April 15, 1947

Jackie Robinson Makes His Major League Debut

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues.  Robinson debuted at second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers and won rookie-of-the year.  Robinson led the National League in batting in 1949, when he was named MVP, and was voted an All-Star from 1949 to 1954.  

I remember sitting in the upper deck at Milwaukee County Stadium with my dad in or before 1955 to watch the Braves play the Dodgers.  By that time the Dodgers had four other African Americans on their team: Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, Don Newcomb and Joe Black.  Junior Gilliam was one of my favorite players.  Campanella won the National League MVP award in 1951, 1953 and 1955 before a car crash in 1958 rendered him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

I had the baseball card pictured above.  My mom threw it and all my other baseball cards out my freshman year at UW-Madison.

President Lincoln Dies

On this day in 1865, President Lincoln died from a gunshot to the head the night before while attending “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater.  Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, who hoped Lincoln’s assassination would somehow turn the tide of the Civil War.  Booth had originally sought to kidnap Lincoln on March 20 and take him to the Confederate capital of Richmond but Lincoln failed to appear at the location where Booth and his conspirators lay in wait.  Although Richmond had fallen and Lee had surrendered during the interim, Booth hatched a second plot to kill the top leaders of the Union government.  At the same time that Lincoln was shot, Secretary of State Seward was shot in his home and seriously wounded.  Vice President Andrew Johnson was also supposed to be shot but his would-be assassin chickened out.

Today's Art of the Deal Part II

China Offers To Defend Kim Jong-un If He Gives Up His Nukes

But Trump may have discussed this over chocolate cake

WaPo Discovers the Art of the Deal

China is suddenly leaning on North Korea — and it might be thanks to Trump

But the media is primarily focused on Trump not classifying China as a currency manipulator

Chechens tell of prison beatings and electric shocks in anti-gay purge: ‘They called us animals’

Up to several hundred gay men are feared to have been rounded up and some killed in ultra-conservative Russian republic

The Guardian

Dilbert on the US and Russian Relationship

In the second dimension, things look bad.  In the third dimension, the opposite.

Maybe Stephen Cohen isn't right

Trump to Isis: You kill one of our Green Berets and we'll drop the Mother of All Bombs on you

I think Isis will get the message

Fort Sumter Falls to the Confederates

 On this day in 1861, Ft. Sumter fell to the Confederate Army after a 30 hour shelling that produced no fatalities other than a Confederate horse felled by an errant Union cannon shot.  The first shot of the Civil War was fired by secessionist and slaveholder Edmund Ruffin.  The first shot by Union forces was fired by Captain Abner Doubleday.  Although there were no human fatalities during the battle, a Union soldier was killed when his gun exploded in his hands as he attempted to fire the 47th shot in the 100-gun salute allowed the Union Army by the Confederates before the Union army abandoned the fort.  Ruffin survived the war but killed himself after Lee’s surrender because he did not want to live under “Yankee rule.”

Althouse Rips Greenhouse/NYT "The Supreme Court is Broken" 

It isn't in Flyover America

The Dems refuse to acknowledge that Trump made SCOTUS a successful campaign issue by publishing his list of possible appointee and Hillary failed to respond

Greenhouse writes: 

Going forward, it will be next to impossible for people to look at decisions that may appear on the Republican Party’s agenda — on voting rights, as a prime example — without seeing the Supreme Court as a partisan tool....

That's true, if by "people," you mean the coastal elite of the United States and partisan Democrats in the Blue Islands of Flyover America.

But I think it's easily possible for many Americans to see the Supreme Court as a legitimate, independent branch — and not in spite of but because of the election. The death of Antonin Scalia, less than a year before the presidential election, made what we want from the Court a big issue in the campaign. Denying the outgoing President his choice gave Americans our choice. What sort of person belongs on the Court? Candidate Trump committed to a list of names, and Hillary Clinton had endless opportunities to criticize his choices and offer her own, and the people voted. It seems to have been the decisive issue for many of us. The kind of Justices Trump promised to nominate — and Gorsuch was known and named — are what Americans think belongs on the Court.

Will the Democrats' and NeoCons' Insistence that Russia Interfered in the Presidential Election Cause a War with Russia?

'Words Are Also Deeds’: Unverified Stories and the Growing Risk of War With Russia

The US narratives for which there are as of yet no facts could lead to direct military conflict between Washington and Moscow.

