Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
izzie Borden found innocent of a grisly double murder; Britain’s Queen Victoria begins rule; Race-related rioting hits Detroit; Muhammad Ali convicted in Vietnam War-era draft case; ‘Jaws’ premieres.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
It was black Americans who delivered on Lincoln’s promise of “a new birth of freedom.”
Neither Abraham Lincoln nor the Republican Party freed the slaves. They helped set freedom in motion and eventually codified it into law with the 13th Amendment, but they were not themselves responsible for the end of slavery. They were not the ones who brought about its final destruction.
Who freed the slaves? The slaves freed the slaves. [..]
When secession turned to war, it was enslaved people who turned a narrow conflict over union into a revolutionary war for freedom. “From the first guns at Sumter, the strongest advocates of emancipation were the slaves themselves,” the historian Ira Berlin wrote in 1992. “Lacking political standing or public voice, forbidden access to the weapons of war, slaves tossed aside the grand pronouncements of Lincoln and other Union leaders that the sectional conflict was only a war for national unity and moved directly to put their own freedom — and that of their posterity — atop the national agenda.”
All of this is apropos of Juneteenth, which commemorates June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger entered Galveston, Texas, to lead the Union occupation force and delivered the news of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved people in the region. This holiday, which only became a nationwide celebration (among black Americans) in the 20th century, has grown in stature over the last decade as a result of key anniversaries (2011 to 2015 was the sesquicentennial of the Civil War), trends in public opinion (the growing racial liberalism of left-leaning whites), and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The ugly story didn’t end with the abolition of slavery.
When Trump campaign officials scheduled a rally in Tulsa, Okla., on June 19, they sent what looked like a signal of approval to white supremacists. For June 19 is Juneteenth, a day celebrated by African-Americans to mark the end of slavery. And Tulsa was the site of the 1921 race massacre, one of the deadliest incidents in the long, violent offensive to deny blacks the fruits of their hard-won freedom.
It’s now being claimed that the Trump campaign didn’t understand the date’s significance, but I don’t believe that for a minute. President Trump did, grudgingly, push the rally back one day, but that was surely because he and his inner circle were surprised by the strength of the backlash — just as they’ve been surprised by public support for the Black Lives Matter protests.
But let’s talk about Tulsa and how it fits into the broader story of racism in America.
Joe Biden has declared that slavery is America’s “original sin.” He’s right, of course. It’s important, however, to understand that the sinning didn’t stop when slavery was abolished. [..]
As I said, then, while slavery was America’s original sin, its dire legacy was perpetuated by other sins, some of which continue to this day.
The good news is that America may be changing. Donald Trump’s attempt to use the old racist playbook has led to a plunge in the polls. His Tulsa stunt appears to be backfiring. We are still stained by our original sin, but we may, at long last, be on the road to redemption.
John Bolton is a weasel for not telling the truth about President Trump when it might have mattered — at least, theoretically. In practice, however, Bolton’s coming clean wouldn’t have mattered at all, since Bolton’s fellow weasels — Republican senators — were never going to remove the Head Weasel from office. That was always going to be our job.
I’m using the word “weasel” in the dictionary sense of “a deceitful or treacherous person.” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is excepted because he, alone, put duty above party loyalty in voting to convict Trump during his impeachment trial. The rest of the GOP Senate caucus chose to maintain the tragic fiction that Trump is fit to exercise the vast powers of the presidency, even as these cravens know that to be untrue. Imagine how different things might be today if all senators, and not just Democrats and Romney, had upheld the oath they took to judge Trump impartially in his impeachment trial. [..]
At this point, Bolton’s revelations are just more of what we already knew from earlier accounts by journalists and onetime Trump insiders. The president’s 11th-hour attempt to halt publication of Bolton’s book is constitutionally absurd — the courts almost never impose prior restraint on free speech — and puts the president in the position of making two mutually exclusive claims: that the book is both “a compilation of lies and made up stories,” as Trump tweeted Thursday, and also that it is filled with classified information, which generally consists of secrets that are true.
A pox on both Bolton’s and Trump’s houses. But never forget the Republican Party’s shameful refusal to acknowledge who Trump is and what he’s doing to this country. And look at what the GOP’s fecklessness has cost the nation just in the few months since impeachment.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed; Father’s Day first celebrated in the U.S.; The event behind ‘Juneteenth’; Author Salman Rushdie born; NBA draft pick Len Bias dies; Entertainer Paula Adbul born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
Ok, just so you understand who Dominic Raab is, he’s the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain. Because of our “Special Relationship” he is thoroughly familiar with all Internet tropes and memes.
The foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s assertion that the act of taking a knee appears to be “a symbol of subjugation and subordination” that originates from the TV show Game of Thrones showed a startling level of ignorance of the genesis of the protest adopted by the Black Lives Matter movement.
When the then NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the US national anthem before a game on 1 September 2016 to highlight racism, it began a protest that would reverberate around the world.
Other NFL players followed in his footsteps, as did players in other US sports including Megan Rapinoe, who played for the women’s national soccer team.
While many applauded Kaepernick’s action – he also announced he would donate $1m to charitable causes – it was controversial, not least with the then presidential candidate Donald Trump, and made global headlines.
At around the same time, Bernice King, the daughter of the murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, tweeted a picture of Kaepernick taking a knee with Eric Reid, the first NFL player to join him in the protest, alongside that of her father kneeling in prayer outside the Dallas County courthouse in Alabama on 1 February 1965 during a peaceful demonstration. She captioned the two images: “The real shame and disrespect is that, decades after the first photo, racism still kills people and corrupts systems.”
…
Another famous image of a black man kneeling featured on a 18th-century medallion created by renowned potter Josiah Wedgwood. He copied an existing design of a slave in chains kneeling, adding the inscription “Am I Not a Man and a Brother”. The image was widely reproduced and the wording became a rallying call for British and US abolitionists.
However, the image was a far cry from the defiant gesture today. The academic and novelist David Dabydeen described it as “docile and supplicatory (reflecting nothing of the frequent fierce rebellions by enslaved people in the New World plantations)”.
Neither the image of King nor the slave provided the inspiration for Kaepernick, however. It is often forgotten that his initial protest was to remain seated for the national anthem, mirroring a 1996 protest by the NBA basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who took the same action citing US tyranny.
It was Nate Boyer, a white former NFL player and army veteran, who advised Kaepernick to take a knee instead of sitting down. Boyer told National Public Radio: “In my opinions and in my experience, kneeling’s never been in our history really seen as a disrespectful act. I mean, people kneel when they get knighted. You kneel to propose to your wife, and you take a knee to pray. And soldiers often take a knee in front of a fallen brother’s grave to pay respects. So I thought, if anything, besides standing, that was the most respectful.”
In other Kaepernick news, after Goodell shamed the Owners a bit the Chargers may give him a look as Back Up. “He’s a good fit for our system.”
There will certainly be some car door slamming in Kensington tonight.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
On DACA and LGBTQ rights, John Roberts is shielding Trump from 2020 backlash. Is he willing to protect abortion?
For the second day this week, the Supreme Court surprised legal watchers by issuing another decision protecting the rights of minorities against the aggressive assault unleashed during Donald Trump’s administration. On Monday, the court issued a momentous victory for LGBTQ rights — one that may ultimately be more consequential than the decision granting marriage equality — ruling that employers cannot fire people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. On Thursday, in the sole decision released, the court once again gave liberals a reason to celebrate by voiding the Trump’s administration’s attempt to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program begun under Barack Obama, which allowed undocumented people who were brought to the U.S. as minors to live free of the threat of deportation.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, joined the liberals on both decisions, and even wrote the DACA decision. (Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, shocked both the left and the right by writing the earlier decision about LGBTQ rights.) In both cases, conservatives justified their decisions in dry language about legal procedure. Gorsuch argued that the plain text of the Civil Rights Act barring discrimination on the basis of sex covered sexual orientation and gender identity. Roberts argued that Trump’s move to end DACA violated the Administrative Procedure Act, an FDR-era law barring “arbitrary and capicrious” executive rule changes, in language that almost eerily anticipated the arbitrary and capricious nature of pretty much everything Trump does. [..]
The only real question is whether Roberts, a notorious anti-choice ideologue, will keep it up through the rest of the term — and will actually be willing to protect Trump by protecting abortion rights.
The economic legacy of the pandemic threatens to be an extraordinary new concentration of wealth.
Since January, Amazon’s stock price has gone up from about $1,850 to about $2,600. The S.&P. 500 — comprising large corporate stocks dominated by technology companies — has recovered most of its recently lost value. And most highly paid professionals and managers have kept their jobs and experienced minimal changes in wealth.
