C'mon, Biden-stanners.
Admit it. You're worried about Status Quo Joe's health. Trump makes "word salad having a stroke" simply because he's a babbling egotistical idiot with a high, solipsistic ego level for a career business CEO or a president.
Biden has recently made "word salad that sounds like it comes from having had a stroke, or at least a mini-stroke." And, we have a history of this in our chief execs. Woodrow Wilson, and his wife covering for him.
(Do you really think this is just a stutter, or his attempts to control one? If so, then why hasn't it been this bad before?)
FDR, of course, hadn't had a mini-stroke by summer 1944, as far as we know. But, FDR's health started going downhill after the late 1943 Tehran Conference. And everybody knew it.
And Dems claimed that FDR would lose with Henry Wallace as vice president again, and FDR accepted that James Farley and AFL labor leaders were correct. It's true that Wallace did turn out to be kind of naive about the USSR during early Cold War years. And? FDR was kind of naive during the war. It's also true that FDR had killed the Bureau for Economic Warfare in 1943, but that appears to be more a turf battle issue than Wallace mismanagement. It's also true that FDR did not pick him to run the War Production Board established in 1942. So, it's possible that Wallace wouldn't have been a good prez.
As for Truman being a boon on the ticket? The 1944 election results were little different from 1940. Roosevelt was down 17 electoral votes and just over 1 percentage point in 1940. How much Truman kept him from falling even further is unknown. What is known is that Dem bosses thought Truman a centrist and a safe pair of hands.
As for 1960? LBJ was important for JFK's election. But (other than doing far better on civil rights than Jack would ever have done), he wasn't important for US history, and certainly wasn't seen so at the time. Nobody expected Jack's assassination, of course, and how many top Dem insiders knew much of anything about the reality of Jack's Addison's Disease is an open question.
Elizabeth Warren would be the least bad of Biden's options, but I doubt he'll pick her. He's going to want to go younger, IMO, and also possibly minority. That means Kamala Harris. People who know know about her "cop" record as California AG and her playing footsie with a Mnuchin bank. Joaquin Castro is probably a bit of an unknown, and I think Biden wants a woman. Amy Klobuchar might be nice, but if it's not Harris, it's likely Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. I think she would be better than Harris. But that's a low bar. Whitmer will have the flip side of opponents to her tough stand on sheltering in place pushing themselves forward elsewhere.
And, while Barack Obama needed to show the general public a safe pair of hands as his Veep, since he was trying to be the first black president (and then fucked America by claiming to be the first post-racial one instead) 2008 wasn't as important as this year. For people who weren't racists, Obama had some level of competency, obviously, and plenty of good health.
Update, May 21: "Vetting" Klobuchar doesn't make her his choice, and we don't know who leaked this — her staff or his. But, if Biden really is leaning that way, he's a bigger idiot than Hillary Clinton over Tim Kaine.
Update, May 28: A note from the flames of Minneapolis. Amy Klobuchar is the former DA for the Twin Cities who batted 0-for-30 in trying to convict bad cops. From that link to the original story in the NYT, noting that in more than two dozen cases, she didn't use her discretion to file charges herself, and instead punted them to a grand jury. And more here. And here. Maybe, if she had done something, he wouldn't have engaged in more police brutality after she went to the Senate.
Update, June 12: Klobuchar put a black teen behind bars for life for a non-murder level killing in a case that is badly if not fatally flawed.
Sidebar: If you really need shaky claims by Tara / Whomever Reade to vote against Biden, you've got problems otherwise.
Showing posts with label Truman (Harry). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Truman (Harry). Show all posts
August 06, 2015
#Hiroshima: 70 years ago today — reality vs. inaccurate revisionism
Contra some nuclear apologists of both years past and today, yes, nuclear weapons are, to some degree, qualitatively different than other so-called "conventional" arms.
Are they different from others in the class of what once was more neutrally called ABC weapons, for Atomic, Biological and Chemical, or what is today called, with emotional edge, "weapons of mass destruction"?
I think not.
Yes, radiation sickness and cancers killed people years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And pneumonia and other pulmonary illnesses killed World War I veterans who hadn't gotten their gas masks on in time for years and years later, too.
As for the immorality in general?
Sorry, but the cadre of left-liberals who says we should never have dropped either bomb at all, like Gar Alperowitz, or yesterday, Christian Appy?
