The Chinese Premier Xi Linping is headed to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Trump. Or according to the left, Trump is taking yet another vacation and shirking his duties while coincidentally being at the same place as the Chinese leader. Also, Russia.
Or that “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” was originally recorded by T. Rex, short for Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is a type of dinosaur, much like the entire concept of a “supergroup” or “Duran Duran?”
Or that Duran Duran took its name from Barbarella, a movie released two full years before the 1971 debut of “Get It On (Bang a Gong)?”
Or that Marc Bolan, leader singer of T. Rex and the writer of “Get It On (Bang a Gong),” died while a passenger in a Mini 1275GT, a car featured nowhere in the video for The Power Station’s 1985 hit cover of “Get It On (Bang a Gong)?”
Or that an anagram* for acronym for “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” is BAGGIO, the name of an Italian former professional soccerball player Dino Baggio, who was born in 1971, the same year that “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” was a hit for T. Rex? And that “dino” is a common short way of saying “dinosaur,” of which I will remind you T. Rex was a type of?
I think, given all these facts, any reasonable person can only conclude that 9/11 never happened.
*As pointed out by the quick-witted and handsome Florida Man
Happy Wednesday! I have many fewer boxes in my house and in a much better mood. Also, the pool refinishers aren’t going to rape me with STEVE SMITH’s dick, so its a good day!
It looks like Susan Rice will be playing Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius to Trump’s Roadrunner in the 2nd go-around of Republican presidents are dangerous morons who keep not losing to the Democrats.
But then again, Steve Bannon just got the boot from the NSC, and took a dig at the aforementioned Ms. Rice on his way out. And Rick Perry is in? Will he bring his famously sharp memory to bear on issues of National Security? Who knows, but at least we’ll know who the leaker isn’t.
Gorsuch edited an article that might have plagiarized some information once. HuffPo asked, “Why do Republicans keep nominating people accused of plagiarism?” Although the plagiarism accusations are (a) always leveled after and (b) not as serious as Joe Biden’s.
On October 7, 1873, the new American ambassador to Japan met emperor Mutsuhito and showed his credentials.
A high-level Japanese delegation, headed by Iwakura Tomomi, the minister responsible for foreign affairs, had in the previous month returned from a lengthy foreign journey, which had included the United States. The Iwakura Mission had sought to alert the West to Japan’s complaints about the “unequal treaties” forced on the country under the prior Japanese regime, the Shogunate.
After the United States “opened up” Japan in 1853-54, the U.S. and several European powers had negotiated treaties with the Shogun’s regime. Many Japanese patriots considered the treaties to be unfair and humiliating. In the 1860s, Japan went through a civil war. The victorious faction had overthrown the Shogunate and established the “Meiji Restoration” regime in 1868. The Meiji government, which ruled in the Emperor’s name, believed its predecessor had been too weak in the face of foreign pressure.
The new American minister plenipotentiary would adopt a conciliatory approach regarding Japan’s grievances.
John Armor Bingham
John A. Bingham was a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the local leaders of Bingham’s own Republican party had denied him renomination the previous year. Bingham had left Congress under something of a cloud. He’d had dubious dealings with the crooked Crédit Mobilier company, and on his way out the door he joined his Congressional colleagues in voting themselves a retroactive pay increase (known as the “Salary Grab”). But despite some grumbling, the Grant administration and the Senate had approved him as minister to Japan.
Bingham had once been an important legislator and prosecutor when America, like Japan, was enduring civil strife in the 1860s. Bingham supported laws to conscript men, suspend habeas corpus, and to take other steps allegedly needed to win the war. During a two-year interval after he had been rejected by the voters in the Democratic surge of 1862, Bingham served as a military prosecutor. His cases included the controversial court-martial of Surgeon General William A. Hammond during the war, and the also-controversial military trial of the alleged Lincoln assassination conspirators at the war’s end.
Accused of violating the Bill of Rights with his wartime actions, Bingham replied that in the dire emergency posed by the war, civil liberties would have to be set aside.
Bingham’s constituents sent him back to the House in time for him to serve in the postwar Congress as it grappled with Reconstruction. Bingham seemed to have been chastened by his defeat in 1862 – a believer in equal rights, he’d been reminded that he could only go so far ahead of his white racist constituents. He began showing comparative caution on race – at least he was cautious in comparison to Thaddeus Stevens, whose unswerving commitment to racial equality, combined with his anger at the ex-Confederates, earned him the title “Radical.”
