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TAHAWK

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Posts posted by TAHAWK

  1. 2 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

    And so what?  Two ideas were brought before the congress for debate, one the status quo, the other change.  The ideas were debated openly and the better idea prevailed.  That's how the system works.  

    As for unanimity, remember, that's how we got the unpatriotic Patriot Act, the freedom-denying USA Freedom Act, the star-chamber FISA system, etc.  

    "So," contrary to some opinions, change has been happening.  Sometimes  the better idea prevails.

    The three acts you mention were not passed unanimously in either house of Congress.

    The 1977 FISA, as amended, passed both houses on roll call votes: 95-1 in the Senate; 266-176 in the House

    The 2001 Patriot Act, in the aftermath of 9/11,  passed both houses on roll call votes: 98-1 in the Senate; 357-66 in the House

    The USA Freedom Act of 2015 passed both houses on roll call votes: 67-32 in the Senate;  388-88 in the House.  The 2020 renewal of that Act passed  easily, 80-16 and 278-136

    Given my age, I would have mentioned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that passed the House 416-0 and the Senate 98-2.  One of the two Senate "nos," Wayne Morse of Oregon,  lost his  seat in the next primary.  While I disagreed with almost every position that he took,  although not on the War, he was an actual honest politician, a man of principle.

     

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  2. Everett M. Dirkson , the Republican Minority Leader and manager of the bill in the Senate, rose to say the last word in support of ending the Democrat filibuster that had held up the  the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

     ""Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.'  The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here...

    Pending before us is another moral issue. Basically it deals with equality of opportunity in exercising the franchise, in securing an education, in making a livelihood, in enjoying the mantle of protection of the law. It has been a long, hard furrow and each generation must plow its share...

    It is to take us further down that road that a bill is pending before us. We have a duty to get that job done."

     

     

  3. "Stone Mountain was "the sacred site to members of the second and third national klans."[27]:262

    The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan – the second Klan — was inspired by D. W. Griffith's 1915 Klan-glorifying film, The Birth of a Nation.[28] It was followed in August by the highly publicized lynching of Leo Frank, who had been wrongly convicted of murder, in nearby Marietta, Georgia. On November 25 of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, a small group, including fifteen robed and hooded "charter members" of the new organization, met at the summit of Stone Mountain to create a new iteration of the Klan. They were led by William J. Simmons, and included two elderly members of the original Klan. As part of their ceremony, they set up on the summit an altar covered with a flag, opened a Bible, and burned a 16-foot cross.[7]:20[29]

    Stone Mountain was the location of an annual Labor Day cross-burning ceremony for the next 50 years,[30] only ending when the state condemned the property[clarification needed].

    Fundraising for the monument resumed in 1923. In October of that year, Venable granted the Klan easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired.[31] The influence of the UDC continued, in support of Mrs. Plane's vision of a carving explicitly for the purpose of creating a Confederate memorial. She suggested in a letter to the first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum:

    I feel it is due to the Klan[,] which saved us from Negro dominations [sic] and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?[7]:21[22]

    The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. Venable and Borglum, who were both closely associated with the Klan, arranged to pack the SMCMA with Klan members.[32] The SMCMA, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued fundraising efforts. Of the $250,000 raised, part came from the federal government, which in 1925 issued special fifty-cent coins with the soldiers Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on them.[33] The image on the verso of the coin was based on The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson,[34] executed in 1869 by Everett B. D. Fabrino Julio (American, b. St. Helena 1843 – 1879, emigrated to US 1860), itself an icon of Lost Cause mythology; it is now in the American Civil War Museum (until 2012 the Museum of the Confederacy).[35] When the state completed the purchase in 1960, it condemned the property to void Venable's agreement to allow the Klan perpetual right to hold meetings on the premises.[32]"

     

    "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia."

  4. Over the years, people have pulled down statues of Saddam, Stalin,  Hitler, and Pol Pot.  In what sense did this diminish "history" or "art"?   But, then, I never saw a life-like picture of a soup can as "art," so I am likely as disqualified from opining about statuary as I am about music..

