Politics Plus

Another late post.  I'll try harder tomorrow but I do have physio in the morning and my back is saying hooray!

Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:53 (average 5:07). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Fantasy Football

* Rank change shown is from week 12 – 13

Short Takes

Mother Jones — In early 1945, the federal government started to open the internment camps where it had held 120,000 Japanese Americans for much of World War II. Seven decades later, photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been tracking down the internees pictured in wartime images by photographers like Dorothea Lange (who photographed Kitagaki's own family—see below).

So far, he's identified more than 50 survivors, often reshooting them in the locations where they were originally photographed.

Seven-year-olds Helene Nakamoto Mihara (left, in top photo) and Mary Ann Yahiro (center) were photographed by Lange as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance outside their elementary school in San Francisco in 1942. Both were sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Yahiro (right, in bottom photo) was separated from her mother, who died in another camp. "I don't have bitterness like a lot of people might," she told Kitagaki.

Click through to read some of the personal stories of Japanese Americans interned in camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 07 December 1941.  Some never recovered from this forced internment.  In Canada, it was much the same as noted in Wikipedia :

Japanese Canadian Internment refers to the detainment of Japanese Canadians following the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong and Malaya and attack on Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent Canadian declaration of war on Japan during World War II. This forced relocation subjected Japanese Canadians to government-enforced curfews and interrogations, in addition to job and property losses.^[1] The internment of Japanese Canadians was deemed necessary by the federal Cabinetheaded by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, largely due to existing racism. This was done so, despite evidence supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Department of National Defence that this decision was unwarranted.^[2]

Beginning after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and lasting until 1949 (four years after World War II had ended) all persons of Japanese heritage were systematically removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps. The Canadian government shut down all Japanese-language newspapers, took possession of businesses and fishing boats, and effectively sold them. In order to fund the internment itself, vehicles, houses and personal belongings were also sold.^[1]

In August 1944, Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that Japanese Canadians were to move east into prisoner of war [POW] camps and internment camps as had been previously encouraged. The official policy stated that Japanese Canadians must move east of the Rocky Mountains or be repatriated to Japan following the end of the war.^[3] However, by 1947 many Japanese Canadians had been granted exemption to this enforced no-entry zone, and by 1949 legislation was enacted that allowed Japanese Canadians the right to vote provincially as well as federally, officially marking the end of internment.^[4]

One noted difference between the US and Canadian internments was the end date . . . in the US, internment ended in 1946, while in Canada the end was legislated in 1949.  The reason for the internment in both countries was blatant racism and not the declared "danger to society" used at the time.

If we listen to Republicans and the right wing nut jobs, the US will head down this path again.  As posted by TomCat today in his On the Edge–12/8/2015, Senator Jeff Merkley (D – Oregon) spoke elequently.

Daily Beast — The principle of “one person, one vote” sounds simple. But this week, the Supreme Court will hear a case that reveals how not-simple it really is, and how race lurks in the background of profound legal questions.

According to the Constitution, states determine how their state and local legislative districts are drawn. For more than a century, many were based on geography, which led some sparsely populated rural districts to have as much representation as cities.

That changed in 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Reynolds v. Sims, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution required districts to be based on population, not geography. “Legislators represent people, not trees,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren. And the Constitution requires that “the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.” The principle of “one person, one vote” was born.

I like Earl Warren's statement “Legislators represent people, not trees,”.  Considering that only citizens can vote, but all people within a district must live with the determination that voters make in that district, IMO, setting district boundaries by population is the correct method.  No method is 100% fair but Evenwel needs to get over it! Arguments are being heard Tuesday.  It will be interesting to see how the Roberts court rules.

The Hill — The top two Republican leaders in Congress on Tuesday denounced Donald Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States in a remarkable rebuke of the party’s presidential front-runner.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) collectively ripped the plan as unconstitutional, putting on stark display the rupture between the Republican establishment and Trump.

The fierce blowback from the GOP leaders was echoed by many rank-and-file Republican lawmakers — and did not go unnoticed.

It is about time that the Republican Party dealt with Trump.

