dagblog - Comments for "The Pursuit of Happiness....."

Well I think if you pay

cmaukonen — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 01:51:49 +0000

Well I think if you pay attention closely though you will find that the - ahum - new management is trying to put the country back to the way it was economically with the cold war.

It never dawned on me the

Beetlejuice — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:53:43 +0000

In reply to The Pursuit of Happiness.....

It never dawned on me the fall of the Berlin Wall was also the fall of bipartisanship, but I can see it now and note the pieces do fall into place and is the pattern of what we're experiencing today. I remember the Cuban missile crisis and the start of the Vietnam war when I was in grade school (4th grade) and by the time I graduated high school (1981), the war in Vietnam was still running hot, the draft in full force and the economy sucked. And I remember the politics of the day were vicious at times ... I was in Alabama when school busing became an issue ... but in the end, everyone accepted what was served on their plates. So once the governor ... the hatred/fear of communism ... to our political system was eliminated, each political Party was freed and began to work in earnest on their own unique political agenda, not realizing the glue that once held everything together would no longer work. And it also freed the radicals of both Party's to run amok and stir up trouble in the name of causes near and dear to selected niches within teach Party that felt the past injustices needed to be struck down with a vengeance. Seems we lost more than what we gained with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

I knew these people, these

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 07:51:38 +0000

In reply to Well, hopefully I'll smile

I knew these people, these two people...

Well, hopefully I'll smile

ocean-kat — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 03:26:50 +0000

In reply to Holy smokes, you've been

Well, hopefully I'll smile more about the next few years now that I have a relatively comfortable life here. I don't think I'll ever smile about last summer with no electricity sitting in 100 degree heat, no fan, next to a propane lantern for reading with moths and flies flying around it and landing on my sweat drenched body. For just one example.

I'm 12 miles from the nearest small town, Arivaca. But its 7 miles of rough dirt road and takes about 30 minutes to get there. The small store is too expensive for anything but basic necessities so I travel 60 miles, 120 round trip, to a larger town once a month or so to stock up.

I'm mostly alone (with my dog) but Ruby is a pretty popular ghost town so there are frequent visitors. We don't converse much, I just give them some info about the town and its history and let them walk around. The buildings are all about 100 years old and compared to most ghost towns in good condition. Though it is falling apart most of the walls are still there and most buildings have roofs so history buffs can actually see how people lived back then.

I could only get to town once a week and the store has no newspapers so I just let go of the news. In a way that was good though I missed it. I was a news junkie and being a pretty far left liberal the news just got me depressed or angry.

If you or others I know are ever in southern Arizona you can contact me and I'll put you up for while in one of the buildings in somewhat rustic comfort to check out the place.

Holy smokes, you've been

artappraiser — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:49:40 +0000

In reply to Thanks, I wondered if anyone

Holy smokes, you've been living a Wim Wenders movie! The European vision of the American West! Hey, as tough as it all might have been, bet you are gonna smile remembering this past 1 1/2 years when you're in your 90's.

How far did you have to go to get provisions and a newspaper? Are you alone most of the time?

Thanks, I wondered if anyone

ocean-kat — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:19:54 +0000

In reply to Ocean-kat, it's good to see

Thanks, I wondered if anyone would remember me.

In brief: A year and a half ago I moved to Arizona to work as the caretaker of the ghost town Ruby. No electricity, no drinking water, no phone, and worst of all, no internet. I had to repair a house to live in, figure out how to take care of my basic necessities, save up enough cash from this low paying job to purchase a solar system and, finally, get satellite internet.

Its been a long hard 18 months with almost no news being the worst part of it. I've been trying to catch up these last 4 weeks on some of what I've missed. And lurking here to see who is still around and what you all are talking about. I've really missed the lively discussion of the old TPM crowd that moved to Dag. It feels great to be back.

Dude.

Qnonymous — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:46:26 +0000

In reply to "The people" are never any

Dude.

Ocean-kat, it's good to see

artappraiser — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:47:23 +0000

In reply to "The people" are never any

Ocean-kat, it's good to see you commenting here; that is all I got to say.

Yes, in the end McCarthy's

ocean-kat — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:07:39 +0000

In reply to Except I do not remember

Yes, in the end McCarthy's methods and personality were unappealing and were rejected. But let's not forget that HUAC was just the tip of the iceburg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Loyalty-security_reviews

In the federal government, President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds...for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States."^[11] Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.^[12]

When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things."^[13] The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four-week hearing. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.

Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958 it was estimated that roughly one out of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review.^[14] Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, it could be very difficult to find other employment. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."^[15]

"The people" are never any

ocean-kat — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:58:36 +0000

In reply to In the beginning of the 20TH

"The people" are never any one thing. Some were horrified, some were cowed, some were supportive, some were asleep. Same as always.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

"In January 1954, a Gallup poll found that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion of the senator."

"McCarthyism was supported by a variety of groups, including the American Legion and various other anti-communist organizations. One core element of support was a variety of militantly anti-communist women's groups such as the American Public Relations Forum and the Minute Women of the U.S.A.. These organized tens of thousands of housewives into study groups, letter-writing networks, and patriotic clubs that coordinated efforts to identify and eradicate what they saw as subversion.^[36]"

Not even "The Historians" agree on what caused the "end" of the McCarthy era. While changing public opinion had some effect I, and others, would argue that several Supreme court decisions had the greater effect.

"Much of the undoing of McCarthyism came at the hands of the Supreme Court. As Richard Rovere wrote in his biography of Joseph McCarthy, "[T]he United States Supreme Court took judicial notice of the rents McCarthy was making in the fabric of liberty and thereupon wrote a series of decisions that have made the fabric stronger than before.""