Thaddeus Stevens
Re-elected in 1864, Bingham became a member of the powerful committee on Reconstruction when Congress started its postwar deliberations in December 1865. Bingham wanted to keep military rule in the occupied South until the former Confederate states adopted a new constitutional amendment – the Fourteenth. Bingham would at first be content with that, without obliging the states to enfranchise the former slaves. But Bingham, and Congress, ultimately decided that the defeated Southern states would have to reorganize themselves with governments chosen by black and white voters, in addition to ratifying the new Amendment. After taking these steps, the rebellious states would be restored to the Union.
Bingham helped shape the Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its provisions about civil liberties (Sections One and Five), as expressed in language about the privileges and immunities of citizens, due process, and equal protection. Section One was “the spirit of Christianity embodied in your legislation,” Bingham assured his constituents. Concerning the evils which the amendment would prevent, Bingham said:
Hereafter the American people can not have peace, if, as in the past, states are permitted to take away the freedom of speech, and to condemn men, as felons, to the penitentiary for teaching their fellow men that there is a hereafter, and a reward for those who learn to do well.
In this and other remarks, Bingham suggested that the Fourteenth Amendment provided federal enforcement to the Bill of Rights in the states. At one point, Bingham suggested that the 1833 decision in Barron v. Baltimorehad simply denied that the feds could enforce the Bill of Rights in the states – the Court had not denied that the states were bound by the Bill of Rights. The Fourteenth Amendment would arm the federal government with the needed enforcement tools.
The Supreme Court indicated that it might ruin everything by requiring civil trials for subversive elements in the ex-Confederacy. To ensure that the U. S. military could punish ex-Confederate obstructionists without a jury trial, Bingham helped strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction in those sorts of cases. The Supreme Court acquiesced. Bingham thought it would be time enough to allow full constitutional rights after the South had accepted the terms of Congressional Reconstruction.
When President Andrew Johnson tried to obstruct the Congressional Reconstruction program, the House impeached him. Bingham was one of the “managers” (prosecutors) in the impeachment trial, which ended with the Senate acquitting Johnson with a nailbiting margin of one vote.
With the former slaves enfranchised and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified, Congress readmitted the former Confederate states into the Union and restored civil government. Bingham kept an eye on the South, supporting the Fifteenth (voting rights) Amendment and pushing for a bill to prosecute white supremacist terrorists like the Klan. After the Klan prosecutions seemed to cripple that organization, the Reconstruction process, and the transition to a peacetime regime of full constitutional liberties, seemed complete.
Meanwhile, in the year Bingham arrived in Japan, the Japanese government took various reform and modernization measures with a view of catching up with the West. In 1873, the government, in an attempt to bolster its military, adopted conscription. Bingham would be familiar with conscription, which he pushed during the Civil War, but Japanese conscription was initiated in peacetime (though a dissident faction unsuccessfully pushed for a war in Korea in that same year).
1873 also marked Japan’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the legalization of the previously-banned religion of Christianity. Bingham would certainly have applauded the latter measure, even though many of the newly-legalized Christians were Catholics, not members of the zealous Presbyterian “Covenanter” denomination to which Bingham belonged. Around the same time that it made Christianity legal, the Japanese government was supervising the building of new shrines for the official Shinto religion, which focused its devotional energies on the Emperor.
As ambassador, Bingham tried to free Japan from the tentacles of the “unequal treaties”…
…agreeing in 1878 that the United States would renounce any rights under these treaties if the European powers could be induced to do so, too. Bingham wished to treat the Japanese government with respect instead of throwing his weight around and stomping through Tokyo like a giant fire-breathing lizard.
That lizard is YUUUGE!
In 1878, as Bingham was showing his willingness to get Japan out from the “unequal treaties,” the secretary to minister Iwakura Tomomi published a journal of the Iwakura Mission from a few years before. The secretary, Kume Kunitake, discussed the American part of the delegation’s journey in the first of his five volumes.
Japanese foreign minister Iwakura Tomomi with several key members of his delegation
The delegates were not exactly giddy as schoolgirls about their 1872 trip through the U. S….
What kind of image did you think I was going to put here?
They were not simply sightseers. As Kume’s official journal showed, the delegates wanted to find out what they could about the United States so that they could turn that information to good use in their own country. The publication of the journal in 1878 indicated that the Japanese public was expected to learn these lessons, too.