Article by Stephen F. Cohen/The Nation

Dilbert on Trump's Reframing of the North Korea Problem

Plus Trump's promotion from Hitler to incompetent to "effective but some of us don't like what he is doing"

The media just don't seem to get this North Korea play

His Father Coined the Phrase "On, Wisconsin!"

President Truman Fires Gen. MacArthur

On this day in 1951, Democrat President Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur and set off a public outcry.  MacArthur had saved South Korea from the North’s attempted invasion through a series of brilliant military tactics and then attacked North Korea to wipe out the communist regime.  Truman was concerned the Chinese would join the fight on behalf of North Korea but MacArthur assured Truman this would not happen.  Shortly afterward, 100,000s of thousands of Chinese troops entered North Korea, joined the fight against the U.S., and drove the American forces back into South Korea.  MacArthur asked for permission to bomb China and invade it using Nationalist Chinese troops.  Truman refused MacArthur’s request and instead fired him saying he wanted to keep the Korean conflict a “limited war.”  MacArthur returned home to a hero’s welcome and gave his famous speech to Congress in which he said, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

Douglas MacArthur was the son of Arthur MacArthur, who won the Medal of Honor at the age of 19 for his bravery during the Battle of Missionary Ridge outside Chattanooga when young Arthur charged to the summit at a critical phase in the battle, planted the regimental flag, and shouted “On, Wisconsin”.

From National Review

The Russian Stooge

The Dems and Media Want You to Forget Obama's Record

The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Kremlin succeeded in infiltrating the U.S. government at the highest levels.  

How else to explain a newly elected president looking the other way after an act of Russian aggression? Agreeing to a farcically one-sided nuclear deal? Mercilessly mocking the idea that Russia represents our foremost geopolitical foe? Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia? Diminishing our defenses and pursuing a Moscow-friendly policy of hostility to fossil fuels? 

All of these items, of course, refer to things said or done by President Barack Obama.

They missed a few things

FDR's War Against the Press

Franklin Roosevelt had his own Breitbart, and radio was his Twitter.

 

You mean this stuff isn't new?

From Pat Buchanan, the man who presaged Donald Trump

Is Trump Enlisting in the War Party?

By firing off five dozen Tomahawk missiles at a military airfield, our “America First” president may have plunged us into another Middle East war that his countrymen do not want to fight.

Are we certain Assad personally ordered a gas attack on civilians?

For it makes no sense. Why would Assad, who is winning the war and had been told America was no longer demanding his removal, order a nerve gas attack on children, certain to ignite America’s rage, for no military gain?

From one of my fellow crusty old farts

Ancient Village Discovered on Canada's West Coast Predates the Pyramids

Evidence suggests it is 14,000 years old and dates back to the last ice age

An ancient archeological find on Triquet Island on B.C.’s Central Coast is adding credence to the oral histories of the Heiltsuk Nation. 

“Heiltsuk oral history talks of a strip of land in that area where the excavation took place. It was a place that never froze during the ice age and it was a place where our ancestors flocked to for survival,” said William Housty, a member of Heiltsuk Nation. 

B.C. archaeologists have excavated a settlement in the area — in traditional Heiltsuk Nation territory — and dated it to 14,000 years ago, during the last ice age where glaciers covered much of North America. 

“This find is very important because it reaffirms a lot of the history that our people have been talking about for thousands of years,” Housty said.

 I love those ancient myths

From one of my two favorite economists: Gary Shilling

A Sober Look at the Near Term Future of the U.S. Housing Market

Shilling is great at seeing the big picture

Americans are Increasingly Self-Segregating Themselves on the Basis of their Political Views

Charlie Cook's Analysis

The Exodus from Egypt is nearly complete

Only 18 Jews left in the country

You didn't hear this via the state run media

Lee Surrenders at Appomattox

April 9, 1865

On this day in history, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after getting trapped in Appomattox Valley.   The Confederate armies had been on the defensive for several weeks and Lee was trying to join forces with the Army of Tennessee, led by Joseph Eggleston Johnston, the great grandfather of my next door neighbor in Gulf Shores.  In a little known coincidence, Lee’s surrender occurred in the living room of Wilmer McLean, who had converted Appomattox Courthouse into his new home.  Years before McLean had left his original home because the first battle of the Civil War had been fought in his front yard along the banks of Bull Run.  After the surrender, Union soldiers took almost all of the furniture and other artifacts from McLean’s home to save as mementoes.  McLean commissioned the print above in what turned out to be a failed attempt to recover his losses.  While Lee’s surrender brought an effective end to the Civil War, other Confederate generals fought on, including Confederate General Johnston, who surrendered a few weeks later.