    On the other paw,  mobs of  "cancel culture" morons attack statues of Lincoln, Grant, and Frederick Douglass - and burn down minority-owned business chanting "No justice; no peace" and "Black Lives matter."  Drive-by social change by Molotov Cocktail, clubs, rocks, guns, and looting.

    As for [ Some] Black Lives Matter,  they have a beef.  My youth was pretty naive, but I roomed two years with a guy from Mississippi who was the first in his family to graduate high school.  He was finishing his Phd in history, summa cum laude.   Later,  when I left history, I found myself seated  for thirty weeks, for six hours a day M-F, next to the very intense President of the campus Black Student Union.  Their collective reading list was eye-opening.  I  had, for example, never previously heard of Kenneth M. Stampp and his monumental study of the horrors of American slavery of people of African dissent. I had known it was bad, but Stampp hammered home the full depth of the depravity with clinical precision.

    But the false dichotomy [ Some] Black Lives Matter presents between police vs. more welfare once more evades a real discussion on why certain urban areas are centers of uber violence directed against their inhabitants by their inhabitants. 

    SBLM's demand for he dismantling of criminal law and places of incarceration even when the vast predominance of the victims of criminals are Black people seems daft.   

    They demand for "collective ownership" of  "the economy" is  an attempt at regression to the failed theories of centuries of socialism.

    My dad's "people" came to this continent in convicts, losers in a civil war in Britain.  They were sent here by the English and certain Scots who picked the winning side. In that last, being reduced to bondage by their "own," they shared an experience with Africans. Their transportation, while under far less vile and fatal conditions than Black prisoners, was equally involuntary. They  were not regarded, like Black slaves, as property and had the opportunity, over years - sometimes decades- to "work off" their serfdom and cross over the mountains to the West, where they proceeded to evict the local population by force.  Some, thereafter, defended the king and some supported revolution.  Later, some supported chattel slavery and some, even in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia fought and died to end it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Relatively few statutes are raised to the cannon fodder, whereas a great 351' obelisk has been raised to celebrate the treason of Jefferson Davis - as a political statement about slavery - that chattel slavery was the correct policy.   Such "art" in the midst of populations of Black people is akin to a stature commemorating The National Socialist party in Israel. 

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  5. Classic "liberalism" was characterized by the statement, "I disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it."   Judged by that standard, modern "liberals" are highly illiberal.  What they do not want to be said is to be banned and criminalized as "hate speech," they hatefully demand.  They also seek to go "forward" to socialism, a belief that the state is the source of all good and, thus, should have near absolute power - a very old idea - "regressive."    As Orwell said, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  

    More Black civilians were killed in the last 24.    Their lives apparently do not "matter" to SBLM.  In the latest media spew, AOC suggests they are killing  each other because they are hungry - a fairly dubious and, even, odious suggestion.  Hunger has been shown to cause aggression, as with crowding [at least in rodents, Sail-fin Mollies, and Guppies].  Not sure how hungry the shooters in NYC are, and NYC is very densely populated (Manhattan ranking 8th in density, in the World).  Chicago is not in the top fifty-eight in population density.  But, then, neither NYC nor Chicago are near the top of U.S. cities for murder rate - not even in the top [bottom] thirty.  For that, you need to look at (or avoid) St. Louis and East St.Louis,  Gary,  Chester, Baltimore, Flint, Detroit, New [sic] Orleans,  Cleveland, and the like.  You know, all those cities run by elderly folks exerting "inertia."  Ha!

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  6.  " It's ironic that a country founded by rebels now has such a strong contingent of folks who think conformity is what we should be teaching in schools.  I can't think this is really an isolated issue though, since pretty much EVERY generation in every country throughout history has thought their younger generations were full of silly liberal nonsense."

     I lived through "No freedom of speech for Communists," to see "No freedom of speech for anyone other than us [SBLM, Anarchists,  and/or socialists.]"  I think conformity to an authoritarian paradigm, right or left, or racial, should NOT be taught in schools.  It should be THE place where opposing ideas are compared - not repressed.  Now university professors are fired for expressing opinions as shocking as "All lives matter" or "captalism is not inherently evil."  Berkeley was the center of the "Free Speech Movement" during the Vietnam blunder.  Now any speech not conforming to the current PC is met with Molotov Cocktails and clubs.  