Readers of Kume’s journal learned that the delegation visited many Western and Northern states, with the visits to the ex-Confederacy limited to Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, VA. Perhaps they wanted to learn from the Civil War’s winners, not its losers. Delegation members studied the schools in Oakland, CA (“a famous educational centre in the western United States”), observed some Native Americans in Nevada (“Their features display the bone structure often seen among our own base people and outcasts”), visited Salt Lake City (“According to Mormon beliefs, if a man does not have at least seven wives he cannot enter Heaven”), visited Chicago in the wake of its recent fire (“said to have been the worst fire since the city was founded”), mixed sightseeing and diplomacy in Washington, D.C., where they reflected on the turbulence of the Presidential election (“Merchants forgot their calculations; women stayed their sewing needles in mid-stitch”), visited the naval academy in Annapolis, MD (“In America, women are not forbidden from entering government buildings”), went to see New York City’s Bible Society and YMCA (“We were suspicious of the tears of those who prayed before a man condemned to death for heresy, whom they acclaim as the son of a celestial king”), checked out West Point (“Those who fail are shamed before their relatives, but, on the other hand, this may serve as a spur to them”), and “attended a concert at the World Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival” in Boston (“Now the world is at peace, with not a speck of dust stirring”).
Kume’s journal frequently paused in its descriptions to inform the readers of the lessons the Japanese should learn from what was being described. After recounting how the delegates were able to hire an American company to ship packages to Japan, Kume added these reflections: “When Japanese merchants think of the West, they imagine some distant galaxy. When western merchants view the world, however, they see it as a single city. With that attitude, they cannot fail to prosper.” Recounting the death of Horace Greeley “of a broken heart” after he lost the Presidential election in 1872, Kume wrote: “This reveals how Westerners are willing to throw their whole heart into the pursuit of their convictions, and if they do not realise them, they are even willing to sacrifice their lives. Without such extreme virtue and endurance, it is hard to expect success in this world.”
Horace Greeley, before he died for honor
Kume’s account of the American Civil War also seemed to point to a moral for the Japanese to follow. After describing the strength of the proslavery forces before the war, Kume’s journal said: “Faced with such determination, the abolitionists looked into their hearts and fought harder.”
Kume described how, after the war, many black people had achieved success in business and politics, thus showing that skin color was unconnected to intelligence. After noting the surge in the establishment of black schools, Kume’s journal added: “It is not inconceivable that, within a decade or two, talented black people will rise and white people who do not study hard will fall by the wayside.” Kume was marking out a path to success for any people whom whites were trying to marginalize.
The North had won the American Civil War in the name of the supremacy of the federal government. But from the standpoint of centralized Japan, the U. S. still had broad respect for states’ rights: “With its own legislature, each state maintaining its autonomy and assumes the features of a genuine independent state within the federal union….the federal government derives its power from the states; the states are not created by the federal government.”
By 1878, when Japanese readers were reading about the lessons of the Iwakura Mission’s American travels, the U. S. had already dropped a notch or two since 1872 when it came to civil liberties. President Rutherford B. Hayes, to shore up support for his contested election victory, agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South at the very time that white terrorism was resuming against the former slaves. The Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, denying it the broad liberty-affirming meaning which Bingham had once attributed to it (the process had started with the Slaughterhouse decision shortly before Bingham departed for Japan in 1873).
To nationalists like Kume and his bosses in the Japanese government, civil liberties as such were not a concern. To them, Japan could not afford much Western-style individualism. As Bingham left his post in 1885 – removed from office by an incoming Democratic administration – Japanese leaders were preparing a Constitution which did not exactly embody Bingham’s vision of peacetime civil liberties. That constitution came out in 1889, and it centered political authority in the Emperor, not in the people. Civil liberties were generally subject to being restricted by law. The one similarity with Bingham’s ideas was a provision that the Emperor could operate without regard to constitutional rights during war or “national emergency.”
After his diplomatic service, Bingham told Americans that he was impressed by Japan’s Meiji leadership. Like Bismarck (and like himself, Bingham might have added), the Japanese rulers had centralized and modernized a great country. Bingham did worry about one thing – the propensity of the Japanese leadership for foreign aggression.
In his old age, Bingham fell into poverty and was apparently deteriorating mentally. His friends in Congress proposed to award him a Civil War pension based on his wartime service as a military prosecutor. To sweeten the pill for the now-resurgent Southern Democrats, Bingham’s supporters magnified his clashes with Thaddeus Stevens, whose memory the Southern leaders execrated. Bingham, the scourge of Southern “traitors,” became, in the feel-good glow of retrospect, an apostle of moderation and kindness to the white South. The pension bill was adopted. Bingham died in 1900 at age 85.
