I'm continuing to try and brainstorm any possible way that we as a nation can find our way towards gaining and maintaining a leadership of reasonable, rational adults. I'm sure you have too, but I would like to have ideas to use beyond 'Vote out ALL incumbents! Both sides!' To me, that's not really enough. I mean, the past three elections- 2006, 2008 and 2010- have been considered 'waves', elections where large chunks of seats changed hands, and after three straight rounds of electoral carnage- on both sides- this is where we stand, a place most would agree is even worse than where we started before those three elections.
So a straightforward throw-the-bums-out mentality, with no further direction, isn't working.
'Term limits!'
12 year-limit, right? You tell me what possible good a term-limiting is going to have on someone that's doing their damage within months, weeks, DAYS of taking office. Scott Walker didn't even wait for his inauguration before pressuring outgoing governor Jim Doyle to kill a high-speed rail project. There is no term limit in the world that's going to prevent that. No, I want something else. Something new. Something outside the box.
Something like a political hall of fame.
...okay, how many of you stopped reading and went off to go ogle pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt?
For the rest of you, I'm envisioning an American Political Hall of Fame. First off, halls of fame are awesome. Second, and more to the point, done correctly, it can be used as an inspiration to greatness- a concrete, independently-bestowed, high-profile honor that cannot be bought or campaigned for but rather must be earned. It can also be a humbling device, a way to tell those getting a big head, 'you may think you're some hotshot, but these are your betters, and they expect more of you'.
This might also, incidentally, have an effect on the rest of the public. You see, as much as some of them may deserve it, even when elected officials behave themselves, we're still pretty hard on them. We any offhand remark saying how they'd like to see something or other happen as a "promise" to be filed alongside the stuff they stump for in campaign rallies, and damn the man or woman who then "breaks" their "promise" by subsequently regarding that offhand remark as an offhand remark. Damn the elected official who loses a vote and then fails to find some way to brazenly ignore the vote and ram through their defeated policy goals anyway. Damn them if they ever go home and take a day off of work. Oh, no. They're playing golf. While people are out of work and/or starving and/or getting killed by something or other, which in a total coincidence has been the case at every time ever. The BASTARDS.
When called on this, every single time the response will be along the lines of 'Well, they're being held to a higher standard.' Nobody ever actually defines this standard. It's this morphing, evolving thing that nobody ever actually seems to reach.
With a Political Hall of Fame, that 'higher standard' is no longer that kind of moving target. There's your higher standard, cast in bronze and marble and free on Tuesdays. Here's who you're trying to live up to.
But you've got to put it together properly in order for it to be any of these things.
First, we need a location. Someone's got to house the Hall of Fame. But I want to start by noting where I DON'T want it: anywhere in the Beltway or environs. Too insular. Too self-congratulatory. Doesn't send a good message at all. I also do not want it in any city in the country where it would not be the town's primary claim to fame. A good Hall of Fame makes the town synonymous with its Hall. 'He's going to Cooperstown.' 'He's going to Canton.' That's what I want here.
Think of it like this: take every city that houses a major league team in the five major leagues- MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS. Eliminate every single one of them. Take any city that houses an NCAA Division 1 program. Eliminate those cities too. And Division 2. And Division 3. All out of consideration.
While you're at it, you can also dump any city claiming to have the first or biggest of anything or which prominently claims to be the 'capital' or 'home' of anything or anyone.
All done? There's your starting point.
I'd like to have it in Iowa, near the Mississippi. First off, I've been in that area and it's just lovely. Second, the Mississippi has a nice Americana value to it. Third, Iowa is the home of the first Presidential primaries. Any semi-serious candidate, anyone serious enough to stump in Iowa, would be almost obligated to show up at some point. How much of an effect it has on them is up for debate, but the assumption here lies on it either having at least some effect, however small, on some of the candidates, and/or it having an effect on the voters who visit and then almost certainly look at the candidates and go 'why can't YOU be like that?'
As for a specific town, I'm going to pick Guttenberg. It's a small town, about 2,000 people, and local geography dictates that it'll never be all that much more than that, but that's fine. If you want a town to be destined as a synonym for what we're doing, you don't want any town that's known for anything. Which limits you largely to small towns. Guttenberg's main claim to fame is that they have a lock and dam of the Upper Mississippi. That's it. (The local geography of Guttenberg is that it's a thin strip of development on the riverbank, pressed in by bluffs. The bluffs can be built on, though, and are reachable, so we'll stick the Hall up there. It'll be a nice view and it cuts down on flood risks. Am I thinking about this way too much? Like I care.)
So we have a location. Now the much more relevant question: how to determine who's going to Guttenberg.