    The current political silliness-de-jour is about as illiberal as possible.  NOT " I disagree with what you say but defend your right to say it" INSTEAD: " I disagree with what you say, so you are not allowed to say it."  And this obscenity is tacitly support by the American Civil Liberties Union.

    "LIberal,"like "progressive" and "blue,." is makeup on a pig.   Woodrow Wilson, THE 'liberal" "progressive," imprisoned political opponents and encouraged mobs to attack those whose ideas he disliked.  Sound familiar?

    Meanwhile, the Black-on-Black slaughter in the cities -  run for decades on a one-party system  - is merely background noise for the "Woke" and their political, media, and entertainment allies. 

    The statute of Frederick Douglass is torn down by the "enlightened."  FREDERICK DOUGLASS !   An ignorance so profound in the young is not "silly."  

     

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  7. Good suggestions, but inconsistent with the primary BSA objective.  

    A uniform - the same except for details - would be nice to replace the current brand approach, and would far more closely match the stated reasons for a "uniform."  Again, that approach is inconsistent with the primary BSA objective.

  8. 7. The calmer, more obedient types stayed home.

    8. A more heterogeneous society than many.

    9. Taught for two generations with public money  that the present economic and political systems are evil so their rules are not worthy of obedience.  "Burn it down!"  

    10. Societal value of youth, inexperience, and ignorance over age, experience and knowledge.  E.G. "Tear down that statute  Of Frederick Douglass  - Black Lives Matter!" :confused:

    11. Told for three generations that  "You deserve more free stuff, and someone else should pay for it.," a belief that such is  "justice."   

     

     

  9. Cuyahoga County, Ohio, [Cleveland and suburbs] murder capital of Ohio, once had a "farm" out on the east end of the county (AKA "Workhouse").  Prisoners worked in the gardens, learned landscape gardening and learned how to farm .  It was closed about twenty-five years ago on the grounds that, as most of the inmates were Black, it was a 'slave plantation."  Of course, no one asked the inmates, becasue they didn't matter, as is the case with those slaughtered by civilians in today's urban "centers." The acreage was turned ointo large office buildings, hospitals, and an "up scale" shopping center, to the great enrichment of politically-connected "developers."  The "developers" wear masks today, as they should have back then.

  10. The problem of recidivism - criminals reoffending, has been noted for over 150 years in the U.S.  Ex-President Hays led an Ohio  commission looking for a solution - the path to "reform"  - in the 1870s.  The commission concluded that inmates should be discharged with a trade - giving them a stake in civil society.  In Ohio, this led to the foundation and expansion of Ohio Prison Industries (Now Ohio Penal Industries).  At one time, this organization taught carpentry, including finish -carpentry and furniture-making, barbering, electrical work, motor vehicle repair, metal working, machining, and other skilled trades.  Over the decades, the unions succeeded in having many of the programs eliminated on the grounds that they competed with "free labor."   The motor vehicle repair program was restarted s few years ago.    The Ohio authorities have masses of data, gathered over many decades, that support the conclusion that those who graduate from the training programs are much less likely to reoffend.

    That study also concluded, that punishment rarely deters future offense, except of course for capital punishment when speaking of the executed.

    Mercy is also owed to the public who are victims and potential victims of offenders.    Violent crime is up 100% or more in many of our "woke" cities.

    The current social warriors expressly wish to eliminate police, courts, current criminal law, and places of incarceration.   The old LA County main jail, housing those awaiting trail for the most violent crimes - murder, violent rape, battery causing severe bodily harm (e.g,. wide beating), child molestation - is ordered closed by the County Commission with no provision for housing the jailed prisoners elsewhere - truly "transformation."   Will this not encourage "self-help" - the system in Britain before William forcibly introduced he concept of "crime" as being an offense against the state post 1066?

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  11. EVANS v. ABNEY is precedent but immaterial to the issue being discussed.  The restriction created by the settlor in that case - use of the property by Whites only - was held unenforceable under federal law, causing the trust to fail under Georgia state law.  The trust having failed, the property reverted to the heirs of the settlor of the trust, the odious Senator Bacon, as a matter of Georgia law.