No, they don't leave me cold, they leave me angry. Because they're simply not correct, and not telling the truth. (And, people, don't claim I haven't read this stuff; I read Alperowitz's whole book.)
First, a sidebar. I have not said, and do not say, the bombings were "justified." Philosophy minded friends of mine in general should take note that I generally reject the use of that word period, based largely on Walter Kaufmann and his thought-provoking "Without Guilt and Justice," reviewed by me here.
Or, another way to look at Hiroshima is in the words of former Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who called the nuclear bombs the "least bad" option. I think that gets it about right.
First, naval blockade alone wouldn't have hastened the end of the war very much at all. Not even when the Soviet Union jumped in. Yes, that caught Japan off-guard. (It didn't catch them by "surprise"; Japanese leaders ignored that Stalin's lieutenants stopped talking to them after May 8, 1945 and that their neutrality treaty had a 90-day opt-out. Say what you will about Stalin elsewhere, and note that he used those 3 months to refit his European theater veteran units, but he scrupulously waited those 90 days, declared war, and attacked.)
But, Japan could have moved troops from elsewhere in China to Manchuria. Iwo Jima did bring us closer to bombing more of mainland China, to interdict roads and railroads, but, it wouldn't have stopped troop movements, just bollixed them. It could have pulled Unit 731's labs back into Korea, while releasing its terror on Soviet troops had it wanted to do so.
Meanwhile, more and more Japanese troops would have died in fighting in China, Southeast Asia, etc. More and more Chinese and Soviet troops, and American naval and air forces, and army troops in the Philippines, would have died, too.
I've blogged about this issue before; no, the Russkies didn't force an end to the war just by their entry into it.
To the degree a naval blockade might have had partial effect, more and more Japanese civilians would have died of starvation, or hunger-related illnesses. And, more and more would have died from conventional bombing. I've read estimates that, if we blockaded Japan for six months, and cut links between the different Home Islands as part of that, more Japanese would have died from starvation in 1946 than were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
As it was, Japan did not ask for the face-saving Imperial-conditional surrender until after the second bomb at Nagasaki.
AND, AND, AND ...
Hirohito, in his Imperial announcement or rescript, ONLY cited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and not the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. (He does mention reaching out to its government, as well as the American and British ones, in seeking peace; that's the only mention of the USSR, and there's not even a hint about its invasion of Manchuria.)
Ward Wilson says that Hirohito DID mention the USSR's war entry, and ignored the Bomb, on a separate rescript Aug. 17.
However, that just illustrates my point. It was for just the troops, not the general public. Given that the Japanese Army had long wanted to fight the Russkies, could be that's why Hirohito told the troops exactly what he did.
Beyond that, historians in general normally mean the rescript of the radio broadcast to the Japanese pubic, the link I first gave. And, I'm pretty sure Ward Wilson knows that.
As for how many, or how few, American or allied lives Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved? To put it in blunt war terms, if ONE life was saved, that was enough.
Unlike Appy, and perhaps a straw man he's creating, I've never claimed the bomb was an act of "mercy." I've long claimed, per the immortal William T. Sherman's "war is hell," that it was an act of realism indeed.
And, speaking of military officers, Chet Nimitz, Ernie King and others at the end of WWII should have read them some Sherman before blanketly opposing the bomb, too.
Maybe this is another way in which Clemenceau is right: "War is too important to be left to the generals."
Or, maybe the brass hats with scrambled eggs said this because, especially with things like the later 1940s tests of blowing up fleets with atomic weapons, they were worried about becoming irrelevant. They clearly exhibited that attitude later on in fights over what service branch would control the military missile program.
And, per this whole issue, this is definitely why I identify myself here as a "skeptical left-liberal."
As for leftists who call Hiroshima a war crime? No, the real war crime was that Hirohito, the man who knew plenty about Unit 731 and the Rape of Nanking at the time they were happening, didn't surrender sooner.
Also re Hirohito? Until late spring of 1945, he hoped to retain all Japanese possessions up to 1920, ie, what it got after World War I. Even up to just before the Soviet intervention, he appeared to hope to retain the Empire as it was in 1905, after the Russo-Japanese War.