Yet more than 20 million Americans are unemployed.
These are signs that the economic legacy of the coronavirus pandemic could be an increase in wealth concentration that will shock a nation that thought itself numb to such things. Arguments over whether the recovery will be “V-shaped” or “U-shaped” ignore the fact that different socioeconomic classes have been affected differently and will recover differently. Despite its populist airs, the Trump administration is orchestrating what will be, unless something is done, a rich man’s recovery.
The panic is a measure of how deluded public discourse has become.
What can we possibly make of the crisis that unfolded in the remote Oregon seaside town of Coquille?
Coquille is a sleepy logging community of 3,800 people, almost all of them white. It is miles and miles from nowhere. Portland is 250 miles to the north. San Francisco is 500 miles to the south.
But Fox News is in a frenzy about rioters and looters, and President Trump warns about the anti-fascist movement known as antifa. So early this month as a small group of local residents planned a peaceful “Black Lives Matter” protest in Coquille, word raced around that three busloads of antifa activists were headed to Coquille to bust up the town. [..]
Of course, no rampaging anarchists ever showed up. The Battle of Coquille ended without beginning.
Similar hysteria about antifa invasions has erupted across the country. I asked my followers on Facebook how earnest citizens could fall prey to such panics, and I was stunned by how many reported similar anxieties in their own towns — sometimes creating dangerous situations.
In the annals of weird and revealing arguments between members of Congress, the one that took place between Reps. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday stands out. Along with a less fiery but equally revealing moment in a Senate hearing on Tuesday involving Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), it showed how the fact that we’re now discussing structural racism has Republicans seriously freaked out.
Their response is to attempt to take a debate about institutions and structures — policing, criminal justice, housing, health care, banking, employment, education and so much else — and reframe it as just about individual hearts. Which accomplishes two things. First, it renders them blameless, since they can assert “I’m no racist!” and take great affront at any suggestion otherwise. Second, it diverts us from ambitious reform to combat racism, if all we have to do is find the “bad apples” and get rid of them. [..]
There’s one other goal this kind of framing can accomplish: It allows white men in particular to say their feelings are hurt, and they know well that ordinarily, when they say that everyone drops everything to assuage them. You may recall a particularly vivid incident in which then-Rep. Mark Meadows, now White House chief of staff, mistakenly thought Rep. Rashida Tlaib had called him a racist, grinding a congressional hearing to a halt while everyone madly reassured him that the contents of his pure heart were not in question.
That’s how it usually goes, which is what was so striking about what Richmond said. He made clear that he really didn’t care about the hurt feelings of white members of Congress, an assertion so shocking that it led Gaetz to imply he had imaginary black children and erupt in fury.
But if the debate is about structures — not about the animus that does or doesn’t lie in any one person’s heart — then Republicans can’t say “Are you calling me a racist???” and have everyone drop everything to placate them. And frankly, it’s about time. We have more important things to deal with.
Dame Vera Lynn, whose song We’ll Meet Again became an anthem of hope and resilience during the second world war, has died aged 103.
Her family said they were “deeply saddened to announce the passing of one of Britain’s best-loved entertainers”, and that they were with her when she died at her East Sussex home.
…
Born in East Ham, on the outskirts of London, in 1917, Lynn survived a near-fatal case of diphtheria as a two-year old, and began performing aged seven. From the age of 18 she began working with orchestras in the UK, and released her debut solo recording, Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire, in 1936, while she worked in an East End shipping company.
During the second world war, she performed to people sheltering from bombing raids in the stations of London’s underground, and her popularity among soldiers grew her fame. She earned the nickname “the forces’ sweetheart”, touring for troops in Egypt, India and Myanmar, then known as Burma, during the war. “Singing in the jungle was very hot and very sticky, which was a bit hard going,” she told the Guardian in 2017. “I had a little piano, which they trudged around on the back of a lorry, hoping it would survive the journeys.”
Captain Tom Moore, the veteran who recently raised £33m for NHS charities, tweeted: “She had a huge impact on me in Burma and remained important to me throughout my life.”