First, let's define who's eligible for enshrinement. There are two main rules:
1. Eligible candidates must, of course, have something to do with politics. This could be elected officials, unelected members of the public sector (such as Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, staffers, members of the bureaucracy, etc.), campaign workers, journalists, lobbyists, activists, pollsters, whatever. However, whoever they may are, they can only be judged on their political body of work. John McCain, for example, can't have his Vietnam experience count for him except as it relates to his use of it as a utensil over his political career.
2. Candidates become eligible for induction after having been dead for a minimum of 25 years. No exceptions. Any earlier than that and I feel the process will become too partisan for there to be a good enough appraisal. I do not believe the political world can be trusted to properly judge its own contemporaries; there will be too much partisan posturing and not enough historical hindsight into a candidate. Besides, there really is no 'retirement' to speak of. You can continue to have an effect on politics right up to your final breath and beyond the grave. It really will not do to have anyone who's alive get inducted, run for office on it and win, and then proceed to suck. That costs everyone involved credibility.
Next, the induction process.
Round 1 will be public nominations. I want to, at some point in the process, involve the general American public, give people a sense of ownership of the place. This is my method of doing that. The main ballot- Round 2- will consist of 50 names in any given year. 45 names on the inaugural ballot will be decided by the public, through online nominations. We'll say they can nominate up to 10 people. The top 45 names- after the removals of fakes and ineligibles- go on the ballot. The other five slots will be handed to... well, here we'll just call it the Veterans' Committee like most Halls of Fame call their secondary committee. We can call it something else later. The Veterans' Committee is a panel of whoever the Hall of Fame curators deem fit. Their job is mainly to fill in the mental gaps. They're going to try and put more obscure names on the main ballot, names that the general public wouldn't really ever think to nominate.
Round 2 is the main ballot. Here, let's just be honest, I'm cribbing heavily from baseball's procedure. It's a good way of doing things and fits in nice with what we're trying to do. The main ballot is sent to a group of political historians, none of which can already have been on the Veterans' Committee. We'll aim for somewhere between 500-1,000 of them. They're our equivalent of the baseball writers- they specialize in the knowledge base we need, and besides, of all the groups of people that get dragged into political fights, they actually largely get left alone to do their thing. They're perfect Hall of Fame voters. They'll get the main ballot of 50 names and be asked to vote to elect up to 12 names. Just like in baseball, anyone who claims at least 75% of the vote is inducted into the Hall of Fame. 75% is well and plenty enough to keep above a partisan fight. Plenty of political types would get 50% of the vote. It's that last 25% that'll get you.
If you don't get 75%, you're not in, at least not yet. However, other top performers on the ballot get a consolation prize: anyone who gets at least 10% is guaranteed a place on the ballot for the next year. The remaining places on the ballot are placed up for grabs in the next Round 1 nominations, with 3 spots reserved for the Veterans' Committee in years after the first.
On the other hand, should anyone be so unfortunate as to not claim a single vote- it happens in baseball, so don't laugh- that person becomes ineligible for five years. This will help cut down on people trying to shove a name through the nomination process that are just totally, completely unacceptable.
Usually in a Hall of Fame, that's the end of it. You're in, you're in. However, this is history we're talking about. Times change. Sentiments change. People who seemed like good choices upon their induction can, over time, turn out to not look nearly as good. This has happened before in a related hall, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City, housed at Bronx Community College. (It also had a dead-for-25-years requirement, though they bent it a few times.) That Hall, while a point of national pride in its time, was intensely campaigned for in only the one round of balloting (this is why the public is not given the final round) and made some very questionable choices. James Buchanan. Stonewall Jackson. Sidney Lanier, campaigned for by the Daughters of the Confederacy after Booker T. Washington had gotten in. You look at such names now, and honestly, James Buchanan is not someone worth honoring like that. That's not like putting Eppa Rixey in baseball's Hall of Fame. That's like inducting Turk Wendell. Bad choices like that cost a Hall credibility in later years.
The Hall died off for lack of interest, mainly because not enough people were getting elected. People were used to electing 10 people at a time, once every five years. (We're doing a much smaller annual induction, so that won't be much of an issue.) It also got overshadowed by baseball's Hall of Fame, which was inducting people who were still alive. (We'll hold firm on that point. We also will refrain from simply reanimating the Hall for Great Americans, as it took from all walks of society and we're focused squarely on politics.)
We're going to allow for the possibility of bad choices with an ejection mechanic. We'll let the first ten years of the Hall go, so we can build up the place a bit. Starting in Year 11, nominations will ask the public which single Hall of Famer they feel to be the least deserving of enshrinement. The Hall of Famer with the most votes will be placed onto an ejection vote on the main Round 2 ballot.