What rescued Bingham from comparative obscurity was the debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment – specifically, the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment required the states to obey the Bill of Rights – a doctrine known as “incorporation.” Supporters of incorporating the Bill of Rights portray Bingham as a James Madison figure who shaped the Fourteenth Amendment and whose vision was adopted by the people. Opponents of incorporation pay attention to Bingham for the purpose of minimizing his role or portraying him as legally ignorant.
One of Bingham’s key scholarly opponents was Raoul Berger, who referred to Bingham’s “sloppiness” in reasoning, and called him a “muddled thinker, given to the florid, windy rhetoric of a stump orator, liberally interspersed with invocations to the Deity.” Berger said Bingham was “utterly at sea as to the role of the Bill of Rights.”
Berger’s discussion of Bingham was included in his book Government by Judiciary, published in 1977. This book is a key event in the history of originalist Constitutional thought. The book took aim at key Warren Court’s decisions, in which the Court invoked the Fourteenth Amendment to justify remaking state laws regarding criminal justice, legislative apportionment, welfare rights, education, and so on. Berger presented evidence that the Fourteenth Amendment, if read according to intent of the framers of that amendment, did not achieve what the Warren court said it did.
Some of Berger’s claims proved highly contentious, even among his fellow originalists. For instance, Berger said that the Fourteenth Amendment was never meant to abolish segregated schools or to apply the Bill of Rights to the states.
Supporters of the Warren Court, the sort of folks who had loved Berger’s works on impeachment and executive privilege, took issue with Berger’s conclusions on the Fourteenth Amendment.
“We would like to address some disagreements we have with your work.”
Conservatives, on the other hand, liked Berger’s main points, and Berger’s book became the jumping-off point for the movement of legal originalism, which conservatives liked because it exposed the bad Supreme Court decisions they opposed as illegitimate.
Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwing Meese, took up the theme of originalism in the 1980s, including criticism of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.
Edwin Meese (center) in 1981 In 1989, Berger doubled down on his contention that the Fourteenth Amendment does not incorporate the Bill of Rights. Berger had even more epithets for Bingham – the Congressman was “[i]ntoxicated by his own rhetoric,” his “confused utterances must have confused his listeners,” he was wrong about Barron v. Baltimore.
To many originalists, who liked much of what Berger had to say, attacking the incorporation of the Bill of Rights (and attacking the Brown decision) represented a step too far. It was one thing to criticize made-up rights like welfare rights and the right to abortion, but there was nothing made-up about the Bill of Rights or about its applicability to the states.
Bill of Rights on left, bad Supreme Court precedents on right
Berger’s claim, briefly, was that the relevant provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment had been intended to validate the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law guaranteed that with respect to certain basic rights (like property ownership and access to the courts), all native-born citizens would have the same rights as white citizens. Thus, so long as the states had the same laws for black people as for white people, it didn’t matter whether they obeyed the Bill of Rights.
Berger’s opponents said, with John Bingham, that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to force the states to obey at least the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights, and maybe other rights of citizenship as well.
The debate continues.
“You’ve got your Bill of Rights in my Civil Rights Bill!” “You’ve got your Civil Rights Bill in my Bill of Rights!”
Berger, who had regarded himself as a good progressive, wasn’t sure he liked the praise he was getting from the likes of Ronald Reagan, but he did not back down, defending his work in speeches and numerous articles – and even in more books.
He died in 2000 at the age of 99.
Works Consulted
Raoul Berger, Death Penalties: The Supreme Court’s Obstacle Course. Harvard University Press, 1982.
___________, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
___________, Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Kume Kunitake (Chushichi Tsuzuki and R. Jules Young eds.), Japan Rising: The Iwakura Embassy to the USA and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U. S. – Japan Relations. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Gary L. McDowell, “The True Constitutionalist. Raoul Berger, 1901-2000: His Life and His Contribution to American Law and Politics.” The Times Literary Supplement, no. 5122 (May 25, 2001): 15.
Gerald N. Magliocca, American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment. New York: New York University Press, 2013.
Johnathan O’Neill, Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History.Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
“Raoul Berger, Whose Constitution Writings Helped To Sink Nixon,” Boston Globe, reprinted in Chicago Tribune, September 28, 2000, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-09-28/news/0009280256_1_executive-privilege-writings-constitutional
I have had a few requests for some of the recipes that I have posted in comments over the years so I thought putting them up here would be easier for any interested parties to find. After hearing about some of the cooking mistakes from the inexperienced and how some people are pressed for time, I thought it would be handy if I compressed/condensed the recipes and methods so that anyone can eat gourmet quality food with very little effort and time. I hope you all enjoy these immensely. Really good food can only make your life better. This is gourmet food for the non-gourmet chef.
Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, was famous for beginning his recipes with “First, you make a roux.” Justin knew what he was talking about.
I am going to give instructions on how to make a basic roux but I recommend buying your roux ready made from the grocery store. They are identical in taste and quality. The only disadvantage in buying roux is that the pre-made roux tends to settle on their way to your kitchen and can take some effort and time to stir back into a homogenous consistency. The only reason you should make your roux is if you can’t find any to buy or if you want a special roux made differently.
Practicing making a roux is easy, cheap, and doesn’t take long to master. Start with a warm skillet, a good whisk, and a pot set aside to put the roux in. Put equal parts white flour and oil into the skillet and whisk until there are no lumps. I have tried various flours and found that the best, by far, is plain bleached wheat flour. Any good vegetable oil will do. A quarter cup of flour and a quarter cup of oil will make plenty of roux for any large pot of whatever dish you are making.
Turn the heat up to medium-high and stir occasionally until you see the oil-flour mixture begin to boil. Begin whisking constantly. If it begins to smoke you have the heat too high. The constant stirring keeps any of the oil-flour mixture from sitting on the hot pan surface long enough to burn. Continue doing this until you see the flour start to brown. When it gets to the color of caramel you have made a light roux. You can remove the skillet from the heat now if a light roux was your goal. Because the pan and oil are still hot, it will continue to cook the flour for a short time and possibly brown it further. To prevent this, empty the pan into the cool pot you have set aside.
If you want a darker roux continue to cook and stir the roux until it reaches the color of milk chocolate. If you are really adventurous you can cook it to the color of dark chocolate but you run the risk of burning your roux.
The light roux will have less flavor and will thicken your dish, the darker roux will flavor your dish more and not thicken as much.
For taste you can experiment with different oils. I find that peanut and sesame oils have a much nuttier taste, lard is more hearty, and the various other vegetable oils are more generic but still satisfactory.
If you are worried about calorie counts, don’t be. A little roux goes a long way. The oil coats the flour granules and makes them more difficult to digest. The darker you make the roux, the more you cook it, the fewer calories there are to be digested.
Again, unless you are shooting for something unique like a sesame roux, it is much easier to buy your roux ready made. There are numerous brands of ready-made roux; they are all identical and as good as what you can make yourself. It only takes a few minutes to make a roux but having it ready made is a real time saver. Buy your roux. It is usually found in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store and is economical.
How to throw together a first class meal in fifteen minutes
1/4 – 1/3 cup of prepared dark roux. A light roux will do but a dark one is preferred
1 12oz to 16oz bag of frozen seasoning blend (onion, bell pepper, celery mixture)
6-8 chicken bouillon cubes
1 cap-full of Zataran’s liquid crab boil
1 teaspoon (less if you are a wimp) Cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon crushed garlic or 1 teaspoon powdered garlic
Dark chicken (8 boneless, skinless thighs or 4 leg quarters)
About 2 lbs of cajun sausage, sliced ¼ inch thick
6-8 cups of water – to cover the meats
If you are in a hurry you can simply throw all of these ingredients into a large stock pot cold, adding the water last to just cover the meats. Cover your pot and bring to a low boil for about one hour. There is no need to precook or mix anything. The boiling will do all of that for you. While it is boiling, an occasional poke with a spoon isn’t a bad idea. After you have turned the heat on you can start the rice, put away all of your ingredients, wash any dishes if there are any. (There shouldn’t be aside from the measuring spoons. All you needed to do was open packages, the pot is on the stove, and the stirring spoon is next to the pot on a trivet or spoon-rest.) When your significant other/others arrive all they will see is a clean kitchen, a boiling pot, and the air will be filled with the most delicious smell. Serve over rice.
– Get yourself a microwave rice cooker. It is a simple plastic pot with a snap-on lid and a vent. It only costs a couple of bucks. To make your rice, put two cups of water, one cup of rice (basmati is best), two chicken bouillon cubes, one and a half tablespoons of butter, and about one tablespoon of dried, sweet basil in the pot. Microwave on high for 15 minutes.
You can taste the rice but don’t let anyone else taste it before serving the meal. They will eat all of your rice right out of the cooker.
Lastly, while you are in the Cajun food section of the grocery store, keep your eyes peeled for gumbo file’. It is dried and finely ground sassafras leaves. After you have served your gumbo over rice you can sprinkle this over the top of your dish.