==
A new book, "Unconditional," largely confirms Richard Frank's take in "Downfall" on Imperial Japan while putting this all within contemporary US politics, including people trying to tie what terms of surrender we offered Japan into trying to end the New Deal. That continued to play out in both postwar occupation and rebuilding of Japan, on the far side of the Pacific, and on continued assessments of Truman's decision over here.
Are they different from others in the class of what once was more neutrally called ABC weapons, for Atomic, Biological and Chemical, or what is today called, with emotional edge, "weapons of mass destruction"?
I think not.
Yes, radiation sickness and cancers killed people years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And pneumonia and other pulmonary illnesses killed World War I veterans who hadn't gotten their gas masks on in time for years and years later, too.
As for the immorality in general?
No, they don't leave me cold, they leave me angry. Because they're simply not correct, and not telling the truth. (And, people, don't claim I haven't read this stuff; I read Alperowitz's whole book.)
First, a sidebar. I have not said, and do not say, the bombings were "justified." Philosophy minded friends of mine in general should take note that I generally reject the use of that word period, based largely on Walter Kaufmann and his thought-provoking "Without Guilt and Justice," reviewed by me here.
Or, another way to look at Hiroshima is in the words of former Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who called the nuclear bombs the "least bad" option. I think that gets it about right.
First, naval blockade alone wouldn't have hastened the end of the war very much at all. Not even when the Soviet Union jumped in. Yes, that caught Japan off-guard. (It didn't catch them by "surprise"; Japanese leaders ignored that Stalin's lieutenants stopped talking to them after May 8, 1945 and that their neutrality treaty had a 90-day opt-out. Say what you will about Stalin elsewhere, and note that he used those 3 months to refit his European theater veteran units, but he scrupulously waited those 90 days, declared war, and attacked.)
But, Japan could have moved troops from elsewhere in China to Manchuria. Iwo Jima did bring us closer to bombing more of mainland China, to interdict roads and railroads, but, it wouldn't have stopped troop movements, just bollixed them. It could have pulled Unit 731's labs back into Korea, while releasing its terror on Soviet troops had it wanted to do so.
Meanwhile, more and more Japanese troops would have died in fighting in China, Southeast Asia, etc. More and more Chinese and Soviet troops, and American naval and air forces, and army troops in the Philippines, would have died, too.
I've blogged about this issue before; no, the Russkies didn't force an end to the war just by their entry into it.
To the degree a naval blockade might have had partial effect, more and more Japanese civilians would have died of starvation, or hunger-related illnesses. And, more and more would have died from conventional bombing. I've read estimates that, if we blockaded Japan for six months, and cut links between the different Home Islands as part of that, more Japanese would have died from starvation in 1946 than were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
AND, AND, AND ...
Hirohito, in his Imperial announcement or rescript, ONLY cited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and not the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. (He does mention reaching out to its government, as well as the American and British ones, in seeking peace; that's the only mention of the USSR, and there's not even a hint about its invasion of Manchuria.)
Ward Wilson says that Hirohito DID mention the USSR's war entry, and ignored the Bomb, on a separate rescript Aug. 17.
However, that just illustrates my point. It was for just the troops, not the general public. Given that the Japanese Army had long wanted to fight the Russkies, could be that's why Hirohito told the troops exactly what he did.
Beyond that, historians in general normally mean the rescript of the radio broadcast to the Japanese pubic, the link I first gave. And, I'm pretty sure Ward Wilson knows that.
As for how many, or how few, American or allied lives Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved? To put it in blunt war terms, if ONE life was saved, that was enough.
Unlike Appy, and perhaps a straw man he's creating, I've never claimed the bomb was an act of "mercy." I've long claimed, per the immortal William T. Sherman's "war is hell," that it was an act of realism indeed.
And, speaking of military officers, Chet Nimitz, Ernie King and others at the end of WWII should have read them some Sherman before blanketly opposing the bomb, too.
Maybe this is another way in which Clemenceau is right: "War is too important to be left to the generals."
Or, maybe the brass hats with scrambled eggs said this because, especially with things like the later 1940s tests of blowing up fleets with atomic weapons, they were worried about becoming irrelevant. They clearly exhibited that attitude later on in fights over what service branch would control the military missile program.
And, per this whole issue, this is definitely why I identify myself here as a "skeptical left-liberal."
