton argued that they were ballistic missiles, while the State Department said they have yet to announce if they think they were ballistic missiles or not.

Though President Trump has made clear that he doesn’t consider the tests a big deal at all, an doesn’t want to do anything about them, other US officials seem keen to keep the topic up for discussion, and not endorse the president’s position specifically.

(antiwar.com)

Further Reading:

Trump Contradicts Bolton on North Korea’s Missile Tests, Says He’s Confident in Kim

Blind trust is NO foreign policy…..Bring back a Reagan mantra….”Trust But Verify”.

Has the luster faded?

A new statement from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry was deeply critical of the US government, accusing them of acting in bad faith during the peace process, while continuing to conduct drills as part of an “evil ambition” to conquer North Korea by force.

The statement was attributed to the Policy Research Director of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies, who said the US has shown “ulterior intention” in the lead up to and following the failed Hanoi summit.

They further singled out John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for having “insulted the dignity” of North Korea’s leadership, and used “abusive language” in comments about the diplomatic process.

It concluded with a warning that US hostile acts would only add to tensions on the already unstable Korean Peninsula, and adding that the “use of strength is not at all a monopoly of the United States.”

(antiwar.com)