However, just as it's tough to get in, it's just as tough to get yanked back out. It will take 75% of the vote to evict. If 75% vote to evict, out they go. Their plaque will be saved, but placed in a special exhibit outside the walls of the Hall of Fame with a second plaque explaining why they were kicked out. (They are, however, eligible to be re-enshrined.) If they don't get 75%, that Hall of Famer is safe for one year, plus an extra year per 10% of the vote they came in under 75%. If in Year 1 Abraham Lincoln got 74% of the vote to evict, he would be safe in Year 2 but would be eligible for eviction again in Year 3. If he got 65%, he'd be safe in Years 2 and 3 and would be eligible again in Year 4. however, the voters were more reasonable, said 'wait, are we seriously voting on whether to kick Abe Lincoln out of the Hall of Fame?!' and under 5% voted to evict, that's eight years of safety he's got ahead of him.
So when on the calendar are we doing all this? I'm timing the induction ceremony for around late August: nice weather in eastern Iowa, still green and nice but after the worst of the summer heat passes. We work backwards from there: online nominations go on over March and April, the main ballot is drawn up, printed out and deliberated on over the course of May and June, and I'd like the inductees announced on July 4 for obvious reasons.
So now we just need to get someone to pay for and build the thing. Also maybe we should tell the people of Guttenberg, Iowa about the plan. They might not like it if someone came along and just started randomly pouring concrete without warning.
Now how do we find the money? Darned austerity.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Housekeeping Note
You may have already noticed over the past few days, but I've been making another run through the Blogger toolbox and seeing how I can fill the place out.
Noting the changes quickly:
*There's a 'contact' page now at the top. The info is repeated in the introductory post way back from the day the blog kicked off, but it recently occurred to me that that arrangement is getting more ridiculously inconvenient every day.
*There's now a share function over to the side. I tried attaching it to the bottom of each post, but the only way I could get it to work was when it attached to the bottom of the page, not bottom of the post.
*Finally, there's a most-popular page listing. Due to the unwieldy design and size (those stupid, stupid diamonds, mainly), though, that may not last long. I'm still trying to work out how to make it so that it doesn't stretch a page the length of Route 66.
Noting the changes quickly:
*There's a 'contact' page now at the top. The info is repeated in the introductory post way back from the day the blog kicked off, but it recently occurred to me that that arrangement is getting more ridiculously inconvenient every day.
*There's now a share function over to the side. I tried attaching it to the bottom of each post, but the only way I could get it to work was when it attached to the bottom of the page, not bottom of the post.
*Finally, there's a most-popular page listing. Due to the unwieldy design and size (those stupid, stupid diamonds, mainly), though, that may not last long. I'm still trying to work out how to make it so that it doesn't stretch a page the length of Route 66.
Standing For Something
So, barring a shock vote in the Senate, it's August 2nd and we're out of the debt-ceiling crisis. For now. (It'll keep being 'for now' as long as we have a debt ceiling to raise, something we enshrined during World War 1 with the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 and modified with Public Debt Acts during World War 2. It wouldn't be very difficult to repeal the ceiling if we didn't want to have one anymore.)
Beyond the point just noted, we're not going to discuss here my feelings on the bill itself. I'm more focused on the feelings channeled through the bill and the debate over it. And those feelings are abysmal. Just about everybody hates... well, everybody hates everything. We're angry at each other for the feelings our opposite number holds. We're angry at the middle for not picking a side. We're angry at our own side for not getting enough out of the bill.
One person I saw, a Democrat or progressive or liberal or whatever term it is we want to use today, noted that they had a sort of grudging respect for the Tea Party, because "at least they stand for something."
At least they stand for something.
Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, it is always from a person fed up that their side hasn't gotten close enough to their ideals. That they compromised-- actually, no, "compromised" is never the word used in this context. The word is "caved" or "folded" or something else to that effect. My side lost. The other side 'at least stood for something'.
'Standing for something' is in this context just about always confused with 'being a stubborn asshole'. 'Standing for something', I would argue, plays a very large part in how Congress got to its current state. Use the two phrases interchangeably, and you tell me if the sentiment changes at all. In fact, oftentimes that's the first half of the sentence. 'He may be a stubborn asshole, but at least he stands for something'. It's somewhat unintentionally redundant.
Congress is full of people who stand for something. They stand for something so much that they only talk to each other in the most technical sense of the word, never seriously making progress towards critical, must-pass legislation until the very last possible second before disaster hits. And some won't even talk then. There are only barely enough people to barely operate for barely enough time to function. Imagine a plane flying through a mountain range, headed straight for a cliffside. Essentially, we are gunning the engine and headed right for it, only to wildly yank on the controls while screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and missing the cliff by 20 feet... only to aim the plane straight at the next mountain over and start it all again. Sooner or later, that plane is going to slam into a mountain.
