David von Drehle has a very poignant piece at WaPo Sunday.
We’ve never needed Remembrance Day poppies more than right now
One can still see red poppies pinned to lapels on Remembrance Sunday across Britain. The tradition, marked this year on Nov. 10, persists even though the creators of the holiday are gone, but I doubt that younger Britons wear the symbolic flowers with the same solemnity as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. It’s hard to remember something that defies belief, and the further we go from the events in question, the more incredible they seem.
*****
Nationalism is ascendant across Europe, from Poland to Hungary to Turkey. The dormant pathologies of xenophobia and anti-Semitism are awakening throughout the West. Fascists have marched in Charlottesville and in Marseille and even, incredibly, in Berlin. Stalinism is countenanced in the outlaw state of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. China is building a 21st-century totalitarianism.
Bankrupt impulses and failed ideologies of the 1920s and 1930s are taking root again in another generation of disillusioned and demoralized leadership. But it’s not too late to remember the bitter, bloody fruit of those fields and change course. What better time to start remembering than on Remembrance Day?
Amen, bruddah.
It’s time to say it: Fascism in America threatens our Democracy. Senate Republicans hold freedom in their hands. Read your Roman history senators, a few lessons there. We don’t want no stinking Caesar, unless it’s a salad.
Flatus and all other veterans – Veterans Day to you. I forego my usual breakfast at Denny’s and dinner at the Golden Corral. I am dieting. We are approaching the infamous fifty year anniversary of the 1969 draft lottery. One in which I end up with a number just out of draft range. But when the letter arrives to officially notify me of my good number it includes a typed notice that I had already been drafted and my induction was being delayed. Yah-hoo. Drink here please. And another . . . and another . . .
a little history of poppy appeal in scotland
An animated version of The Poppy Story book. The book follows the development of the Poppy as a symbol of remembrance from the poem In Flanders Fields, and how the Poppy is used to raise money and help those who need it today. It is aimed at children aged four to eight years old.
and a little news on another battlefield
NYTimes:
Not long before the Ukrainian president was inaugurated in May, an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s journeyed to Kiev to deliver a warning to the country’s new leadership, a lawyer for the associate said.
The associate, Lev Parnas, told a representative of the incoming government that it had to announce an investigation into Mr. Trump’s political rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son, or else Vice President Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president, and the United States would freeze aid, the lawyer said.
The claim by Mr. Parnas, who is preparing to share his account with impeachment investigators, challenges the narrative of events from Mr. Trump and Ukrainian officials that is at the core of the congressional inquiry. It also directly links Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to threats of repercussions made to the Ukrainians, something he has strenuously denied.
But Mr. Parnas’s account, while potentially significant, is being contradicted on several fronts. None of the people involved dispute that the meeting occurred, but Mr. Parnas stands alone in saying the intention was to present an ultimatum to the Ukrainian leadership.
Another participant in the meeting, Mr. Parnas’s business partner, Igor Fruman, said Mr. Parnas’s claim was false; the men never raised the issues of aid or the vice president’s attendance at the inauguration, lawyers for Mr. Fruman said.
Mr. Giuliani denied Mr. Parnas’s contention that he had delivered the warning at the direction of Mr. Giuliani. “Categorically, I did not tell him to say that,” Mr. Giuliani said.
The dispute represents the clearest indication yet that Mr. Parnas, who was indicted along with Mr. Fruman last month on campaign finance charges, has turned on Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, both Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, worked with Mr. Giuliani for months in Ukraine outside normal diplomatic channels to further Mr. Trump’s interests. The men have been subpoenaed to testify before Congress, and Mr. Parnas’s lawyer has said his client will comply to the extent he can without incriminating himself. It is unclear if Mr. Parnas will ultimately be called to testify.
Mr. Parnas’s account of the meeting, if corroborated, would reveal the earliest known instance of American aid being tied to demands for Ukraine to take actions that could benefit Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. It would also represent a more extensive threat — to pull Mr. Pence from the inaugural delegation — than was previously known.
[continues]
The 100th anniversary in London with the ceramic poppies
For The Fallen
Robert Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
I was taken by Lt. Col. McCrae’s poem when my high school teacher assigned it to us.
