Anniversaries: On This Day In Zeta Reticula History

Google has an animation gracing their search engine page honoring the 66th anniversary of the Roswell UFO crash.

Yep, we're celebrating the fact that highly evolved lifeforms couldn't handle New Mexico traffic stops at night.

In seriousness, I grew up reading up the paranormal: I spent more time in the 133 shelves than the juvenile fiction.  Flying Saucers for me was a mind-blowing thing.  When The X-Files started I got hooked right off the bat.  Part of me understands the sheer improbability of space travel - damn you, laws of physics - but the child in me hopes we are not alone in the universe and that there are enough nice - the ones that won't eat our brains - sentient beings to co-exist with us.

Of course, the guy at xkcd just has to point out something for the anniversary as well: with the spread of smartphones with cameras, trucks with dashboard cams, the immediacy of YouTube... the evidence of UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and ghosts hasn't kept up.

Which is actually kind of heart-breaking...

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Presidential Character: Week Twenty-Three, I Got Nothing But a One-Termer Again

Another One-Term President to evaluate.  This shouldn't take too long...

The Republicans had enjoyed from Lincoln up to Arthur an extended period of White House control.  Grover Cleveland broke the cycle, bringing into office a reform-minded but-strict-as-hell Democrat that may have functioned but remained vulnerable to the whims of an electorate frustrated when Cleveland's administration failed to respond to their wants (not exactly their needs...).  They came into the 1888 election cycle with high hopes... and promptly ran into a deadlocked convention between two popular choices at the time.  Forced to find a compromise candidate, they settled on Benjamin Harrison, grandson of the late William Henry Harrison (yeah, they facepalmed about that back then too), scion of Ohio, officer of the Civil War (still a major campaign plus), occasionally elected to various offices... and pretty much one of the most bland unremarkable figures to get tabbed for the Boss job.

I exaggerate, I suppose.  Harrison had to have some qualities of value that made him an acceptable candidate.  Unfortunately, the biggest value he had was his malleability: the party bosses knew they could manage him.

Harrison's personality was one of reluctance.  He had to be talked into running for Governor of his state once (he lost a narrowly contested campaign).  Tabbed to serve as Senator (back then, a Senator was nominated by the controlling powers of the state legislature, not direct vote), he did so with little distinction preferring to vote along party interests and rarely making a name for himself.

And yet, Harrison doesn't entirely fit the Passive-Negative model of Presidential Character.  He shared a positive view of government's role in education and social improvement: he was the first President since Grant to make serious efforts to break the Jim Crow power in the south by pushing for federalizing the elections process and ensuring education funding for all.  Both didn't get far in a Congress where Republican allies traded away those issues for economic ones.

If I had to, I'd have to put Harrison right on the edge of the Passive-Negative line, but would make him a Passive-Positive.  Either way, he reacted to issues rather than acted, sought compromise, and worked with others to achieve their goals more than his own.

Next Week: Hey, didn't we meet this guy already...?

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Nobody's Winning Egypt

It's pretty harsh to say it, but so far this has been a no-win scenario for all parties concerned.

For Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party, it's a clear loss because he's been kicked out of office.  There were valid reasons for it: there were no check/balance mechanisms in place to make Morsi more responsive to the needs of the people; Morsi had done nothing to clean up the corruption that existed under Mubarak and in fact it was getting worse; the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) may have been better organized than any other coalition in the nation, but they simply weren't designed to make decisions and compromises that high office requires.  And consider the origins of the MB as a radical, occasionally violent opposition: by ousting them like this, they won't see any incentive in taking democracy seriously as a means to power.  They may well fall back into their old bad (and violent) habits, as demonstrated by the outbreak of violence between the pro-Morsi forces and the protesters last night.

The Army may look like the winners (again), but in truth this coup has hurt their position as well.  Rather than being unbiased players in the game, they've re-inserted themselves into the democratic process in a way that weakens said democratic process.

The foreign policy wonks pushing for democracy aren't happy: while Morsi was a terrible President he was democratically elected.  This coup discredits the validity of elected leadership across the Middle East, especially at a time when nations shrugging off decades of dictatorship - Algeria, Libya, Iraq - are struggling to forge new governments.  Tossing him out in a coup merely sets up the possibility of any future Egyptian President getting tossed out even if said President is actually doing his job.