And there are mountains ahead. There's a government shutdown fight coming up not too long from now. The debt ceiling will raise its head again. And then there's every routine bill that can be blocked, held, filibustered or otherwise held hostage in any way, shape or form.
The thing is, there are a whole lot of things that can be stood for. Political positions. Sports teams. Coke or Pepsi. And, as is becoming increasingly apropos, the positions held in wars. Which wars? At the risk of sounding like Sarah Palin: All of them. Pick your favorite. Every war ever began because people stood for things quite forcefully.
"We believe rather fervently that your oil/land/people actually belong to us. We also believe that you should be dead."
"We disagree."
"Well, let us settle this disagreement through grievous bodily harm on the grandest possible scale."
"Kudos to you for standing up for your beliefs, but by the same token, I do hope you enjoy the sight of your own blood, good sirs."
We reached a point, somewhere along the line, where the middle is unacceptable. If a bill goes left, it angers the right. If a bill goes right, it angers the left. If a bill goes anywhere in between, it angers EVERYBODY.
And on some level, we have to realize that we did this to ourselves. The sentiment- and Nate Silver's analysis bears it out- may show that the will of the voters and elected officials are in total disconnect with each other. But don't think yourself blameless. Each and every one of them is only there because the voters put them there. (And please don't give me the 'it's who counts the votes' line. If anyone should be using that line right now, it's me. I'm from Wisconsin. Look at all the shenanigans going on here with open sacks of votes and fliers muddying the knowledge of when Election Day is and fake candidates who say outright that they're fake... and I'm not boycotting or acting like my vote doesn't count even given all that. Why? First off, that's just not how I operate. Second, because I know if I stay home the other side won't care. Me staying home seems to be what they're actively trying to CAUSE. Me staying home is only going to be seen as an increase in their margin of victory. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. They want me not voting, they are going to have to physically hog-tie and drag me from the precinct.)
You put them in. You- or people you know; you may have supported their opponents- went into the booth and checked the name of each and every person in that body. America voted for gridlock, for checks on one-party rule, and gridlock is exactly what America got. You voted them in, and you can vote them out as well. At the very least, this particular set of people has proven fundamentally incapable of working with each other. Given that the legislative process is built around debate and negotiation and compromise, what that means is that this set of 535 people is incompatible with the system.
What needs to happen, if we are to avoid fights like this in the future, is that there needs to be a movement towards people who are compatible with the system. People that aren't stubborn assholes. People who can talk to each other like adult human beings. People who, instead of arguing over whether the plane in the mountain range should veer at the mountain on the left or the mountain on the right, stop and consider that maybe the plane should fly over the mountains and not veer at any of them.
You know. People who don't stand for things so much.
Beyond the point just noted, we're not going to discuss here my feelings on the bill itself. I'm more focused on the feelings channeled through the bill and the debate over it. And those feelings are abysmal. Just about everybody hates... well, everybody hates everything. We're angry at each other for the feelings our opposite number holds. We're angry at the middle for not picking a side. We're angry at our own side for not getting enough out of the bill.
One person I saw, a Democrat or progressive or liberal or whatever term it is we want to use today, noted that they had a sort of grudging respect for the Tea Party, because "at least they stand for something."
At least they stand for something.
Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, it is always from a person fed up that their side hasn't gotten close enough to their ideals. That they compromised-- actually, no, "compromised" is never the word used in this context. The word is "caved" or "folded" or something else to that effect. My side lost. The other side 'at least stood for something'.
'Standing for something' is in this context just about always confused with 'being a stubborn asshole'. 'Standing for something', I would argue, plays a very large part in how Congress got to its current state. Use the two phrases interchangeably, and you tell me if the sentiment changes at all. In fact, oftentimes that's the first half of the sentence. 'He may be a stubborn asshole, but at least he stands for something'. It's somewhat unintentionally redundant.
Congress is full of people who stand for something. They stand for something so much that they only talk to each other in the most technical sense of the word, never seriously making progress towards critical, must-pass legislation until the very last possible second before disaster hits. And some won't even talk then. There are only barely enough people to barely operate for barely enough time to function. Imagine a plane flying through a mountain range, headed straight for a cliffside. Essentially, we are gunning the engine and headed right for it, only to wildly yank on the controls while screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and missing the cliff by 20 feet... only to aim the plane straight at the next mountain over and start it all again. Sooner or later, that plane is going to slam into a mountain.
And there are mountains ahead. There's a government shutdown fight coming up not too long from now. The debt ceiling will raise its head again. And then there's every routine bill that can be blocked, held, filibustered or otherwise held hostage in any way, shape or form.
