On May 10th 1865 Jefferson Davis was captured attempting to flee the last Seat of the Confederate Government, Washington Georgia. Reputedly he was dressed as a woman to avoid recognition, I see no necessity to slander him beyond his fundamental failures, it’s probably apocryphal. June 23rd Cherokee leader Stand Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.

Which is my way of saying-

The War’s been over for 155 Years!

The Myth of the Lost Cause, carefully crafted by bigoted racists, is persistent and some see nothing wrong with the open display of Traitorous Symbols.

The Commandant of The Marine Corps disagrees.

Top General Orders Removal of All Confederate Paraphernalia From Marine Bases
By Elliot Hannon, Slate
Feb 27, 2020

The Marine Corps took a welcome step toward modernizing after the service’s top general ordered the removal of all Confederate paraphernalia from all Marine installations around the world. The directive from Commandant Gen. David Berger came last week, shortly after a congressional hearing on the rise of the racist ideology of white nationalism in the military. The directive did not specify what exact forms of paraphernalia would now be prohibited beyond, presumably, the Confederate flag. The move was a long time in coming and could draw the Marines further into what has been a divisive societal issue that has morphed into a political issue in the Trump years: the push for the removal of Confederate statues and iconography across American life.

The U.S. has witnessed a troubling rise of white nationalist extremism since Trump’s election, and the military is no different. Several Marines have been punished or kicked out of the service for racist social media posts, prompting Congress to push the Pentagon to better monitor extremism in its ranks. A survey published by the Military Times earlier this month found more than 50 percent of minority service members reported recently witnessing instances of ideological racism, like white nationalism. More than a third of all active-duty troops reported witnessing such instances of racism, including “racist language and discriminatory attitudes from peers, but also more specific examples like swastikas being drawn on service members’ cars, tattoos affiliated with white supremacist groups, stickers supporting the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi-style salutes between individuals.” Those types of extremist attitudes rose by nearly two-thirds from the previous year’s survey.

The debate over the appropriateness of the American military using Confederate names and allowing its symbols is not new. “Ten Army bases are named after leaders of secessionist states, a point of contention for many—especially after a 2015 racially motivated attack on a South Carolina church thrust the debate over honoring Confederate history onto the national stage,” according to Military.com. “But the military’s response to Confederate names, flags and other materials was less clear. The Defense Department didn’t take any immediate action on the issue, Military Times reported at the time, opting to leave it up to individual services to address.”

In addition to the ban on Confederate symbols, the general also ordered Marine leadership to work to deploy more women in combat roles, including positions leading infantry battalions. Directives also pushed the Marines to explore the possibility of yearlong maternity leave and to extend current parental leave benefits to same-sex couples in the service.

I can spell too.

Trevor

Roy Wood Jr.

Stephen

Seth

The EU has made it clear that if the UK wants a trade agreement, Chlorinated Chickens are right out.

Oh, that would be almost every Chicken produced in the US where we cram them into boxes, chop off their beaks so they don’t peck each other to death, pump ’em full of antibiotics so they don’t infect each other and wash them in Chlorinated Water to remove the remaining bacteria from their filthy carcasses.

Mmm… yummy.

That won’t do, according to the European food standards. Anybody and the next person who wants to get into the food industry must go through rigorous training for food safety practices, lest they slip and serve food poisoning to their consumers on a plate. Chefs, kitchen staff, catering staff, and anyone else who handles food that will be served to people, must take up the necessary certifications (like this Level 2 food hygiene catering course) so as to gain entry into the world of food service. In Europe, these standards are apparently way higher, and the food that passes in the US, will clearly not do back there.

The Guardian view on food and Brexit: trust is not on the menu
The Guardian
Wed 26 Feb 2020

Most people pay little attention to the chain of production that brings food to their plates. Americans eat tonnes of chicken every year, unaware of, or unconcerned by, the chemical rinse applied to its pre-cooked carcass. British consumers might also eat chlorine-washed chicken if they had acquired the habit, but since they haven’t the idea is unappetising. This is a problem in transatlantic trade talks because US agribusiness wants access to UK dining tables. The politics of serving food prepared to US safety standards is tricky on a number of levels. Alongside chlorinated chicken, the use of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics in meat production are more tightly regulated in Europe than in many countries that want to export their surplus meat. After Brexit, the UK can abandon EU standards, but if it does so it will find its produce barred from continental markets.