This is a perfect recipe for anyone who wants really good, authentic home-cooked meals but doesn’t have a lot of time. It is easy, fast, and doesn’t take a master chef. I am looking at you Commodius Spittoon. It is also a perfect recipe for any restaurant because it can be made in bulk in minimal time and sold by the bowl for a good profit. It will draw a large, hungry crowd, especially in cold weather. Trust me, they will keep coming back.
Michael Mann: Major Maniacal Moron. Seriously, this might me the most narcissistic person on the face of the planet not named Donald or Barack.
Many of the bids for the border wall have been submitted and are now being made public. Some of them are pretty interesting. Some of them are pretty nutty.
You know how a regular person can get a DUI even if they test out below the minimum BAC? Apparently a Chicagoland cop is immune from that even when he runs over and kills someone. Hell, even when he was said to be intoxicated by witnesses pre- and post-accident. Which reminds me: if you’re ever pulled over, don’t blow.
Of all the stories in the Bible, the story of Phineas is probably my favorite. It has it all: plague, badass gods, wizards, executions, intercourse, more executions, complete confusion, and random violence. It’s all about what ISIS wants to be when it grows up.
Phineas was the grandson of Aaron (who bore a striking resemblance to John Carradine), and thus the great nephew of Moses (who later became a spokesman for the NRA, but that’s a story for a different Bible). As a youth, he was distinguished by his zealotry, that being a euphemism for “crazed killer wrapping himself in religion.” He first comes to our attention with the Heresy of Peor.
The HoP was a bit of a complicated issue: it all started during the 40 Year Hike from Egypt to Israel with a wizard named Balaam. Balaam was hired by the King of Moab to curse the Jews. The King of Moab later went on to be the deputy chair of the DNC. Whatever, Balaam went up on a mountain (people seemed to do that a lot in those days) to do some sacrifices as part of the curse thing, but in a senior moment, he accidentally blessed the Jews. Don’t ask.
Anyway, realizing his mistake, he went back to the King and said, “This cursing shit is all well and good, but if you really want to stick it to Yahweh, what you need to do is get some pussy involved. The women you’ve got here, they’re some pretty fine shiksas, and Jew men cannot resist the lure of the shiksa. That’ll put ’em on Team Baal Peor!” The King thought that this seemed to be a pretty good idea. And what do you know, pretty soon, the Jews were banging Moabite women and worshiping Moabite gods (“Hey, bow down to Baal Peor or no nookie tonight!”).
This pissed off Yahweh something fierce, so he instructed Moses to grab the ringleaders and hang them, which he did with a combination of dispatch, glee, and rope. Now here’s where things get confusing: everyone was worried about the Moabites, but suddenly, the worry is about the Midianites. No explanation beyond, “Well, both names start with the letter mem.” OK, they didn’t even explain THAT much. Maybe it was just shitty copy editing when the Bible got assembled. But whatever, Jew men will fuck anything that’s not wearing a mezuzah and a sheitel, so who cares, bring on the Midianite babes!
Further confusion: apparently the still unmollified Yahweh started a plague which killed like 24,000 Jews, but no one seemed to think that this was worth writing down. Or they were scared to, because a pissed off Yahweh is not a good thing if you want to remain plague-free. Enter Phineas. He found out that there was a VIP from the tribe of Simeon named Zimri, who had a hankering for the strange. Zimri picked up a Midianite woman named Cozbi (or Cosby, which would be fitting) and took her back to the tent for some special desert hummina-hummina. I assume that, being experienced desert wanderers, they had worked out a system to avoid sand in the vagina, but the Bible is rather quiet about those details.
Phineas went to the Love Tent and saw Zimri and Cosby going at it like crazed weasels. Moses knew that this was an issue, but seemed hesitant to act. So Phineas, being a doer and not just a thinker, did what any of us would do in the same situation: he took his spear (which he had snuck past the Hebrew version of TSA, disguising it as a cane) and ran it through both of them. One of the disadvantages of the missionary position is that it really takes only one good spear thrust for both participants to die, but in the heat of the moment, they hadn’t really given this much thought, despite knowing that the homicidal nutbag Phineas was out and about. Phineas, being a lifter stud on the order of Warty, then used the spear as a bar, Cosby and Zimri as plates, deadlifted them, and carried them out of the tent.
Now with Jew-Midianite shishkabob on the menu, Yahweh smiled and stopped that plague that no-one wanted to mention. Phineas got onto the promotion track, pulled together an army, killed a shitload of Midianites, managed to pull this off with no Jewish losses (if you don’t count the 24,000 Yids offed by Yahweh and the newly-ventilated Zimri), and eventually got promoted to High Priest.