The thing is, there are a whole lot of things that can be stood for. Political positions. Sports teams. Coke or Pepsi. And, as is becoming increasingly apropos, the positions held in wars. Which wars? At the risk of sounding like Sarah Palin: All of them. Pick your favorite. Every war ever began because people stood for things quite forcefully.
"We believe rather fervently that your oil/land/people actually belong to us. We also believe that you should be dead."
"We disagree."
"Well, let us settle this disagreement through grievous bodily harm on the grandest possible scale."
"Kudos to you for standing up for your beliefs, but by the same token, I do hope you enjoy the sight of your own blood, good sirs."
We reached a point, somewhere along the line, where the middle is unacceptable. If a bill goes left, it angers the right. If a bill goes right, it angers the left. If a bill goes anywhere in between, it angers EVERYBODY.
And on some level, we have to realize that we did this to ourselves. The sentiment- and Nate Silver's analysis bears it out- may show that the will of the voters and elected officials are in total disconnect with each other. But don't think yourself blameless. Each and every one of them is only there because the voters put them there. (And please don't give me the 'it's who counts the votes' line. If anyone should be using that line right now, it's me. I'm from Wisconsin. Look at all the shenanigans going on here with open sacks of votes and fliers muddying the knowledge of when Election Day is and fake candidates who say outright that they're fake... and I'm not boycotting or acting like my vote doesn't count even given all that. Why? First off, that's just not how I operate. Second, because I know if I stay home the other side won't care. Me staying home seems to be what they're actively trying to CAUSE. Me staying home is only going to be seen as an increase in their margin of victory. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. They want me not voting, they are going to have to physically hog-tie and drag me from the precinct.)
You put them in. You- or people you know; you may have supported their opponents- went into the booth and checked the name of each and every person in that body. America voted for gridlock, for checks on one-party rule, and gridlock is exactly what America got. You voted them in, and you can vote them out as well. At the very least, this particular set of people has proven fundamentally incapable of working with each other. Given that the legislative process is built around debate and negotiation and compromise, what that means is that this set of 535 people is incompatible with the system.
What needs to happen, if we are to avoid fights like this in the future, is that there needs to be a movement towards people who are compatible with the system. People that aren't stubborn assholes. People who can talk to each other like adult human beings. People who, instead of arguing over whether the plane in the mountain range should veer at the mountain on the left or the mountain on the right, stop and consider that maybe the plane should fly over the mountains and not veer at any of them.
You know. People who don't stand for things so much.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Attention Wisconsin Recall Voters
If you have received or seen an absentee-ballot flier, please carefully check the date in which it tells you to turn your ballot in.
The election in question, in State Senate districts 2 and 10, is August 9. The flier I need you to watch out for, distributed by Americans for Prosperity- aka the Koch brothers- tells you that the deadline is "before August 11".
This is an old, old voter fraud trick, the "tell opposition voters to show up a day or two after the election" ploy. If you turn that absentee ballot in on August 11, the election will have been over for two days. The election's on the 9th.
And while we're at it, also be on the lookout for such ploys as 'Republicans vote on Day X, Democrats vote on Day Y' and warnings that you could get arrested for traffic tickets by showing up. If you hear them, they're lies. Go vote anyway.
The election in question, in State Senate districts 2 and 10, is August 9. The flier I need you to watch out for, distributed by Americans for Prosperity- aka the Koch brothers- tells you that the deadline is "before August 11".
This is an old, old voter fraud trick, the "tell opposition voters to show up a day or two after the election" ploy. If you turn that absentee ballot in on August 11, the election will have been over for two days. The election's on the 9th.
And while we're at it, also be on the lookout for such ploys as 'Republicans vote on Day X, Democrats vote on Day Y' and warnings that you could get arrested for traffic tickets by showing up. If you hear them, they're lies. Go vote anyway.
It's Like A 'Participant' Ribbon, But In Statue Form
Early last month, the town of Fushe Kruje, Albania dedicated a statue to George W. Bush. The Americans in the audience will probably wonder why in blazes someone outside of Texas would do that. After all, Bush isn't exactly Mount Rushmore material. Many would argue that Buah was in fact one of the worst Presidents of all time.
There are others that will ignore the 41 men that came before Bush and compare him exclusively to Obama- generally favorably, and while asking the question 'miss him yet?'- but these people aren't even worth the hassle. And I've gone double-barreled on some pretty stupid things in my day.