As for leftists who call Hiroshima a war crime? No, the real war crime was that Hirohito, the man who knew plenty about Unit 731 and the Rape of Nanking at the time they were happening, didn't surrender sooner.
Also re Hirohito? Until late spring of 1945, he hoped to retain all Japanese possessions up to 1920, ie, what it got after World War I. Even up to just before the Soviet intervention, he appeared to hope to retain the Empire as it was in 1905, after the Russo-Japanese War.
==
A new book, "Unconditional," largely confirms Richard Frank's take in "Downfall" on Imperial Japan while putting this all within contemporary US politics, including people trying to tie what terms of surrender we offered Japan into trying to end the New Deal. That continued to play out in both postwar occupation and rebuilding of Japan, on the far side of the Pacific, and on continued assessments of Truman's decision over here.
March 15, 2015
Harry Truman and national health care
A lot of people know that business organizations and the American Medical Association opposed Truman's national health care push. They don't realize that organized labor did as well .
But it did. As discussed in the great new book "The Age of Acquiescence," per my review, the New Deal "settlement" between labor and management-ownership in America was that organized labor would accept the financial settlement of wage gains and benefits offerings (which became more important during World War II with wages generally frozen or nearly so), in exchange for eschewing German-type unionism of sitting on corporate boards (see Volkswagen of America today) and other broader attempts to alter the labor-management power relationship.
So, in Truman's time, the bennies, including good private health insurance, that came with a union job, as well as the pay itself, were a recruiting incentive, and one that organized labor wasn't going to surrender, not even if this helped change the labor-management power relationship to the working man's benefit in general.
Even with LBJ's moves, and without formally stated opposition by organized labor, surely this is why he settled for Medicare and Medicaid. Senior citizens normally are retired and therefore not candidates for union job recruitment. Poor people are working in low-paying non-union jobs, if working at all; also, therefore, not part of organized labor's orbit.
That said, Truman was proposing something more than just national health care. He wanted a federal hospital oversight agency, and a federal form of workmen's compensation for work time lost due to medical treatment. That said, the Truman Library claims that organized labor was in support, but this is the first time I've seen such a claim. I've generally read elsewhere that, if not opposed, it was no more than neutral.
Anyway, the combination of ideas in the bill might have been better than just single-payer health care.
Why?
First, Truman probably could have said that, if surgery were needed, it would only be compensated for if performed at an accredited hospital. That, in turn, would have opened the door to federal pricing controls, including saying "no" with a capital "N" to outrageous pricing by Big Pharma.
(Today, the JCAHO only partially performs the accreditation idea, and as a private agency, doesn't have the same teeth that a federal regulatory board would.)
But it did. As discussed in the great new book "The Age of Acquiescence," per my review, the New Deal "settlement" between labor and management-ownership in America was that organized labor would accept the financial settlement of wage gains and benefits offerings (which became more important during World War II with wages generally frozen or nearly so), in exchange for eschewing German-type unionism of sitting on corporate boards (see Volkswagen of America today) and other broader attempts to alter the labor-management power relationship.
So, in Truman's time, the bennies, including good private health insurance, that came with a union job, as well as the pay itself, were a recruiting incentive, and one that organized labor wasn't going to surrender, not even if this helped change the labor-management power relationship to the working man's benefit in general.
Even with LBJ's moves, and without formally stated opposition by organized labor, surely this is why he settled for Medicare and Medicaid. Senior citizens normally are retired and therefore not candidates for union job recruitment. Poor people are working in low-paying non-union jobs, if working at all; also, therefore, not part of organized labor's orbit.
That said, Truman was proposing something more than just national health care. He wanted a federal hospital oversight agency, and a federal form of workmen's compensation for work time lost due to medical treatment. That said, the Truman Library claims that organized labor was in support, but this is the first time I've seen such a claim. I've generally read elsewhere that, if not opposed, it was no more than neutral.
Anyway, the combination of ideas in the bill might have been better than just single-payer health care.
Why?
First, Truman probably could have said that, if surgery were needed, it would only be compensated for if performed at an accredited hospital. That, in turn, would have opened the door to federal pricing controls, including saying "no" with a capital "N" to outrageous pricing by Big Pharma.
(Today, the JCAHO only partially performs the accreditation idea, and as a private agency, doesn't have the same teeth that a federal regulatory board would.)
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