Happy Canada Day!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Too bad the Roughriders are 1-2, but it is a long season!

Homestead Strike, 1892

Not a Star Trek vs Star Wars debate

Every good Yinzer (person from Pittsburgh) knows about the Homestead Strike.  Steel workers in 1892 demanding higher wages and better working conditions come to blows with private security and twelve people are killed.  Eventually, the US Army is called in to pull everyone apart.  As you can see from the picture, I do mean everyone, including women combatants.

Why bring this up?

Because of the idiot phenomenon of mob harassment of government officials.  This is idiotic and it will lead to violence.

This started with the eviction of Sarah Huckabee Sanders from a restaurant in Virginia and later escalated to the harassment of Florida's attorney general at a Mr Rogers movie (!!!).  Maxine Waters, Representative from California, called for more of this and ended up having to cancel appearances due to death threats.  In other words, what she called for, boomeranged around on her.

Brownshirt tactics have no place in American politics.  If you cannot be civil, you are the problem.  All this will do is lead to a heavy security presence and "protesters" getting arrested or hurt.

Sometimes, you cannot fix stupidity, but if you give them a warning, they might get the point.

If not, oh well....not everyone is a genius. Learn the hard way.

World Cup 2018!

The World Cup kicks off in Russia!

The world comes together in a mass demonstration of misplaced priorities mixed with international friendship.  Soccer, or football as the rest of the world knows it, is played in every corner of the globe, including America, who generally suck at it...LOL

Enthusiasm counts for something!

The winner will probably be a European or South American team but the fun is infectious.  Politics takes no seat (except possibly nationalism) and it is fun for everyone, even the teams that don't win. 

The World Cup is a lot like the Olympics--fighting stops, even in the Middle East (!) and a lot of things stay open 24/7 to catch every game.  This will be all anyone talks about for a solid month.

The audience in America probably won't be that big, but it will seep into the news coverage.

I will watch it like I always do since it is a fun game to watch and it gives me something to do before the Canadian Football League season opens!

Korean Rollercoaster

The off again/on again summit between the US and North Korea is back on again.

The US answered North Korea's petulant attitude by calling off the June 12 meeting in Singapore.  Now it is back on after some reconsideration in Pyonyang.  It is all for the better.

Any kind of reproachment with North Korea is good for the entire planet. It removes (we hope!) nuclear weaponry from unstable leadership a stone's throw from Seoul, home to millions, and prevents a war that could easily escalate to something of global proportions.

A defanged North Korea also allows America to concentrate all of her East Asia attention on an increasingly assertive China.  North Korea has the potential to distract and stretch out US resources i the event of conflict.  Hopefully, this will never come to pass.  With North Korea, you have to assume worst cases.

The June `12 meeting will not solve everything.  It may solve nothing.  But, it is the first step and this is a step that has never been taken with North Korea.  It is a step in the right direction and hopefully brings peace to this dangerous corner of Northeast Asia.

North Korea has no future.  It has no economy, no real sense of nation and is clearly behind the South.  I think reunification is on the horizon and King Jong Un is probably looking for a nice pension from Seoul before the whole thing goes down the drain.  China may or may not let this happen, though I have the feeling if they do let North Korea be absorbed the way East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic in 1990, the price might be Korean neutrality and removal of US forces.

Who knows?  Maybe this neutral unified Korea could become Asia's Switzerland!

Hockey in the desert!

Las Vegas in the National Hockey League?

Vegas in the Stanley Cup in their first year?

This is truly amazing!  I bet the Phoenix Coyotes are upset.  Well probably not as angry as the Washington Capitals, who lost game one tonight.  Well,they play seven so we have to wait, watch and see.

I have to admit,it seems a little shady.  Vegas in its first year in the championship?

Stranger things have happened though none are coming to mind immediately.

I wonder how the Oakland Raiders will do once they move to Vegas.  Something to keep and eye on and maybe build that "shadiness" folder.

Hockey in the Sunbelt seems like a risk but many teams from hot climes have won the Cup....just not in their first year.  Vegas, next to Death Valley is clearly the hottest of all!  Seeing the Stanley Cup in Vegas....hosted by an actual team...is surreal.  Definitely very far removed from the pre-1967 days of the Original Six.

Gotta admit....It's pretty fun and I am enjoying the show!

Exploring the East

Michelle and I usually travel north and west.  There is not really anything interesting to our south and the east usually does not figure into our geographic worldview.  On the other hand, it is fun to go outside the box every now and again.


We went east towards the ocean.

It was interesting.

The first thing I noticed was a lot of water....a LOT!

There were a lot of little creeks and small bridges.  Lots of little lakes dotted the countryside, which tended to turn swampy at random intervals.  It seemed more prevalent as we approached the coast, which made sense if you thought about it....the Atlantic Ocean was there.

Many of the little towns along the way followed the same sort of template....small, agriculture and apparently shrinking.  I also saw large neighborhoods in the middle of nowhere and I wondered where they worked.  Actually, I wondered where they went at all?  There was truly no place to go!

Humans are all over the place in every environment and sometimes in places you don't expect.  Sometimes picking a random direction and going as far as you can be quite enlightening.

Watch out for the deer!

East coast or West coast, they are always around!

May 13, 1865!

On May 13, 1865, nearly a month after the surrender of major Confederate forces in the East, the last battle of the Civil War took place.  A few hundred feet from the Mexican border, the Confederate States Army won its final victory.

Talk about pointless.

I really feel sorry for the soldiers at the Battle of Palmito Ranch, fighting and putting their lives on the line for a war that was all ready over.  Private John Williams of the 34th Indiana was the last soldier to die in the war, the last of 620,000 Americans to die in the worst war in US history.

Nonetheless, the war finally ended and the horrific process of Reconstruction began.

It is a shame they simply did not just fire in the air three times and go home.

A half century later, Adam Gunther would be the last man to die in the First World War, in other words,history repeated itself.  The difference is that Private Williams died in the last battle of a war that truly ended.  We have not had a civil war since.  Private Gunther died in 1918 and the war resumed in 1939.

America learned in 1865 to let the Confederates off the hook early and the former CSA was reintegrated back into the Union by 1870, including the hotbeds of Southern nationalism, Virginia and Texas.

In 1919, despite the US attempts to get the Allies to moderate their approach to a defeated Germany, the Treaty of Versaillies was harsh and laid the groundwork for a worse war twenty years later.  Of course, it was easy for the US to call for a moderate approach to Versailles, especially since 10% of France was destroyed and Britain took major casualties.

Still,lessons of history slipped past.

Par for the course on planet Earth!