The people protesting in the streets may have gained their primary objective - ousting Morsi - but there's no guarantee his replacement will fare any better.  Egypt's economy is in the tank alongside half the planet thanks to this global recession: tourism is also suffering, and being an unstable nation two steps away from open rioting doesn't market well at the AAA travel agency.  The corruption hurting Egypt's ability to provide even basic services like trash pick-up is deep rot: it will take years to flush it out even for a principled reformist.  The protesters may just be back out in the streets within another year.

The more liberal and moderate parties in Egypt may benefit from this, but there was a good reason why the MB won elections: the liberal and moderate groups in Egypt are not that well organized and in some cases unwelcome to a populace that may benefit from liberal reforms but in practice aren't fond of liberal ideas.  There's no sign of anyone in any position to step up and provide a moderate alternative.

There is a chance this could all still work out.  The Army has set up for emergency elections, and depending on the results a sensible moderate leader could be found.  But then the Army has to step back to let that President do his job.  There has to be serious reform efforts in both service and in the legal system (and in local law enforcement) to crack down on the corruption (and provide security against any violent reaction from the far right).  And whoever gets elected President has to make good-faith efforts to keep the Brotherhood engaged... and the Brotherhood has to make good-faith efforts to learn from this and change their methods to be more compromising and amenable to criticism.

It's a very thin needle eye to thread.

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Life Liberty and the Purrsuit of String Toys

I'm baking some beans for a friend's party.  This is the Fourth of July, peoples.

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Anniversaries: Gettysburg Day Three

The battle in most respects determined the fate of the war: the South suffered a decisive loss in the Eastern theater for the first time; Lee's army lost men it couldn't replace; and it failed to end the siege of Vicksburg the way Lee had hoped.

The war was fought for another two years (close enough) after this, because by this point only a total defeat of either side - especially the South, its leadership convinced in the righteousness of its cause - would have ended it.  But from this point on, all the advantages were to the Union: they had finally gotten a semblance of military leadership under Meade (and later Grant) to fight the Virginian theater, they had the numeric advantage of troops (the South intentionally fought with less manpower because they needed to keep enough white men back home to keep the slavery population in check), they had the economic and engineering might (the South had foolishly stuck to a cotton industry dominance and failed to create enough ironworks and grain farms to supply themselves).  This defeat combined with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation effectively kept Europe out of the war for good.

On an end note, a fellow Hordian Andy Hall runs the Dead Confederates blog (tracking southern and Texan history), and had his own take on the Second Day of Gettysburg from the memoirs of a Texan soldier caught in the thick of it.  He's got a great blog: link it.

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Anniversaries: Gettysburg Day Two

This happened 150 years ago today:

That sound you hear is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine codifying the Badass Bookworm trope for American history buffs.

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July 1st, So Many Things To Say

I was going to just focus on the fact that today is the 150th anniversary of the First Day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

But there's a ton of stuff happening in the world, which I gotta mention:

In Texas, the people are up and protesting against the Far Right Republican push to restrict access to abortion - and basically making it impossible for women to have decent health care in the process - using another special session of their legislature to circumvent a good number of procedural rules normally part of the regular sessions.

In North Carolina, the people are up and protesting against the Far Right Republican push to, well, destroy everything that's not a corporate tax cut.  Not just the pro-fetus agenda, but that the state GOP has killed off unemployment benefits (RAAAAAAGGEEEE!) in order to push their austerity agenda.  And this is in face of the facts that this has been one of the worst employment markets ever, and the fact that the unemployment benefits help the unemployed look for a job... any job...

In Egypt, they don't have Far Right Republicans to protest against... they do have the Muslim Brotherhood and their self-serving President Morsi, who have basically mismanaged the nation in its first year of supposed democracy into bringing out protests LARGER than the ones that pushed out Mubarak.

In fact, it's been a really busy week in protests.

More on Gettysburg for Day Two.  That is the one with Little Round Top. (fanboy squeal)

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