Eurosceptics call that protectionism, and partly it is. European food safety standards have a scientific rationale – the idea is that hygiene should be maintained all along the chain, not dealt with at the last stage by blasting microbes with disinfectant. But those rules are bundled up with a system that insulates the sector from global competition. The EU subsidises farmers, recognising how destabilising it would be if a glut of cheap American produce was dumped on their markets. Some Eurosceptics embrace that destabilisation as an economic tonic, others deny it would happen. Pro-leave campaigners advertised cheaper food as a benefit of Brexit, omitting to explain that a price would be paid by farmers. That sleight of hand was easier to accomplish in propaganda than as government policy. The National Farmers’ Union vehemently opposes lowering regulatory barriers to American produce. The NFU president, Minette Batters, this week said doing so would be “insane” and “morally bankrupt“. Downing Street insists high standards will be maintained, but Boris Johnson wants a trade deal with the US and is not renowned for keeping his word. George Eustice, the environment secretary, tries to assuage farmers’ fears without giving them explicit guarantees.

The EU has been less ambiguous. Michel Barnier insists that the application of common standards across the single market will not be compromised as a favour to Britain. Access depends on alignment and, as Mr Barnier noted this week, the geographical proximity of the UK to the rest of Europe makes the enforcement of standards across post-Brexit borders all the more important. As the European commission sees it, such a near neighbour could easily become an entrepôt for substandard produce. That explains EU frustration at Tory MPs’ habit of downplaying or dismissing the requirement for controls at Irish Sea ports. The preservation of an all-Ireland regulatory space under the withdrawal agreement makes such checks necessary once mainland Britain diverges from EU rules. Northern Ireland’s Unionists hate that idea and Mr Johnson hates admitting that he let them down, but those are not grounds to renege on a treaty.

The prime minister can try persuading Mr Barnier to turn a blind eye to changes in UK food standards; he can try persuading British consumers to eat chlorinated chicken; he can try persuading farmers to accept being undercut by American imports. But he will struggle in two ways. First, standards are settled by law, not trust. Second, Mr Johnson has proved that he cannot in any case be trusted. The prime minister keeps serving up rehashed Brexit promises, but they get ever harder to swallow.

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 hungover we’ve been bailed out we’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.

Germany’s Reichstag burns, giving the Nazis under Adolf Hitler a pretext to seize absolute power; A cease-fire ends the Persian Gulf War; Actress Elizabeth Taylor born; Children’s TV host Fred Rogers dies.

I think that the thing that we learned back in the day of the civil rights movement is that you do have to keep on keeping on.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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He executed Thousands (though for scale you really have to compare him to Batista), Packed a bunch more off to “Re-Education” Camps which are by definition much, much worse than a Political Prison.

Oh, and he stole all their Mafia and Graft money when they fled to Miami and started raising an Army of Catholic Cavaliers and Mercenaries to retake the stuff they stole first back from those Roundheaded Apostates and Atheists.

Sure the CIA thought that was a great idea, and they organized the Bay of Pigs which if it weren’t such a bloody defeat would be a farcical physical comedy of the Three Stooges type (Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Woo, woo, woo, woo. Said I didn’t like it, never said I didn’t know it).

We sent him an exploding Cigar!

I mean, how basic. Yeah it was actually poison something or other and we had this showdown draw over Nuclear Missiles (Mutually Assured Destruction works, 72 years and counting. Who wants a heap of glowey ashes?) and then Fidel killed JFK unless it was Sam Giancana or somebody else (Oswald? In the Book Depository? With a Sears Roebuck Rifle? Who’s naive now Kate?).

Finally we decided simmering hate and hostility rather than active aggression was the best course of action until Obama came around. I would have gone to Havana, still might at some point. They say it’s beautiful and it’s very historic in an Age of Exploration/Piracy/Colonial kind of way.

I must say I remember the bad old days quite well enough.