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  12. 7 hours ago, Troop75Eagle said:

    I would like to suggest that more sympathy to the victim needs to start with, as a glaring example, of actually following through with justice in the correct sense of the word.  There have been many cases of investigative police jurisdictions not processing thousands of rape kits, but letting them simply accumulate.  Justice, properly defined, would entail having the processes established followed so that the legal process could move on.  Whatever the reason:  gross negligence, incompetence, depraved indifference, lack of staffing  or even vindictiveness...this is not justice.’   As it is commonly used, ‘no justice’ seems to imply that the justice system is supposed to have a foregone conclusion with the justice system as only a rubber stamp for popular opinion.

    I again note that the criminal pleaded guilty to nine counts of armed robbery and was sentenced for only five of those felonies and for none of the related felonies, such as nine counts of felonious assault.  So despite his guilty plea, he got off totally on more felonies than those for which he was sentenced.  I have no idea what "popular opinion" expected would be the result.

    in Ohio, the present Governor was previously Attorney General, elected in part on a campaign promise to test all the rape kits that had accumulated in the years since rape kits were kept.  That was done.

    “Everybody matters or nobody matters.” ― Harry Bosch

  13. Schott, like Henry Ford, publicly praised Hitler and the Nazis and was known for her negative comments about Jews, Japanese, and Blacks as categories, with regular use of the N-word.  Taking up her supposed cause is the wrong battle at a very wrong time.  She is as eligible to have a building or location named for her as Former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK  U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd.

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  14.   

    On 7/3/2020 at 7:58 AM, RememberSchiff said:

    Commitment against racial injustice...perhaps leadership by example, consider the rest of the story of the 2007 armed robbery of a Boy Scout Christmas tree lot.

    https://www.sent-trib.com/news/man-forms-unlikely-friendship-with-robber-12-years-later/article_da6b0f40-ed55-11e9-bb90-f3ae42f51121.html

     

    If it matters, Mr. Hodge pleaded guilty to nine counts of Armed Robbery.  In sentencing, the trial judge consolidated some of the charges as a matter of discretion, and sentenced him on five of the counts of Armed Robbery.   The charges for felonious assault and battery on the robbery victims were drooped in their entirely in consideration of Mr. Hodge's guilty plea to the nine Armed Robbery charges. The 2010 appeal resulted in no change to his sentence,  the Ohio Supreme Court voting 6-1 to reject his only argument on appeal.

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  15. Promising "free" stuff has been a political stock-in-trade all my life - and longer.  "Kicking the can down the road" on the issue of paying for all the "free" stuff has equally been the political orthodoxy for that same period - and longer.

    Political Dictionary:

    "Reducing government spending" - almost always, reducing the rate at which government spending increases.

    "Free" - when someone else pays - at  least until we run out of other peoples' money.

    "Stimulus Program" - other peoples' money

    "Objective journalism" - our flacks

  16. Amy has a good heart.  But I seriously ask if sameness is the path to brotherhood, to use the old word.

    In terms of basic human rights, all  should be equal in the eyes of the law - in all nations.

    We ought to love our human brothers, to use the old word, for what they are, including their diversity - members of our single race.

    I was reared to appreciate diversity, family guidance supported by my extremely diverse Boy Scout Troop in my youth.  But that did not presume homogeneity - far from it.    E.g.: Our brilliant  Chinese exchange student just could not "get" why my son's extremely large classmate was called "Tiny."  He found it neither humorous or even comprehensible.  "Tiny," he had learned, meant small, not 6'5' and 260 pounds.   "Crazy," it turned out, was a word well known to him, like "OK." (And  he WOULD only sharpen a knife with a single bevel, like a chisel.)

    My biological brothers shared some beliefs and behaviors with me, but were not the same.  The one still left alive would not speak to me for forty-three years in order to obey the doctrine of his church not to associate in a non-business setting with those not of that faith ("bad association").  Then his wife passed on, and we can communicate again, carefully avoiding political issues.

    Until being the "other" does not bring fear and hate, we are doomed to repeat the past.  "Getting along" would be an historic improvement.  There have been at least two wars going on every year of my life, most getting no coverage in the U.S. media because not everyone matters.  Most of these wars, like the Western Sahara War of 1975-1991, in which tens of thousands died, was a war of independence between different ethnic groups.  It goes on to this day as lower-intensity unrest and violence.  Or Google " Tamil Tigers to learn about a twenty-one year civil war on religious and ethnic lines that relates to historic wrongs over seventy-five years and is in recess.