Anyway. Why Bush? Why Bush of all the Presidents? Long story short, he was the one who showed up. Bush was the one who took time out of his schedule to roll into Fushe Kruje and say hi. Albania, despite everything America has done to go out of its way to inspire people to burn our Presidents in effigy as opposed to making statues of them, has a special affection for the United States for two reasons: first, they credit us with bringing them out of the Cold War era; and second, Albanians in Kosovo were under threat of Slobodan Milosevic and his "ethnic cleansing" campaign, and when we bombed Kosovo, we saved those Albanians.
Of course, all the events of consequence happened in the period between the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton administrations. All Bush did was go over and say hi as part of a multi-country trip. But since he did and the others didn't, he's the one that got the statue.
Bush's statue joins a rather eclectic list of foreign dedications to American presidents. Three of the others, one of which needs far more explanation than the others:
*Monrovia, Liberia, named for James Monroe in 1824, during his administration, as that is the point the country was "founded" by freed American slaves. As we've stated here, it didn't end well.
*A statue of Abraham Lincoln stands in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on a street also named for him. The statue stands as part of a trade with Mexico made in 1969, which in turn is the reason Washington DC has a statue of Benito Juarez, that city's namesake. The two were the respective heads of state during the Civil War and were on good terms with each other. Juarez is held in similarly high regard in Mexico.
*Rutherford B. Hayes has a Paraguayan soccer club named for him, called Presidente Hayes. Americans know Hayes largely as the guy who stole the Presidency from Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election.
Not long beforehand, Paraguay was being led by a man named Francisco Solano Lopez. Lopez was watching a conflict unfold between Brazil and Uruguay. Since Uruguay's 1830 independence, that nation had been seeing shaky internal relations that would eventually gel into the two major factions at the time, the Colorados and the Blancos. This conflict spilled over into Brazil, damaging Brazilian farmland. In 1864, Brazil demanded restitution. Uruguay refused.
Brazil invaded, on the side of the Colorados. Argentina was unhappy with this and joined in the war; they supported the Blancos. Brazil won and installed a Colorado government, dismaying Lopez. Uruguay was an ally of Paraguay. He at this point requested to move Paraguayan troops through Argentina so he could join in as well. Argentina told him no; the war was over and there wasn't really any point anymore.
He did it anyway. In fact, he attacked Argentina. According to the book Stupid Wars by Ed Strosser and Michael Prince, Paraguay sacked the city of Corrientes without so much as a declaration of war. This got all three countries angry at Paraguay: Argentina for blindingly obvious reasons, Brazil because he was in support of the Blancos, and Uruguay because it was now a Brazilian puppet state. Cue what became known as the War of the Triple Alliance, in which it was Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
Paraguay, after a couple initial victories against the Argentinians, ran up against the much hardier Brazilian forces. Here, Paraguay's luck turned. It wouldn't stop turning for the next six years. Lopez's forces took battering after battering after battering, but he kept throwing more and more troops into the grinder. At one point in 1865 a draft was held, conscripting boys as young as ten years old and men as old as 60. It wasn't nearly enough to get the troops up to comparable numbers, much less comparable strength. By 1867, troops fought semi-nude for lack of supplies. And lest they not win under these conditions, Lopez would off them himself. "Conquer or die" was the motto, the threat, and the promise.
Meanwhile, what troops remained kept getting pushed north and north and north into the jungle, where in 1870 Brazilian troops finally picked off Lopez. And all it took to reach him was the death of a widely-varying estimate of Paraguay's total population that we'll peg here at 60%. Not just from war, but also food poisoning, poor adaptation to changing climates, and disease (both in general and from all the dead bodies laying around).
Argentina and Brazil spent most of the next decade squabbling over who got what parts of Paraguay. Argentina wanted to annex half of the country, Brazil wanted to leave it in place as a buffer zone and had a second standoff with Argentina to keep them from invading. Eventually, in 1878, they sought a mediator.
Namely, Rutherford B. Hayes. He gave both Argentina and Brazil chunks of land, but he permitted Paraguay to continue to exist. Paraguay was eternally grateful that they had not ceased to exist, and proceeded to plaster Hayes' name all over the country, something they still do today to the utter bewilderment of most Americans who get a good look at how Hayes is honored. As part of Hayes' Fabulous Paraguayan Hero Package, he has a soccer team named for him (which in turn managed to win a top-flight league title in 1952).
It's estimated that Hayes only spent a couple hours of his life on the matter; probably less time than I've spent on this article. The writing and vetting of the treaty were handled on the lower rungs of the diplomatic ladder and Hayes was merely handed something to look over and sign. Which largely, when you get technical, means he did only barely more than Bush did to get his statue. But he still signed a treaty nonetheless.
Either way, sometimes you just can't predict what your legacy's going to be.
There are others that will ignore the 41 men that came before Bush and compare him exclusively to Obama- generally favorably, and while asking the question 'miss him yet?'- but these people aren't even worth the hassle. And I've gone double-barreled on some pretty stupid things in my day.
