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 Somehow, yelling "Flame on!" just doesn't work  But it works for the Human Torch. SANGZHI, HUNAN — OK, so I’m not really Johnny Storm, but it’s a cool photo, anyway. My friend snapped it as we were leaving Jiutian Cave here. After a long climb out of the cool, humid cave into the warm, drier surface air, I was sweating and my head was literally steaming.
The cave trip Thursday was my last excursion for the week-long National Holiday. Earlier in the week, I accompanied two friends (a young married couple) to a wedding in Huarong, a small city near Yueyang, Hunan. Then they drove me to Yueyang, where I met another friend and visited that city for two days. When I came back to Jishou on Wednesday, I literally turned right around and headed out again to Sangzhi with another friend, her cousin, aunt and uncle.
We also visited the reconstructed home of He Long, a revolutionary leader who was later purged during the Cultural Revolution. He was thrown into prison (where he died at age 74), his original home was razed, and his siblings were prevented from attending university. He didn’t get a formal state burial until 40 years after his death.
On our way back to Jishou, we stopped at a roadside marker for the Guzhang County “Golden Spike” — an international reference point for the sedimentary layer corresponding to stage 7* of the Cambrian Period beginning 503 million years ago. The rather elaborate marker includes relief images of Lejopyge laevigata trilobites, which made their first appearance at this time.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Sarah Palin erred in one way. Wikipedia got “corrected” in another. Somehow the twain met and still exposed the weaknesses of both.
If the current Wikipedia page about Paul Revere is to be trusted (the citations look solid, anyway), Paul Revere did in fact warn the British about the Massachusetts militiamen ready to fight them. But he didn’t do it at all like Palin said he did.
Predictably, Palinites are declaring victory for Saint Sarah, ignoring that the truth that she’s still embarrassingly wrong about a well known moment in American history.
Here’s the play-by-play.
At a rally Friday in Boston, Palin told the crowd that Revere rode through town, firing shots off like John Wayne and ringing bells like Bing Crosby, to warn the British (the British –OK?) that the red-blooded colonists were not going to give up their arms to any Redcoats without a fight. Here’s the exact quote, complete with her folksy diction:
“He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.”
So, Revere is on horseback making a lot of ruckus to alert the British army that the colonials were ready to shoot them. Nothing like tipping your hand. And this woman wants to be commander-in-chief?
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 Paul Revere facepalm (via boingboing.net) JISHOU, HUNAN — Can American politics get any stranger? Alleged presidential contender and full-time media hog Sarah Palin recently mangled the story of Paul Revere in a public address, and soon after some of her fans went to Wikipedia to change the Paul Revere entry to match Failin’ Palin’s version.
Because, they said, Palin is a “reliable source,” so her imaginary version of events entitles them to rewrite history. One imagines if Palin told them the Moon was made of green cheese, they’d try to rewrite its wikipedia page, too.
Dumb and dumberer.
In case you missed the gaffe, Palin told a crowd in Boston on June 2 that native son Revere rode through the streets toward Concord ringing bells and making a lotta noise to warn the British.
“He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.”
And we were gonna still be, um, part of that, um, peachy British Empire that has the nice grandma as queen, you betcha!
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JISHOU, HUNAN — A century and a half ago on Dec. 24, South Carolina seceded from the USA, the first act of rebellion in what became the American Civil War.
From what I’ve read in the US news lately, it seems some people have forgotten why South Carolina and the other Confederate states withdrew from the Union. Teabaggers and revisionists would like us all to believe the War was all about State’s Rights, and a tyrannical federal government, led by the Yankee scum. They avoid the unpleasant reality that the main issue was slavery.
There were of course many factors that led to the Civil War, but the catalyst for it was the issue of slavery. The South did not want to give it up, and the Union was making it more and more difficult for the South to conduct its slave-dependent business.
So, yeah, at a certain level, the issue of state’s rights was a major cause of the Civil War, but they weren’t talking about general issues of interstate commerce or interstate laws. The specific issue was slavery, and no amount of whitewashing (pun intended) by today’s neo-confederates can conceal that truth.
South Carolina, on Dec. 24, 1860, issued the following proclamation. It clearly shows that the state’s principal complaint was the federal government’s and northern state’s interference with slavery. The words “slave,” “slavery”, “slaveholding” and “servile insurrection” pepper the document. The state legislature was not making some nebulous argument about “state’s rights.” The South was pissed that the rest of the USA was fucking with the South’s slave economy.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The USA now is just like the Roman Empire before it collapsed, says Rand Paul, GOP nominee for Senator from Kentucky.
Wrong.
Here’s what he said to a Tea Party crowd in Shepherdsville:
"In the latter days of Rome, the economy was crumbling, the emperor ... would placate the mob with bread and circus -- food and entertainment to placate them since the economy was in shambles and dwindling around them," Paul told several hundred people gathered for the rally in a Bullitt County park.
"Now in our country, as our economy is in shambles, they give us Cash for Clunkers and a stimulus check and they tell us to go to the mall and spend your money and everything will be OK ... That's not how you become prosperous as an individual or a country," he told the crowd of supporters.
And the crowd cheered wildly, I’m sure. (“Yay! The USA is falling apart. Yay! Let’s go to Shoney’s afterward to browse the salad bar!”)
Comparing the USA to the declining Roman Empire is as sensible as equating President Obama to Adolph Hitler, the latter of which right wingers (like Glenn Beck) seem to do on a daily basis anyway.
Paul is partly right, the economy of the Western Roman Empire was in the crapper, but he conveniently skipped the reasons. (This is assuming he and his audience know anything about history, which I suspect is not the case.)
This is a preview of Rand Paul: USA crumbling like Roman Empire. Wrong. . Read the full post (782 words, 1 image, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — I got a bee in my bonnet about the Christian Nation billboards that I heard are all over the Tampa-St. Pete area. My post turned out to be so long that I made it a page. You can read it here.
Permanent link to this post (45 words, 1 image, estimated 11 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — Is Pat Buchanan mindnumbingly stupid, or does he secretly adore Adolph Hitler?
Nevermind, I can answer the question myself.
A couple of the blogs I visit refer to Buchanan’s essay for Chronicles magazine, in which he suggests that the Allies pushed Hitler into declaring war on practically everyone in Europe. No, says the big B, it wasn’t that Hitler really intended to go to war; he really had no choice.
Well, being somewhat of a history buff, with World War II one of my interests, I decided to read the essay myself to see exactly what Buchanan has to say on the 70th anniversary of the war’s beginning.
The man is a blithering idiot, and/or an apologist for one of history’s most power-hungry dictators.
Following World War I (the last time Germany tried to take over Europe), the Treaty of Versailles gave Danzig, a city that was heavily German in population, to Poland. Kind of unfair, in retrospect, but the winners of the war were trying to keep Germany weak.
Buchanan suggests in his essay that Hitler, in occupying Danzig in 1939, was merely taking back what Germany should rightfully have had. Those stubborn Poles, “a junta of Polish colonels,” Buchanan says, refused to negotiate with Germany because they had Britain’s word the Crown would rush to their defense should Germany invade. So, the European war was their fault, and Britain’s, because they wouldn’t let Germany have what it should have had all along.
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