The only person with a legitimate gripe about Jackson coming off the $20 is Peter Gammons.
— T.J. Quinn (@TJQuinnESPN) April 20, 2016
This is great:
Harriet Tubman is going to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, according to a report.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday, according to Politico.
Sources told the site that he has also decided to keep Alexander Hamilton on the front of the $10 bill.
Replacing a racist mass murderer with an abolitionist humanitarian and union spy is change I can believe in.
For the non sportsball people, Peter Gammons is a baseball writer/analyst who has an uncanny resemblance to Jackson.
Brachiator
I will gladly take the Tubmans off the hands of any racists who cannot stand having US currency with a black person on it.
Brett
Good to hear they’re replacing Jackson, although I’m still disappointed that it wasn’t Frances Perkins who replaced him. Perkins was probably the most important American woman in politics in the 20th century – she had a massive impact on labor law and relations as FDR’s Secretary of Labor (also first female Cabinet member), and drafted the Social Security Act.
schrodinger's cat
Thinking Housewife* has a sad about this.
*A cray cray blog that I check occasionally to figure what the fringiest right wing fringe is up to.
ET
Some how replacing of Jackson with Tubman seems karmic/poetic. Jackson is rolling over in his grave. I approve.
quakerinabasement
I will line up at the teller’s window the first day they’re available.
blueskies
Some of those comments at the NY Post article are very … much in line with what I expect at the Post. Glad that it appears that this is going to upset the assholes.
Betty Cracker
Yeah, but what’s not so great is that the new $20s won’t come out until 2030, according to a NYT report. I think it sucks that we have to wait another 14 years for a woman and black American to be featured on the front of a US bill because squeeing fans of a Broadway musical flipped out about the Hamilton replacement.
Linnaeus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Is that Darleen Whatshername’s blog?
schrodinger's cat
@Linnaeus:Not Darleen, this woman (?) calls herself Laura Wood.
BGinCHI
This is quite, quite pleasing. I hope it becomes a campaign issue.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I seriously doubt that Jack Lew is going to publicly announce that they’re going to put a woman on the $20 fourteen years after he announces it. Either the NYT article has bad information or there’s not going to be an announcement.
gvg
I am pleased, though since I think the reason the $10 was due to be revised was something about making it harder for counterfeiters so I suppose that is also important and means they should revise Hamilton and the $10 in some way to make that harder.
Why wait on the $20? When I worked in restaurants, the $20 was the most counterfeited.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat:
Wow. Wow wow wowowowowow.
Chyron HR
@Brachiator:
Well, nobody complains about having Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill even though he was really black…
MattF
@BGinCHI: And one may note that the winger proposal to replace FDR with St. Ronnie on the dime has died, at least for the present.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: From what I read in the NYT, the announcement will be that Hamilton is staying on the $10 and that the new design will incorporate figures from the women’s suffrage movement on the back and also that when the $20 is redesigned, Tubman will be on the front.
Mnemosyne
Besides, the Andrew Jackson musical wasn’t nearly as good, so he deserves to be shoved off the $20.
(That’s especially for Betty and, no, it’s not a joke. There was a recent musical that was pretty well-reviewed but didn’t do great at the box office.)
Smiling Mortician
@Betty Cracker: Politico (I know) says 2020, not 2030.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I’m more comfortable waiting until the actual announcement is made before I have a strong opinion about how Jack Lew is doing it wrong.
ETA: Yes, I read your link in the other thread, but you may want to repost it here so people know what we’re bickering about.
mike in dc
Great. As I suggested(tongue in cheek) on a previous thread: John Brown on the 10, Nat Turner on the 100, and General Sherman on a new dollar coin(with Atlanta burning on the flip side of the coin). Worth it just to hear the sound of white supremacists’ heads exploding.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Honestly, though, Hamilton deserves to be on currency a lot more than Jackson. Hamilton was, of course, first Treasury Secretary and founded the First Bank of the United States (as well as Bank of New York). Jackson hated paper money and shut down the Second Bank of the United States. And, of course, Hamilton was an abolitionist while Jackson was a slave owner who was primarily responsible for the Trail of Tears.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m pretty sure I voted for Tubman in the straw poll, so I’m very happy about this. Names I had suggested earlier in the process also included Frances Perkins, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth, and Susan B. Anthony.
The truth is, there are one hell of a lot of great American women who would look excellent on a whole range of currency denominations. It’s been white men from the get-go; high time to redress that balance, and I hope I live long enough to see at least one or two more women/POC honored this way.
ruemara
Not sure where some of this info is coming from. Tubman is on the $20, Ham is on the $10, the $5 will have rotating civil rights figures. Turnaround on engraving art is looking, so 2020 is the rollout. Source, A.P. All I can say is, I squee’d.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I won’t be able to talk to mom at least for a week, now.