Right you lot. I shan’t try to trick you with pics of hot dames. No, I am going for substance here! *turns red trying to hold in laughter* Oh, who the heck am I kidding. Enjoy (or not) these links of….stuff.
South America has seen something like this, in the recent past, has it not?
Gather round, young children, and I’ll tell you a tale. A tale full of treachery and intrigue, mighty heroes and dastardly villains, sung to the tune of the USA PATRIOT Act’s Section 326. A harrowing account of your intrepid author’s attempts to perform a simple act, made not-so-simple by the never-ending meddling of the federal government.
Over the last several weeks, it has been my sworn and sacred duty to set up a small business banking account for our Glibertarian enterprise. Setting up a bank account should, in theory, be an easy enough exercise. One waltzes into a bank; puts hands on hips in the lobby and demands in a loud, commanding voice, “Ho, there! I require the services of a money lender! Make haste, for I have pressing affairs to attend to with the apothecary upon the satisfactory conclusion of our business!”; gives some information; and deposits some money. That is precisely how things worked the last time I had to open a bank account.
Of course, preliminary research had to be conducted. Only one of us is actually made of money (I’ll let you try to guess who!), so the majority of my time was spent on the internet and over the phone with different institutions trying to find an actually free small business checking account. The majority advertise themselves as free, but once you get into the weeds a bit during the enrollment process, it turns out they are free only so long as you meet a variety of requirements, none of which are likely to occur with our current business model.
Pictured here: a banker
And yet, I persisted. Finally landing upon a local bank that, so far as I could tell, had actual, honest-to-Zardoz free small business checking, I gallantly sacrificed my entire lunch break to go speak with these generous merchants of monetary services. I walked into the lobby which, being the middle of a weekday, was largely empty. A thick-set manager in an off-the-rack suit quickly hurried over to me, vigorously shook my hand, and assured me that his underling would be able to attend to our needs. When asking what our business was, I explained that we run a website giving political and pop culture commentary. Why how wonderful! Did you know that the manager was a journalism major? It’s so important for there to be as many voices as possible giving great, down-the-line political commentary, to fight the nefarious tide of fake news!
Bolstered by his enthusiasm and feeling mightily proud of myself for helping to selflessly bring the hard, unvarnished truth to a grateful readership (though given some of the comments made during his rambling glad-handing, I suspect he would not have been so generous with praise if he knew the direction in which our political commentary flows), I sat down comfortably with his associate to begin the process.
Now, as you may or may not know, the leadership of our merry band is scattered across these United States. I explained that not only myself, but a handful of other individuals in various states would need to be signatories on this account. I thought this could be accomplished through digital signatures, faxes, etc. It is here that the first act closes, and the central conflict begins.
The banker looked at me with a nervous smile. “Is there any chance of your associates being able to come in to one of our branches?”
“None at all,” I replied, “and frankly I think it quite racist of you to ask*.”
“I’ll need to speak to my manager. Please excuse me for a moment.”
*thundering denunciation* “YES, YOU SPEAK WITH YOUR MASTER, VULGAR HIRELING, AND TELL HIM THAT I WOULD SPEAK WITH HIM FORTHWITH!”
Some five minutes pass in hushed consultation. There are no other customers in the bank. I nonchalantly begin to inspect the windows and doors at the edge of my vision, to plan my escape, if it turns out that my growing suspicions are true, and I have wondered into a clan of vampires or ghouls using a regional bank as a front to draw in potential victims.
Meaty Manager avalanches back across the room, with an exasperated look upon his reddened ground chuck face.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we’ll not be able to meet your needs.”
“Excuse me?” I replied, momentarily dumbstruck.
“It’s the PATRIOT Act, you see…” and he then begins to tell me of a curse that the Great Tribe has laid upon he and all his kind.
In 2001 of the Western reckoning of years, as many of you may recall, our great nation was paid a friendly visit by some rather motivated Mohammedans who, through a series of peculiar mishaps, wound up killing thousands of innocent people. The immediate and predictable response to this, was for our Federal Government, Beloved by All, to pass an enormous omnibus bill full of things like indefinite detention and a host of new regulations on a wide variety of industries. If they hated us for our freedom, we had found a most ingenious method by which to defuse their wrath – simply get rid of the offending freedoms.