This is the one that really hit me in school
As a Congresswoman and former Navy Commander, I swore an oath to support and defend our Constitution five times. Donald Trump didn’t uphold his oath, but I intend to uphold mine.
need more ads like the above from rep. elaine luria and the one posted yesterday from senate candidate amy McGrath about the oath they took and uphold and the oath trump took but doesn’t.
patd… great cartoon about trumpty dumpty’s Veterans Day schedule. Unfortunately it nails it!
Thinking today of my father who fought in Korea just after becoming a US citizen.
better load up on the popcorn
the hill:
ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS on Wednesday will preempt their regularly scheduled programming for live coverage of the House Intelligence Committee’s open impeachment hearings of President Trump.
As expected, all of the major cable news networks, including Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and CSPAN will also offer live coverage.
[…]
In the past, some high-profile public hearings during the Trump administration have generated huge television audiences.
In May 2017, former FBI Director James Comey‘s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was watched live by 19.5 million people across all the major broadcast and cable news networks.
In Feb. 2019, former Trump personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen‘s testimony delivered 15.8 million viewers, while 13 million tuned in to see former special counsel Robert Mueller testify before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
All audience numbers are according to Nielsen Media Research.
Impeachment hearings for President Nixon in 1973 were also covered live on a rotating basis by the major broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, while PBS carried the proceedings wall-to-wall for more than 250 hours.
More than 7-in-10, or 71 percent, of Americans watched the Nixon impeachment hearings live, according to Gallup.
Nixon would go on to resign the presidency on August 8, 1974.
Another one calls it quits…
Long Time GOP Rep. Peter King Announces Retirement
wow that Luria ad is great, could run anywhere as an ad for impeachment
Hopefully a thoughtful day. My father, my brother and my uncles all served. My father spent world II in the Aluetians with Dashiell Hammett producing radio shows and a newspaper. My parents liked to travel butmy father would not go to Alaska.
https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2010/04/22/corporal-dashiell-hammetts-the-battle-of-the-aleutians-a-graphic-history-1942-1943/
How bad are the Trump judicial appointments?
White House Ends Bar Association Vetting
Nicki Haley boost those book sales and preserve your place in the gooper party
When Trumpence goes I think she thinks she can step
Oh wow at first I thought she had a face lift but no it’s an etching of Trump’s butt on her face –kind of slops over
Thoroughly cool thing to do:
WW2 Plane Flanked by Spitfires drops 750,000 poppies over Dover
My post may have been for Remembrance Day, but it was in the spirit of and inspired by this being Veteran’s Day. In that vein I would like to express my gratitude to all the veterans here and elsewhere, living and dead, who serve or have served to preserve the country formed by those who fought almost 250 years ago to establish a country out of a double handful plus one of colonies from an oppressive government an ocean away.
My father and all my uncles on both sides of my family were of the WWII generation and all served in it. Through some stroke of luck, they all lived through it. One uncle was career USAF and served in the 2 wars after that, and he had the exceeding good fortune to survive being a pilot in Korea and an intel officer in Saigon.
Somebody pass the popcorn.
SFB jr is on tour promoting his book. Yesterday he got ran off of the stage by protestors. He went to UCLA hoping to get some good pictures of disruptive lefties. The lefties showing remarkably good sense didn’t bother playing that game. But the Alt right crazies showed up in full force.
Jack
I want to be associated with the first paragraph of Pogo’s 1:16 post.
BTW he is also putting together a book and from what I’ve read really pissed.
Jack
While this was written for the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. It is equally fitting for today.
We owe a lot to those soldiers who came home and got involved. They were the core of the internationalist thinking that created and maintained alliances that prevented WWIII. Sadly we are seeing the current administration throw all of their hard work aside as if it was meaningless. As I have said, it is a hell of a legacy for the boomers.
Jack
jack, jr’s not the only one facing protestors today according to the hill:
Trump’s remarks at Madison Square Park in Manhattan were largely devoid of politics, but even in New York on Veterans Day the president could not entirely avoid the political headlines that have dogged him in Washington.