I also remember (120+ you know) all the Red Baiting from 1917 to 1940 when, after Hitler attacked, they became our temporary military ally, and then again from 1946 to 1989.

Besides Putin is our pal, he’s KGB not a Commie. Xi is a Commie right enough but we owe him money (not a lot in the grand scheme of things actually) so we’ll posture against him in meaningless economic ways that only harm United States Consumers, Farmers, and Manufacturers.

But heaven forfend you have a nice word about Cuban Literacy or their Global Humanitarian Health Care (not Insurance, actual Doctors, Nurses, Hospitals, Medicine, and Equipment) outreach.

Only good Red is a dead Red.

I’ll let digby take it a little-

Trump’s authoritarian buddies have his number
Published by digby, Hullabaloo
February 26, 2020

There has been a lot of discussion over the past few days about Bernie Sanders’ comment on “60 Minutes” that the authoritarian Cuban leader Fidel Castro had boosted literacy among his people. Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist so I suppose it’s not surprising that this would attract some attention, but his comment really wasn’t anything a standard-issue liberal wouldn’t have made. In fact, the most revered Democrat in America, Barack Obama, said pretty much exactly the same thing when he moved to normalize relations with Cuba in his final years in office.

Nonetheless, the subject was raised again at the presidential debate on Tuesday night when the moderators asked Sanders whether Americans could trust that a socialist would give authoritarians a free pass. Seriously.

I don’t know whether anyone’s noticed this, but Fidel Castro is dead. It’s interesting that such a dull observation about literacy programs in communist countries would cause such hand-wringing when you consider that our current president’s favorite global leaders are all authoritarian strongmen who are very much alive. In fact, Donald Trump was being fêted and fluffed by one of those at the very moment the press was calling for the smelling salts over Sanders’ mundane comments.
…
It’s easy to see why Trump would be anxious to please the leader of an enormous nation with a fast-growing middle class, and it isn’t because he is concerned with the geopolitical implications of a U.S.-Indian partnership.

Trump is likewise unconcerned with human rights violations, either in India or anywhere else. In the past he’s excused Russia’s authoritarian President Vladimir Putin’s killing of journalists, admired Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown on drug users and, of course, has relentlessly bragged about his bromance with Kim Jong-un, the sociopathic leader of North Korea. We can add to that list Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s thuggish Presidnt Jair Bolsonaro and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, all of whom know that Trump is a fool. Modi is just the latest of those to flatter him and shame America in the process.

It’s never been so starkly demonstrated how little Donald Trump cares about anything but himself as it was in India this week. As he was being unctuously massaged and fawned over by the Indian government, there was mass violence in the streets of New Delhi against India’s Muslim minority, spurred on by Modi’s recent decree that threatens their citizenship.
…
Of course Trump didn’t say anything to Modi about his increasingly violent anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist movement. He doesn’t know the first thing about Hinduism, of course. But he agrees with a vicious crackdown on Muslims.

Trump had to water down his “Muslim ban” somewhat in order for the Supreme Court to put some lipstick on it and call it constitutional. But he got ‘er done. And he’s sent a message to every strongman in the world that the U.S. will reward them for such actions as well. You just have to give President Trump a little sugar and put on a little show.

He’s a news dude and you’re wrong fella. 38 foot is plenty to single hand without being unwieldy and if you need to sleep more than 4 you should consider your floating Hospitality Suite that you carry as a Business Expense.

Of course you need to pay the crew even just to bob in the water so it’s the marginal cost of gas for your Aircraft Carrier. I’d still tug around the Day Tripper just for fun though.

Trevor

Stephen

Seth

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 hungover we’ve been bailed out we’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.

The 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center; President Ronald Reagan rebuked over Iran-Contra; France’s Napoleon Bonaparte escapes exile on Elba; Singers Fats Domino and Johnny Cash born.

We were talking about the space between us all and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion. Never glimpse the truth – then it’s far too late when they pass away.

George Harrison

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So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

We have entered the Trump Unbound era — and journalists need to step it up.
By Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post
February 23, 2020

When Donald Trump was elected, the media spent months figuring out how to cover a far-from-ordinary presidency.