Anyway. Why Bush? Why Bush of all the Presidents? Long story short, he was the one who showed up. Bush was the one who took time out of his schedule to roll into Fushe Kruje and say hi. Albania, despite everything America has done to go out of its way to inspire people to burn our Presidents in effigy as opposed to making statues of them, has a special affection for the United States for two reasons: first, they credit us with bringing them out of the Cold War era; and second, Albanians in Kosovo were under threat of Slobodan Milosevic and his "ethnic cleansing" campaign, and when we bombed Kosovo, we saved those Albanians.
Of course, all the events of consequence happened in the period between the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton administrations. All Bush did was go over and say hi as part of a multi-country trip. But since he did and the others didn't, he's the one that got the statue.
Bush's statue joins a rather eclectic list of foreign dedications to American presidents. Three of the others, one of which needs far more explanation than the others:
*Monrovia, Liberia, named for James Monroe in 1824, during his administration, as that is the point the country was "founded" by freed American slaves. As we've stated here, it didn't end well.
*A statue of Abraham Lincoln stands in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on a street also named for him. The statue stands as part of a trade with Mexico made in 1969, which in turn is the reason Washington DC has a statue of Benito Juarez, that city's namesake. The two were the respective heads of state during the Civil War and were on good terms with each other. Juarez is held in similarly high regard in Mexico.
*Rutherford B. Hayes has a Paraguayan soccer club named for him, called Presidente Hayes. Americans know Hayes largely as the guy who stole the Presidency from Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election.
Not long beforehand, Paraguay was being led by a man named Francisco Solano Lopez. Lopez was watching a conflict unfold between Brazil and Uruguay. Since Uruguay's 1830 independence, that nation had been seeing shaky internal relations that would eventually gel into the two major factions at the time, the Colorados and the Blancos. This conflict spilled over into Brazil, damaging Brazilian farmland. In 1864, Brazil demanded restitution. Uruguay refused.
Brazil invaded, on the side of the Colorados. Argentina was unhappy with this and joined in the war; they supported the Blancos. Brazil won and installed a Colorado government, dismaying Lopez. Uruguay was an ally of Paraguay. He at this point requested to move Paraguayan troops through Argentina so he could join in as well. Argentina told him no; the war was over and there wasn't really any point anymore.
He did it anyway. In fact, he attacked Argentina. According to the book Stupid Wars by Ed Strosser and Michael Prince, Paraguay sacked the city of Corrientes without so much as a declaration of war. This got all three countries angry at Paraguay: Argentina for blindingly obvious reasons, Brazil because he was in support of the Blancos, and Uruguay because it was now a Brazilian puppet state. Cue what became known as the War of the Triple Alliance, in which it was Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
Paraguay, after a couple initial victories against the Argentinians, ran up against the much hardier Brazilian forces. Here, Paraguay's luck turned. It wouldn't stop turning for the next six years. Lopez's forces took battering after battering after battering, but he kept throwing more and more troops into the grinder. At one point in 1865 a draft was held, conscripting boys as young as ten years old and men as old as 60. It wasn't nearly enough to get the troops up to comparable numbers, much less comparable strength. By 1867, troops fought semi-nude for lack of supplies. And lest they not win under these conditions, Lopez would off them himself. "Conquer or die" was the motto, the threat, and the promise.
Meanwhile, what troops remained kept getting pushed north and north and north into the jungle, where in 1870 Brazilian troops finally picked off Lopez. And all it took to reach him was the death of a widely-varying estimate of Paraguay's total population that we'll peg here at 60%. Not just from war, but also food poisoning, poor adaptation to changing climates, and disease (both in general and from all the dead bodies laying around).
Argentina and Brazil spent most of the next decade squabbling over who got what parts of Paraguay. Argentina wanted to annex half of the country, Brazil wanted to leave it in place as a buffer zone and had a second standoff with Argentina to keep them from invading. Eventually, in 1878, they sought a mediator.
Namely, Rutherford B. Hayes. He gave both Argentina and Brazil chunks of land, but he permitted Paraguay to continue to exist. Paraguay was eternally grateful that they had not ceased to exist, and proceeded to plaster Hayes' name all over the country, something they still do today to the utter bewilderment of most Americans who get a good look at how Hayes is honored. As part of Hayes' Fabulous Paraguayan Hero Package, he has a soccer team named for him (which in turn managed to win a top-flight league title in 1952).
It's estimated that Hayes only spent a couple hours of his life on the matter; probably less time than I've spent on this article. The writing and vetting of the treaty were handled on the lower rungs of the diplomatic ladder and Hayes was merely handed something to look over and sign. Which largely, when you get technical, means he did only barely more than Bush did to get his statue. But he still signed a treaty nonetheless.