Protesters spelled out the words “impeach” and “convict” in letters taped to the windows of a high-rise overlooking the park, and chants of “lock him up” were heard from the crowd. Public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry are scheduled to begin Wednesday.
Demonstrators gathered near the site of Trump’s speech to protest his presence and could be heard by attendees chanting “lock him up” and blowing whistles in the distance.
[continues]
The Cold War never ended. We only thought it did.
Lock Them ALL Up
Pretty bizarre hearing various and sundry attack the Facebook policy of hands-off political ads when that is the rule of the media They repeat every word SFB says as if it hadn’t already been proven to be a lie over and over again.
Yup, KGC, they say “conservatives believe” first, followed by “GOP lies, GOP lies, GOP lies”.
i’ll associate myself with this also:
“ Oh wow at first I thought [Nikki Haley] had a face lift but no it’s an etching of Trump’s butt on her face –kind of slops over” -KGC
I’m getting the feeling that House Dems will settle on bribery +/or extortion.
I wonder why no one is talking about a RICO charge.
I wonder if trump’s bottom has and impression of nikki. Or, if it does an impression of her.
So many Qs. So few As.
Hers would just be blending in with so many others like Rand Paul and Lindsay Grahm
More false equivalency crap.
And people wonder why SFB gets traction.
The goopers in power including Nicki Hayley are tea party people
Whaddafuckinjoke. They just showed Mulvaney on MTP Daily speaking at the Fiscal Summit. That’s the ONE place neither he nor anyone else in the SFB crime family has as any business even attending.
Besides that, KGC, she fast-tracked at Timken.
Hailey is the best governor that SC has had during my 23-years here. She led the healing from the Charleston Massacre, and rescued the State, and many of its neighbors, from the confederate symbols tarnishing state flags. Now KGC, what have you done for Ohio and California?
I served on the Ohio Youth Commission appointed by Gov John Gilligan
And here the best thing I did was get a friend of mine elected to the SF Board of Education – he has gone on to be elected to the state assembly
I am not an elected official as Ms Haley is and I’m sorry you don’t see that she is a tea party activist and not good on women’s issues. The only things she has done are for herself.
But hey your high horse apparently allows youtosee things no one else can
BETTER THAN MANY, BUT FAR FROM GREAT
So it’s a bittersweet good-bye to Nikki Haley: so much accomplished, but so much damage done, and so much potential squandered.
On the basis of her economic success and the flag alone, Gov. Haley towers over Mark Sanford and Jim Hodges and David Beasley. But Carroll Campbell and Dick Riley? She’s not even in their league.
Yes, it’s an accomplishment for a governor to leave office with a respectable record, let alone one extraordinary success. But her sins of commission were not insignificant. Neither were her sins of omission.
In a state that so desperately needs significant improvement — in education and health and protecting the vulnerable and, yes, in good-paying jobs — it’s frustrating, even depressing to think of how much more she could have accomplished … if only she had chosen to do so.
Ms. Scoppe writes editorials and columns for The State. Reach her at cscoppe@thestate.com or (803) 771-8571 or follow her on Twitter or like her on Facebook @CindiScoppe.
On balance at least I didn’t do as much damage as she did and I have had 50 years of community activism including recently working to get rid of cash bail that keeps people in jail who are only guilty of not having money.
I was instrumental in getting more women appointed to boards and commissions in SF. We set up a system of “countercommissioners”n They attended all the meetings and said how they would have voted. Over time many were appointed to the commissions they had shadowed. This included the police and fire commission. At that time no female firefighters and no women on patrol. We formed the Coalition to Open the Protective Services and soon things began to change.
I worked on getting 18yer olds the vote. It was a national Common Cause poject and I worked on the pilot project on Ohio.
I later served on the Common Cause State Board in California
well I’m bored now
Biden on now CNN Town Hall.
Biden on CNN Town Hall now, getting it done. Uncle Joe still in the game.
Thanks to Flatus, Sturgeone, xrepublican, and any other veterans reading this for your service.
No thanks is necessary for me, Mr Bink. I was just following orders. Thank you for the thanks, sir.
NEW THREAD