Some will argue that many journalists never rose to that challenge — that they normalized Trump at every turn and never successfully conveyed to the public a clear and vivid picture of how he has toppled democratic norms and marched the country toward autocracy.

To be sure, they made adjustments.

Big Journalism began to call a lie a lie. It began to call racism by its name. It began to offer fact-checking in real time.

In other words, journalists adapted — within the framework of their tried-and-true beliefs.

We’re not “part of the resistance,” said New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet; “We’re not at war with the administration; we’re at work,” Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said. These were thoughtful, reasonable remarks, and they set the tone for much of how the mainstream media — from NPR to the broadcast nightly news to regional newspapers — has proceeded.

And then came Trump’s impeachment. And his acquittal. And now, a new era for this president who chooses to believe he’s been vindicated.

Call it Trump Unbound.

In this new era, Trump has declared himself the nation’s chief law enforcement official. He has pardoned a raft of corrupt officials. He has exacted revenge on those he sees as his impeachment enemies — Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the decorated military veteran and national security staffer; and Gordon Sondland, Trump’s own handpicked ambassador to the European Union — simply because they testified under subpoena to what they knew about the White House’s dealings with Ukraine.

In other words, we are in entirely new territory now. Should the news media continue as usual? Should it retain its own traditions as the nation slides toward autocracy? Should it treat the Trump presidency as pretty much the usual thing, with a few more fact-checks and the occasional use of a word like “lie”?

No. We need a new and better approach if we’re going to do our jobs adequately.

First, we need to abandon neutrality-at-all-costs journalism, to replace it with something more suited to the moment. Call it Fairness First.

I’m talking about the kind of fairness that serves the public by describing the world we report on in honest and direct terms — not the phony kind of fairness that tries to duck out of difficult decisions by giving “both sides” of an argument equal time, regardless of their truth or merit.

Now more than ever, with a president feeling empowered and vindictive after his acquittal, we need to apply more scrutiny and less credulity to his increasingly extreme actions and statements.

Second, we need to be far more direct in the way stories are put together and presented.

I often talk to news consumers — citizens by another name — who insist that they want “just the facts” reporting. They’re understandably frustrated that they can’t seem to find that when so many news organizations, especially cable news, seem to have chosen political sides for commercial purposes. They want news that is unbiased — that doesn’t come with a side helping of opinion. Just tell me what happened, they say. I’ll make my own decisions about what it means.

That sounds good in theory. In practice, every piece of reporting on national politics is unavoidably the product of choices: What’s the angle? Who is quoted? What’s the headline? How much historical context is there? How prominent is it on a front page, a home page, an app?

It’s in these small but crucial decisions that mainstream media often fails its audience: We simply are not getting across the big picture or the urgency. This happens, in part, because those news organizations that haven’t chosen up sides — those that want to serve all Americans — fear being charged with bias.

And so they soften the language. They blunt the impact.

Take the story of Trump’s angry reaction to the warning that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election to help his reelection. After hearing this, he reportedly moved to dump the acting director of national intelligence.

That’s big news that ought to be told with real urgency, right?

But not all of mainstream journalism saw it that way. On Friday morning, I searched and scrolled the home page of ABC News, whose evening news show attracts millions every night, the most-watched program of its kind. There were stories about the coronavirus, about the “mom of Idaho kids arrested in Hawaii,” and even a breathless in-case-you-missed-it piece about new fish sandwiches at Arby’s and Bojangles as Lent approaches. I could find the story in question only after a search for the term “Russia.”

And even those news organizations that did emphasize the story were using words that failed to get the importance across — headline after headline used the word “meddling” to describe the reported Russian intrusions into America democracy.

Meddling sounds like your nosy neighbor getting involved, over the backyard fence, in your family’s squabble.

The Daily Beast was more straightforward: “Russia Is Helping Elect Trump Again, Intel Official Says.”

There are dozens of examples every day. Too often, news organizations are cautious to a fault, afraid of their own shadows, and worried about being labeled anti-Trump or biased.

In this new era, my prescription is less false equivalence, more high-impact language and more willingness to take a stand for democracy.

With Trump unbound, the news media need to change. Yes, radically. The stakes are too high not to.

Should I tell the poor bastard? No, he’d be seeing the bats himself soon enough.