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Right Angle: Backstage (09-13-2022)

A meeting of three of the most noteworthy minds of our era…has been unfortunately rescheduled. In its place, we bring you this.

Right Angle: Backstage (09-13-2022)

A meeting of three of the most noteworthy minds of our era…has been unfortunately rescheduled. In its place, we bring you this.

30 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (09-13-2022)”

I remember the very first time our office allowed wearing jeans on Fridays. I went in with my usual jacket, tie, and slacks. When my supervisor asked why I wasn’t in jeans, I told him, “I forgot it was ‘Dress Like A Slob Day.'” LOL Knowing me, he just shook his head.

My big brother was the RS-68 project manager. It is the RS-68 produced by Boeing Aerospace in the early 2000s that powered the Shuttles at the end of the program. There’s also a model of an RS-68 mounted outside the California Dreamin’ ride at Disney’s California Adventure park–they use it as a mister to cool those in the queue. Big bro commented: “Obviously a catastrophic failure of the manifold..” as he saw the mist plume appear.

I don’t know if they still do things this way but the Marines have strict rules about wearing a hat, which we call a ‘cover’, indoors. If you wore your cover indoors that means you are in a state known as “under arms”. Generally that means you’re also carrying a weapon but it doesn’t have to. There’s a thing called a “Duty Belt” that also carries the connotation of being under arms.

So when you exited a building and went outdoors you put your cover on to protect your mostly shaved head from the sun. When you entered a building you removed your cover because it was no longer needed and you were not under arms.

Marines don’t tip their cover to anyone as a sign of respect. We salute. In the Marines it is mandatory to salute officer ranks under all circumstances but … We also salute other enlisted ranks as a sign of respect and/or friendship. If I happened across a good friend outdoors after chow I would salute him and he me.

After a while all these things become ingrained habit.

So when I was not in uniform and wearing civilian clothes I would still wear a hat (often but not always a Stetson) outdoors and remove it indoors. It’s not appropriate to salute while wearing civvies so I would touch the brim of my hat and briefly tip it as a sort of placeholder for a salute. This was just habit for me, I didn’t even think about it.

40 some odd years ago the woman who would become my first wife “brought me home to meet the family”. As I entered my future in-laws home while being introduced to my future mother-in-law I briefly tipped my hat by the brim before grabbing it by the crown and removing it.

Later after we were married my wife told me that had greatly impressed my mother-in-law because “he tips his hat to a lady, no one ever does that anymore”. I didn’t even think about that at the time but in retrospect it was so.

Years later … A couple years ago I was coming home from town in my pickup truck when I saw a black lady off in the distance cross the road to her mailbox. As I pulled up to her I stopped, tipped my hat and motioned for her to proceed and I would wait for her. From the beaming smile on her face it was clear that I had genuinely made her day. There was nothing suspicious, guarded or in any way any thing but real joy on her face.

The lesson here is that manners are not wasted and when they become habit an opportunity to employ them to advantage is never missed. The world could do with a little more hat tipping.

I wonder how many of the people actually behind the Mermaid movie know about Hans C A? Could they think it was just a Disney story? I would not be surprised that 80% of the audience have never heard of him.

Regarding hats… I think some of that might go back to how women and girls dressed their hair and head. If you weren’t married you wore you hair this way, and when you were married, you covered your head… usually with a kerchief instead of a hat.
Also, with the hats… I would add ties, cuff links, pocket kerchiefs and handkerchiefs.
I think the clothing styles, like language, indicate a person’s respect for themselves as much as others. We’ve lost a lot of that, as a society, and I think that is a symptom of some kind of societal ill.

Bill, I just finished watching Altered Carbon (Season 1) for the third time–clearly love the show. Two female heroes–Quellquest Falconer (a black woman) and Lieutenant Ortega (Latina). Very diverse cast of great characters–no one cares about their race.

I’m an American through and through but an American of Danish extraction and Danish culture. I come from an area in Minnesota that was settled by Danes who didn’t mind the cold and the snow because it was so much like the place they left in Denmark. My ancestors were poor tenant farmers who could never own land in Denmark and so moved to America to own their own farms. My Great Grandfather poring over plat maps of his homestead and the surrounding area discovered 40 acres adjacent to his farm that had never been claimed. He rode a horse on a two week journey across Minnesota to file a claim on that land.

That area is so concentrated in Danish settlement that the city I was born in has a mermaid statue similar to the one in Copenhagen Harbor. I have Royal Copenhagen porcelain objects depicting the Copenhagen Harbor statue that belonged to my Grandmother. As a child I was read, repeatedly, every single one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. These fairy tales are as familiar to Danes as The Brothers Grimm fairy tales are to a German.

I have skin in this fight.

Danes do not come from Africa or even Southern Europe. We are not black or brown. We just aren’t. In fact one night sitting in a bar in the city I mentioned above not far from the Little Mermaid statue as an adult I took out my calculator and tabulated the number of blondes of both sexes present. That was a long time ago and I can’t remember the exact proportion now but I distinctly recall it was over 80%.

I’m offended that a studio would cast the Little Mermaid character in any form other than as Hans Christian Andersen conceived her. It’s a Danish story and a Danish character.

It’s not OK to steal my heritage to make some woke virtue signal point. If you want your culture respected then you have to respect other cultures too.