Huffington Post — "However, by saying on Monday that all Muslims overseas, even U.S. citizens who are abroad for business or pleasure, will be refused re-entry to the United States, he would effectively deny them their citizenship rights," he [Max Paul Fiedman] wrote. "Like Jews in Germany, they would be rendered stateless."

The cover of the New York Dail News has Trump down to a tee.  Check out their front page on Huff Post.

My Universe — 

I am exceptionally late today as I didn't get home until 8:30 pm.  My student's eldest son has significant problems, not the least of which I believe is depression.  I spent over 3 hours talking with him and then more time talking with his mother.  She is going to try to get a doctor's appointment tomorrow to which I will go as well.  Please pray or keep the family in your prayers.  I am just about finished October's report and November's is partially complete.  I had hoped that they would be finished today but circumstances precluded that.  We had wind and heavy rain warnings on the weekend and again for tonight.  Let's hope there are no power interrupts like there were on the weekend . . . 43,000 homes without power at the height of the storm, some still without power this evening.

Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:52 (average 4:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes

The Atlantic — Coccidioidomycosis, also known as cocci, or valley fever, is a fungal disease endemic to the soils of the Southwest, in places like Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. In California, it’s rampant across the Central Valley, an area just slightly smaller than West Virginia that grows about a third of the country’s produce. About 30 percent of all valley fever cases nationwide occur in the Central Valley each year.

Valley fever has perplexed doctors and patients alike for more than a century. Symptoms range from mild fatigue to incapacitating, flesh-eating infections, and despite decades of research, advances in treatment and pushes to develop a vaccine have been painfully slow. There’s virtually no way to guard against inhaling the spores that cause valley fever, as most masks can’t filter out the microscopic dust particles that carry the spores through the air and into the lungs. …

… rates of valley fever are rising nationwide. Between 1998 and 2011, documented cases across the country increased steadily by about 15 percent annually, from just 2,000 infections in 1998 to more than 22,000 in 2011. In areas where the fungus is widespread, like Kern County, it’s statistically more probable to develop valley fever than hepatitis or chickenpox.  

Although The Atlantic article is from 08 August 2014, the video is from the current Mother Jones, and both are important when discussing the effects of climate change.  For example, California is suffering through a prolonged drought.  As a result, the soil is very dry, some becoming "dusty" which is where the Coccidioides fungus lives and gets blown about by the winds.  The CDC has more information about the disease.  Click through for the rest of the article.

Middle East Eye — In a July Haaretz article commemorating the first anniversary of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, which killed more than 2,250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 51 days, journalist Khaled Diab quotes Palestinian psychologist Hasan Zeyada of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme: “Gaza has endured multiple losses – what we call multi-traumatic losses. People in other places usually endure a single loss: the loss of a home, or a family member, or a job. Many Gazans have lost them all.”

And while Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is often the focus of discussions of the psychological repercussions of conflict, Diab summarises the observation by various experts that “talk of post- or pre-trauma is futile, since trauma is constant and ongoing”.

In addition to attending professionally to the victims of this Israeli-induced brand of eternal trauma, Dr. Zeyada is personally well acquainted with the phenomenon. Last August, the New York Times reported on his “challenging new patient: himself”. Six of the psychologist’s close family members, including his mother, had just been wiped out by an Israeli airstrike.

Operation Protective Edge came to an end on 26 August 2014. But the diagnosis of collective psychological suffering in the Palestinian coastal enclave is open-ended, and serves to compound the more tangible suffering that attends the regular Israeli release of large quantities of ordnance in the direction of human bodies.

This article, although written almost 6 months ago, remains just as germane today given the on going hostilities between Israel and Gaza. The video from The Nation is a followup to the killing of four boys from the Bakr family on the beach by Israeli bombardment back in August 2014.  If you don't remember the bombing on the beach, perhaps this will help you.  The raw emotion is palpable.  These young lives are changed forever, and not for the better.

Talking Points Memo — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened Monday that he may not attend CNN's next debate unless the network forks over $5 million, which the real estate mogul said would go to charity.

Trump pulled the stunt once before, demanding that CNN donate the proceeds from its September Republican presidential debate to a charity. The network didn't publicly comment on the request and Trump ultimately participated in the debate.

It is about time that someone called Trump on his bloviating narcissism.  Are you up to it CNN?  Who runs your business anyway?

My Universe —