Fox News graphic of PATRIOT ACT, heroically standing in front of the sigil of the glorious Department of Homeland Security
In this behemoth of a law lies section 326, dealing with the establishment of what is known as a Customer Identification Program. Now before establishing accounts, banks are required to, and held liable for, making strong efforts to establish the identify of their customers. The exact methods by which they do this are left up to the individual institutions. According to the text of the act itself, it sounds easy enough to perform using only legal documents. However, Meaty Manager explained to me that practically all banks, particularly those who are only regional players and who cannot afford to buy off entire branches of government, generally are held to much tighter restrictions by their compliance departments, lest they find themselves on the wrong end of a federal inquiry. And so, without having the opportunity to actually see each of the individuals face to face and have a chat with them, they simply could not pass muster using their bank’s particular CIP rules. There was no way, you see, for them to have faith that we were not drug dealers or terrorists (he mentioned those two professions explicitly, showing an interesting creep from Fighting Terrorism to Eh, the Tool is Already There, Might As Well Use It to Fight Drugs).
Gathering what dignity remained to me, I indignantly declared to him that such was foolishness in the age of internet business, and that surely a great catastrophe (in the form of lack of growth) would befall his institution if it continued in this folly. Meaty Manager could only smile and give me a Gallic shrug, as if to suggest that, if such were the vicissitudes of fate, then he would suffer what he must.
On my way out the door, Meaty Manager did offer one piece of parting advice. He suggested to consult with a bank whose reach extends across all the lands, so that there would be outposts near any person that we decided needed official access. Perhaps then, could their identities be properly ascertained to the King’s satisfaction.
Thoroughly demoralized at this point, your dogged author decided to follow the suited mound’s advice and talk to a big bank. And so, this past Saturday morn, I found myself in the lobby of a Major National Bank. After waiting for some time, I was finally introduced to Paul**, the small business banking representative. I explained to him right away the issue I had had previously, and he agreed it was an obstacle.
There followed two hours, and I am not kidding or engaging in hyperbole there, in which I was interrogated by Paul and his Manager (I was by now convinced that every man who works in a bank has the exact same physical build). I explained more than once what our business did. I showed them the site. I explained about the concept of the Internet, and how it came to be that many different people, only a few of whom have ever met in person, can reside in different states and still all have interest in a shared venture. I was asked more than once some questions that sounded suspiciously like they were going to lead to “gotcha!” moments had I answered differently, some about drugs and some about terrorism. It was, frankly, ludicrous.
I asked why I was being treated this way. Same story, different day: PATRIOT Act, section 326. We don’t Know you. How can we Know your compatriots when they aren’t even here? Was I aware how deeply suspicious this entire thing was? Why, did I know that some young dissidents have used otherwise seemingly innocuous websites to sell the Devil’s own concoctions? What nerve had I, to come in here proclaiming my own innocence, when all of my actions so clearly speak to the contrary!
I shall not bore you with further details; suffice to say that due to some stern negotiations and my resolve to not leave without a deal in hand, one hour after the bank closed, I left with a newly established account, and a series of addendums that I could mail to my compatriots that which, upon completion in front of a notary, would then suffice to establish identity for banking purposes. You see, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s FAQ on the CIP allows for a bank to rely on the good offices of a third party for purposes of establishing identity. However, the bank is held responsible if the third party’s methods are found to be insufficient or unsound. As such, few banks are willing to take such a risk. However, when it comes to dislodging an agitated libertarian from your place of business after the automatically timed overhead lights have already extinguished, it appears they were willing to make an exception.
TL;DR version: apparently starting a small business with partners in different states is now considered to essentially be drug-running or terrorism related unless and until proven otherwise. This helps to preserve our freedom after 9/11. Be grateful the King is there to see all, and to protect us from the evils that lurk in the dark.
Production poster for The Patriot Two: After the Apocalypse.
All information used to write this article that was not gleaned from my personal experience was obtained here and here, if you want to ruin your Sunday afternoon reading through it. Having already done so, I wouldn’t recommend it.
*conversations may not have occurred precisely as recounted
**names have been changed to protect the barely competent
_-_panoramio.jpg "These treaties were a national calamari, I mean calamity")
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![[insert joke with Jar-Jar Binks accent here]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Troika_1981.jpg "[insert joke with Jar-Jar Binks accent here]")
Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, was famous for beginning his recipes with “First, you make a roux.” Justin knew what he was talking about.
1/4 – 1/3 cup of prepared dark roux. A light roux will do but a dark one is preferred
Phineas was the grandson of Aaron (who bore a striking resemblance to John Carradine), and thus the great nephew of Moses (who later became a spokesman for the NRA, but that’s a story for a different Bible). As a youth, he was distinguished by his zealotry, that being a euphemism for “crazed killer wrapping himself in religion.” He first comes to our attention with the Heresy of Peor.