Lynn’s wartime popularity was boosted by her signature song, We’ll Meet Again, released in 1939 and written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles. Its wistful melody and determinedly optimistic lyrics – “I know we’ll meet again some sunny day” – proved powerfully uplifting for departing soldiers, and it has endured as the defining song of the British campaign. It re-entered the UK charts this year at No 55 amid the 75th anniversary celebrations of VE Day. It was also used – with heavy irony – by director Stanley Kubrick at the climax of his cold war satire Dr Strangelove.
The White Cliffs of Dover, in which Lynn hymns the British coastline as she hopes for peace, is another of her enduring patriotic songs – written by Walter Kent and Nat Burton, it was originally released in 1942. The far right British National Party (BNP) featured it and used its title for a compilation album of British songs in 2009 – Lynn objected, and took legal action over the release.
We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs of Dover were released too early to enjoy chart success, but Lynn did top the UK charts for two weeks in 1954 with My Son, My Son, a heartfelt ballad from a mother to her son. She is also the oldest person to have reached the top of the UK album charts, which she achieved with a best-of compilation in 2009, beating the previous record holder Bob Dylan. A compilation marking her 100th birthday reached No 3 in 2017 – Paul McCartney was among those marking her milestone, saying at the time: “She became a symbol of optimism and a better life to come. We all grew up with a great admiration and respect for her.”
A 1952 single, Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart, topped the US charts, and she had two other Top 10 singles there.
Her last public performance came in 2005, at the 60th anniversary celebrations for VE Day in Trafalgar Square. She performed a snatch of We’ll Meet Again, and told the crowd: “These boys gave their lives and some came home badly injured and for some families life would never be the same. We should always remember, we should never forget and we should teach the children to remember.”
She was awarded an OBE in 1969, and made a dame in 1975, for her charity work. She has given her name to her own breast cancer and child cerebral palsy charities, and has also worked with charities for military servicepeople, including Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide (Flow).
The British army, navy and air force all paid tribute via the Twitter accounts, as did the Royal British Legion, who described her as “an unforgettable British icon [and] symbol of hope to the Armed Forces Community past and present.”
Lynn also wrote three autobiographies – the most recent, Some Sunny Day, was published in 2009 – and hosted a variety show on BBC television during the 1960s.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Churchill rallies Britain in World War II; Napoleon beaten at Battle of Waterloo; Amelia Earhart crosses the Atlantic; Sally Ride becomes America’s first woman in space; Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
In response to nationwide protests regarding police brutality and racial discrimination, food conglomerate Quaker Oats announced Friday that after 130 years, it would replace its historically racist Aunt Jemima mascot with a black female lawyer who enjoys pancakes from time to time.
“The time has come to replace Jemima, a problematic and stereotypical character that originated in minstrel shows, with Sheila, the public defender of cultivated tastes who eats pancakes on occasion, in addition to a variety of other foods,” said Quaker spokesperson Aaron Parshley, who explained that the former Aunt Jemima brand of syrups and pancake mixes would now bear a logo depicting an African American woman who wears a suit, carries a briefcase, and isn’t an aunt per se, though she is godmother to the child of a dear friend she met as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College.
Our new mascot is based on several real-life black women who are lawyers and eat pancakes some mornings when they aren’t too busy litigating on behalf of the disadvantaged.
While Sheila does enjoy our extended line of breakfast foods, that is only one small facet of her rich and complex identity as a human being: Sheila also speaks fluent Italian, likes U2, is bisexual, and enjoys cross-country skiing.
Let us make it clear that Sheila never serves the pancakes herself, but now and then goes to a diner near the courthouse where waitresses and waiters of a variety of races serve them to her.”
At press time, Mars Inc. announced it would follow suit by replacing the mascot of its Uncle Ben’s brand with a black engineering graduate student.
I suppose I should have been buying Non-GMO Organic Steel Cut right along but you know, if you’re eating Oatmeal at all you kind of get this aura of healthiness even if it’s less than 50% of your Oatmeal Cookie mix.
I use Regular and not Instant because it’s instant enough and dried Cranberries instead of Raisins because I like savory and top it with Butter and Salt. Two parts Water to 1 part Oatmeal (you put your dried fruit in at this point too). Nuke it for about 3 minutes (it gets soft and gummy) but only 30 seconds at a time because otherwise it will crawl out and get all over.
Or you can use it in Meat Loaf or Balls to lighten the texture instead of Bread Crumbs (Richard uses it that way).