    I think this is a matter of substance, not being picky.  

     

      

     

  17. 37 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

    Adults create the units and manage the program.  

    Folks who struggle with the idea that adults have any authority on the program usually put the program design a head of the Mission. Without the goal of building moral and ethical adults, scouting is just an after school activities program.

    A program intended to develop character requires continued tending to insure the youth are getting the most out of the Aims and Methods. Anyone who manages a true patrol method troop will agree that staying out of the Patrols way is a lot harder than just telling scout how to act in good character.

    Barry

    Scouting is said by BSA to be "experiential learning."  So Scouts learn to be good members of a representative democracy by experiencing representative democracy, as opposed to authoritarianism.  Adult leading is ignoring the mission.  A Scouter is honor bound to let the Scouts make the decisions even if his would (He thinks) be "better."  Thus, the youth is allowed  to learn by doing - even if what is done is "wrong."  Of course, safety issues trump all and Scouting values are to be maintained - one of which is youth leading  with adults teaching the teachers, counseling, coaching, and being a resource.  Being trustworthy in Scouting  fashion does require adult ego to be subordinate to the Mission and  even that fund-raising be subordinate to the Mission.

    The value of being "trustworthy" includes not pretending to supply Scouting while actually supplying the adult-run "platoon" or after-school "club."

    No one ever died from a burned pancake.  Scouting dies  some when the adults take over the pancake flipper.

     

     

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  18. "Implying"? 

    if by "myth" you compare BSA to "honest politicians," you are, I think 100% correct.

     A  "Troop" is said by BSA to be composed of "patrols," not Scouts, and operates a program selected, planned and led by Scouts, with the counsel, influence, and resources of adults.  if it is otherwise, THAT is on BSA, for doing a poor job of training, almost nothing to encourage Scouting or discourage non-Scouting, and on the adults who refuse to allow Scouting. 

     

    BSA "says" as of 10/31/2019:

    1. If a troop is not using the Patrol Method, "it is not really a ... Scout troop."

     2. Under The Patrol Method, a Scout primarily experiences Scouts BSA program in the setting or context of his or her patrol, not a troop.  "[Y]ou will belong to a Patrol...."

              COROLLARY:  A Scout spends most of his or her Scouting time doing activities within his or her patrol: planning; organizing; leading; learning; advancing; performing service; camping; hiking; playing, not in troop activities.

              COROLLARY: the troop primarily exists to provide support to patrol program: leadership training; resources; safety; institutional stability; advanced Scoutcraft training.

              COROLLARY: per the current Handbook, a troop is composed of patrols, not Scouts.

              COROLLARY: "Patrols will sometimes join with other patrols to learn skills and complete advancement requirements.”

     3. A patrol is a small (5-8 member),  semi-permanent, largely self-selected, compatible team of Scouts -  a mini-democracy - which, under the leadership of a Patrol Leader whom they democratically select, democratically plans and experiences Scouts BSA program as a team.

              COROLLARY:  Each member of the patrol has a "position" (job) assigned by the Patrol Leader, primarily through agreement or persuasion.

     4. A troop is the "league" within which patrol teams play the "game of Scouting."

     5. Troop activities involving Scouts, except for Boards of Review, are democratically chosen and planned by the Patrol Leaders' Council, chaired by a Senior Patrol Leader, himself or herself democratically chosen solely by the Scouts in the troop, who leads those activities in cooperation with the Patrol Leaders.  The Patrol Leaders' Council is composed solely of Scouts - only they vote - and represents the Scouts of the respective patrols.

              COROLLARY: Patrol Leaders support and cooperate in the leadership of troop activities involving Scouts, except for Boards of Review.

     6. The adult role in a troop is one of leadership trainer, coach, counselor, mentor, example, and resource, and, except as to matters of safety, not direct leadership. (Scouter response to question from a Scout: "Should we build the campfire now?"  A: "Have you asked your Patrol Leader?") 
     

     

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