Which makes me think that CRT and all this woke nonsense is actually intended to cause resentment of black people by white and other people. How better to create a harmful backlash against another race than by putting a single race on a pedestal and encouraging its members to act like they are for any reason better than any other race? This is pure racism. This is the cultural appropriation those people condemn us for.

Ask yourself if there is any real difference between a wealthy white 18th or 19th Century slaveholder who claims black people are incapable of being educated and a wealthy white 21st Century politician claiming that black people are too inherently ignorant to be able to secure some sort of photo identification? Both claims are based on the same premise.

Historical racists believed that blacks were less than human, less intelligent and prone to criminality. Why is this any different than today’s Democrat Party? Is claiming a desire to help the people Democrats hold as inferior any less racist than any given Southern plantation owner who held slaves ante bellum? The methods have morphed for political expediency but the underlying, continuing racism remains unchanged. The Democrats pre-Civil War kept their thralls on cotton plantations, the Democrat Party of the 21st century keep their thralls on vote plantations. It’s the same thing but is it intentional or is it just misguided?

The fact that this stuff is championed by Democrats, historically slave holders and racists, amplifies my suspicions regarding intent. We know that the Democrat Party makes a practice of accusing others of what it is doing itself. We know that the Democrat Party is the party of historical racism and continues its racist practices to this day. These things are obvious.

It’s certainly not Ok with me for such people to hijack my heritage and my culture for their own political gain. That’s no more OK than casting someone like me as a King of Ancient Zimbabwe.

Ask yourself if there is any real difference between a wealthy white 18th or 19th Century slaveholder who claims black people are incapable of being educated and a wealthy white 21st Century politician claiming that black people are too inherently ignorant to be able to secure some sort of photo identification? Both claims are based on the same premise.

This is something I’ve also thought.
All of the lawyers and activists could have helped anyone unable (by time due to work schedule, skill or monetary ability) to obtain any birth certificate or other paperwork required for a state photo ID and still have lots of money left over compared to the lawsuits, TV ads and other trouble they’ve caused. Those cases are so rare that the cost would be minimal. At most 30 minutes trying to find the web site for the clerk of courts where a person was born, and $20 for a replacement birth certificate.
If we could put a picture on WIC or SNAP (or whatever the name is these days) cards to prevent them from being stolen (*cough* sold for quick cash) then that could work as a state ID as well as let them buy the booze they can’t without an ID.
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I wonder how many of the people actually behind the Mermaid movie know about Hans C A? Could they think it was just a Disney story? I would not be surprised that 80% of the audience have never heard of him.

I can’t remember the details but Ted Cruz related on his Verdict podcast that Texas made some provision for getting people an ID along with a free ride to the DMV or other government agency and back home again so they could pick that up.

In the entire state of Texas there were something like 20 people who used that system to get a legal ID to vote with.

Clearly this is not some sort of huge demographic in crisis being denied their voting rights because they can’t get an ID. I’d be happy to see a Federal law requiring States to provide the same services that Texas does. That would negate the Democrat’s objection to voter ID.

So the Democrats would never let something like that happen.

Because this “Blacks are too poor/stupid/lazy/ignorant to get a legal picture ID” argument is a stalking-horse*, not a genuine issue.
(*stalking-horse, NOUN, Something serving to conceal plans; a fictitious reason that is concocted in order to conceal the real reason)

The Democrats must needs oppose any measures that solidly nail down the application of “One legal authorized voter = one legal legitimate verified vote”. If a system like that is put in place all the tricks, lies and cheating of the Democrat Political Machines across the nation will begin to implode. Ballot harvesting, voter fraud, and all the other ways they’ve learned to cheat vote counts over the decades and centuries will fail if that happens.

As you point out, if they really were concerned about the issue of voter IDs there are ways to be certain everyone who wants one can get one AND it wouldn’t take much because those people who find themselves in that position are fairly rare birds.

So Democrats are never going to go for that.

The really pathetic thing is that they use this as an issue to prevent such a system from being put in place. Which betrays their attitude towards black people. Republicans don’t think black people are too poor/stupid/lazy/ignorant to obtain a real ID with which to vote. Democrats take that as a given and use it as a political excuse to avoid negating their political machines. That they believe the issue is credible says all you need to know about what Democrats think of black people.

It is pure duplicitous fiction and as offensive to black people as the ‘n’ word. The Democrat policy in this regard boils down to … “Dumb ‘n’ words are too stupid to figure out how to get a voter ID so we can’t have voter IDs.”. Yet hypocritically these same people are not so dumb as to not be able to negotiate the paperwork for obtaining Democrat vote-buying entitlements.

At the very least, as you say, EBT cards should carry photos of the rightful beneficiary but if they do that it would become nearly impossible to sell those cards to get cash for drug money.

Those JWST images are not as wonderful as they want you to believe. Why aren’t they mentioning its irreparable damage it received? Those lens flares and artifacts in the lens flares are indicative of a bad camera. Most photographers recognize this failure.

F-35 unofficial nickname is “Fat Amy”. My daughter tells me this was a character in a series of (apparently) popular movies from the 20-teens with Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson (whose character was Fat Amy).

A guy campaigning out of his basement who can barely speak thinking he can win PA without a few million 10 Pm votes in Philly & Pitt? Nah, that’s too crazy a story to be plausible!

Yeah, as far as content goes it’s the biggest reason I subscribed. There’s also the fact that Bill and Co. are providing a vital service to our side and other things but BackStage is the one video I look forward most during the week. Backstage alone is worth the price of a subscription.

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