One of America’s most recognizable but unreconstructed household brands, Aunt Jemima pancake products, will change its name and image in an effort by the brand to distance itself from racial stereotypes.
The logo of the brand, familiar to shoppers on every supermarket shelf that features pancake mix and pancake syrup – a staple of the classic American breakfast – features an African American woman named after a character from minstrel shows from the 19th century.
“We recognize Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype,” a statement from Quaker Foods North America, a unit of PepsiCo that owns the Aunt Jemima brand, said, in a statement obtained by NBC news.
The company has long been criticized for the logo and name of its product, and made the announcement as Black Lives Matter protests against racism in the US continue to grow amid a fresh surge in anger following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.
“As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations,” Quaker said.
Quaker said the new packaging will be introduced in fall of 2020. A replacement name will be brought in some time after.
Early Aunt Jemima logos featured various crude renderings of a dark-skinned woman wearing a headscarf, the design clearly influenced by minstrel shows, where white-skinned actors would portray stereotyped black people.
Later Aunt Jemima was portrayed by real women – first Nancy Green, who had been born enslaved, and then Anna S Harrington.
In 1989 Quaker updated Aunt Jemima, removing the woman in a head scarf and introducing the character which still appears on packaging today. At the time a company spokesman said they “wanted a more modern-looking woman, but one who still has traditional values”, who could retain the “goodwill and positive perceptions that already existed”.
According to the Jim Crow museum of racist memorabilia, Aunt Jemima is “the most well known and enduring racial caricature of African American women” and is based on the “mammy” stereotype.
“From slavery through the Jim Crow era, the mammy image served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America.
“During slavery, the mammy caricature was posited as proof that blacks – in this case, black women – were contented, even happy, as slaves. Her wide grin, hearty laughter and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery.”
A pair of businessmen in Missouri created Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix in the late 1880s. They took the name Aunt Jemima from a popular vaudeville song, according to the Jim Crow museum.
In 2014 two descendants of Harrington, whose likeness was used for Aunt Jemima, sued the brand, claiming they were owed royalties. The case was dismissed in 2015, after Quaker said Aunt Jemima was never meant to be a real person.
“The image symbolizes a sense of caring, warmth, hospitality and comfort and is neither based on, nor meant to depict any one person,” Quaker Oats said at the time.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said 260 workers at the Orlando International Airport have tested positive for the coronavirus after nearly 500 employees were tested but according to the airport management that’s not the case.
“[An] airport in Central Florida had a couple of cases, they did the contact tracing,” DeSantis said Tuesday during a news conference. “They looked [at] almost 500 workers [and] 260 people working close together were positive, 52 percent positivity rate on that one.”
However, it turns out those positive cases were not all airport employees and the cases were from a period of several months, according to the Orlando International Airport.
Orlando airport executives clarified the numbers Wednesday, clarifying not all 260 people are workers nor were they part of the group of 500 workers tested as referenced by the governor.
…
The governor’s office has also since walked back on the claims.
“Governor DeSantis has emphasized the benefit of testing for COVID-19 and contact tracing throughout the state. MCO had 132 employees test positive for COVID-19. Through contact tracing of those employees, an additional 128 individuals not associated with the airport tested positive for COVID-19 resulting in 260 total positive cases. We appreciate MCO’s commitment to working with the Orange County Health Department, the Florida Department of Health and for ensuring best practices are followed for the health and safety of all employees and visitors to the airport,” communications director Helen Ferre said Wednesday afternoon.
More than 2,780 new cases of coronavirus were reported in Florida on Tuesday.
The state reports more than 80,100 people have tested positive from COVID-19 and 2,993 people have died from coronavirus.
The Florida Department of Health reports 5.5 percent of people taking a COVID-19 test have tested positive for the virus.
Gov. DeSantis said this month around 30,000 COVID-19 test results are coming back each day.
The percentage of people testing positive for the virus has gone up since May 17.
Dr. Raul Pino with the Department of Health said coronavirus cases in Orange County are up 202 percent from the week before.
…
In Orange County, Dr. Pino said six people were on ventilators and 70 people were hospitalized outside of the intensive care unit.
The median age for people testing positive for COVID-19 is 46.
Eighty-six percent of COVID-19 related deaths in Florida have occurred in the age group of 65 and older, according to DeSantis.
He also said there have been more COVID-19 related fatalities over the age of 90 than under the age of 65.
Recent Comments