Either way, sometimes you just can't predict what your legacy's going to be.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Unauthorized Life Story
On Tuesday, Kentucky Fried Chicken launched colonelsanders.com, a website dedicated to collecting stories about the life of, well, Colonel Harlan Sanders. Sanders, of course, was the founder of KFC and the man who came up with the 11-herbs-and-spices recipe.
Sanders died in 1980, so it's on KFC to gather up stories and documentation about him. Granted, being KFC, you probably are not going to get the unvarnished account, just story after story about how great and nice and occasionally funny he was.
Now, KFC maintains that the site is about preserving Sanders' life story and not about just selling chicken. I find that rather hard to believe. But just in case, I offer this story.
Sanders sold his interest in KFC in 1964 for $2 million to John Brown and Jack Massey, but would spend the rest of his life as a spokesman inspecting restaurants personally right up until his death in 1980 at age 90.
Sanders wasn't to remain idle himself, however. After selling his interest on KFC, he and wife Claudia soon afterwards founded a new restaurant, Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky. And while his face would remain with KFC, the menu itself was now out of his control. This didn't sit well with Sanders, who sued the then-owners, the Heublein Corporation, for $122 million. First, they were preventing him from franchising the Dinner House. Second, they were putting his name on the new menu items. (They settled out of court, possibly out of embarrassment. Sanders was allowed to franchise and sell his recipe in the Dinner House.)
So what on KFC's menu did Sanders not like? The Extra Crispy recipe. The 'Original' recipe is called that for a reason. That's the Colonel's recipe, or at least the current version of it. Extra Crispy was introduced by Brown, who swiped the idea for a crispy recipe from one of Sanders' competitors, Church's Chicken. (Which, if you don't live in the South, you should know has a national franchise of its own these days, though only one place in Kentucky itself.)
Sanders was quite happy with the original recipe, thank you. He didn't like Extra Crispy. He hated it, in fact. Just hated it. In fact, he didn't like a lot of the new menu. He hated it so loudly and fervently, in fact, that KFC sued him back in 1978 for defamation. The case was dismissed because none of the claims were deemed sue-worthy.
Among Sanders' comments on the new menu:
If the aim of KFC is really just to tell Sanders' life story, and not to sell chicken, one would think this should be included.
I'm willing to bet it won't, though.
Sanders died in 1980, so it's on KFC to gather up stories and documentation about him. Granted, being KFC, you probably are not going to get the unvarnished account, just story after story about how great and nice and occasionally funny he was.
Now, KFC maintains that the site is about preserving Sanders' life story and not about just selling chicken. I find that rather hard to believe. But just in case, I offer this story.
Sanders sold his interest in KFC in 1964 for $2 million to John Brown and Jack Massey, but would spend the rest of his life as a spokesman inspecting restaurants personally right up until his death in 1980 at age 90.
Sanders wasn't to remain idle himself, however. After selling his interest on KFC, he and wife Claudia soon afterwards founded a new restaurant, Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky. And while his face would remain with KFC, the menu itself was now out of his control. This didn't sit well with Sanders, who sued the then-owners, the Heublein Corporation, for $122 million. First, they were preventing him from franchising the Dinner House. Second, they were putting his name on the new menu items. (They settled out of court, possibly out of embarrassment. Sanders was allowed to franchise and sell his recipe in the Dinner House.)
So what on KFC's menu did Sanders not like? The Extra Crispy recipe. The 'Original' recipe is called that for a reason. That's the Colonel's recipe, or at least the current version of it. Extra Crispy was introduced by Brown, who swiped the idea for a crispy recipe from one of Sanders' competitors, Church's Chicken. (Which, if you don't live in the South, you should know has a national franchise of its own these days, though only one place in Kentucky itself.)
Sanders was quite happy with the original recipe, thank you. He didn't like Extra Crispy. He hated it, in fact. Just hated it. In fact, he didn't like a lot of the new menu. He hated it so loudly and fervently, in fact, that KFC sued him back in 1978 for defamation. The case was dismissed because none of the claims were deemed sue-worthy.
Among Sanders' comments on the new menu:
"The stuff on the mashed potatoes, for instance.
"My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons and then they mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I've seen my mother make it.
"To the 'wallpaper paste' they add some sludge and sell it for 65 or 75 cents a pint. There's no nutrition in it and they ought not to be allowed to sell it.
"And another thing. That new crispy recipe is nothing in the world but a damn fried doughball stuck on some chicken."
If the aim of KFC is really just to tell Sanders' life story, and not to sell chicken, one would think this should be included.
I'm willing to bet it won't, though.
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