Felonius Monk
And a pretty damned good guitar player, too.
Around the 2;56 mark he even mentions the Andrew Jackson bill.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
G just sent me a new link. They say 2020, and it sounds like that’s when all of the new bills will debut. If I’m reading this right, even if they pursued the initial plan to replace Hamilton on the front, it wasn’t going to be circulated until 2020 anyway.
The Other Chuck
@Major Major Major Major: The salty tears of wingnuts are the tastiest. And why would they want to keep such an anti-central-bank guy on their FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES anyway? And wow, the guy (or is that the aforementioned HouseFrau?) uses the term “genocide” without irony. Trail of tears anyone? Whatever, never try to get into a wingnut’s mind.
I do hope the final engraving of Tubman that’s chosen is better than the samples I’ve seen. Tubman was by no means a pretty lady, nor is that relevant to what she did, but portraiture on the money should be a little flattering, no?
raven
I have a friend who is a prominent feminist law professor and she is not happy.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Yep, it looks like 2020 was always the date (as always, Cokie is a crappy journalist) and this is an announcement of a rejiggering of who goes on which bill.
Bye-bye, Jackson! Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out!
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: Cultural Marxism! I never liked Chico much, but disrespecting Groucho is very bad.
Bubblegum Tate
All-too-predictable wingnut spin:
“Harriet Tubman was a Christian Republican who ran the Underground Railroad to free the slaves from Democrats.”
So sad.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: No argument from me there. I just think the delay sucks.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Told you she was cray cray.
The Other Chuck
@Roger Moore:
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but yes compared to Jackson he was.
BGinCHI
@MattF: Only benefit of that might be a neo-noir where someone says, “He isn’t a fella you can trust. He’d Reagan his mother out for half that.”
ruemara
@raven: I’m not sure why she’s unhappy.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: From your link:
So yeah, like I said, 2030.
Chris
I really hope this is real. I’ve thought since childhood that there was something fucked up about Andrew Jackson being honored on the $20.00 bill, but I never expected anything to actually be done about it.
(Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate the irony and the “fuck you” message of having a national bank turn Andrew Jackson into a symbol of their currency. Kind of like Che Guevara being commoditized and marketed into a product that fills the coffers of the Evil Capitalists. But ultimately, irony isn’t really a good enough reason to keep a genocidal maniac on one of our most-used units of currency).
catclub
@quakerinabasement: Me too!
Linnaeus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, okay. I ask because your comment reminded me of a conservative woman who a few years back complained that the US Postal Service was going to stop issuing Christmas stamps (which turned out not to be the case, and I suspect that actually disappointed her), and I was wondering if it was the same person.
Mnemosyne
@raven:
Generally speaking, once you remind people that Hamilton is the guy who created the department that issues our money, while Jackson is the guy who tried to destroy it, they understand it a little better.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: that’s a stupid delay.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: The filth that was the shitty grade Z movie star should never appear on any US currency of any kind.
Linnaeus
@Chris:
When I saw the Viva Gordita! commercials by Taco Bell, I thought that maybe the postmodernists were on to something.
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
And now the descendants of those Democrats show up at CPAC and ask why the slaves couldn’t just be grateful to the slave owner for giving them food and shelter.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, if there isn’t someone out there writing a Tubman screenplay for Olivia Spencer to play the lead, one of us needs to jump on that.
catclub
@mike in dc: I like the way you think. Interested in any Newsletter subscription, et cetera,….
Linnaeus
I’ve often wondered why the $20 bill is printed in greater quantities than the $10, given that most things you buy are priced closer to multiples of $10 or $5 rather than $20.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Right, but there’s not a special delay because of this. AFAICT, that’s just how long the planned timeline has always been. So even if they stuck to the original plan, you’d still be waiting until 2030.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: I got to see a production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson in Chicago a few years ago, and it is actually really good. Not as serious as Hamilton, of course, and appropriately more irreverent toward its subject.
Librarian
To be fair to Jackson for one minute, he did believe in the supremacy of the federal government over the states and did not go for any of the states rights nonsense peddled by southerners like John Calhoun. And when South Carolina threatened to declare certain federal laws null and void in the state, he told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of the idea and threatened to use force against them. I think he should get some credit for that.
raven
@ruemara: I’ll let you know as soon as she posts something other than “this was the worst decision they could have made”.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think that’s the case. The $10 was scheduled for replacement sooner — it’s in the works already. If I’m wrong about that, then never mind!
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
It’s slightly complicated. Hamilton never owned slaves, but there may be some slight evidence that his wife brought 2 slaves with her when they married. There are some records of him buying a few household slaves for his in-laws.
On the other side, he was one of the cofounders of New York’s manumission society, which helped people purchase their own freedom, he helped write Haiti’s constitution and supported their revolution, and made personal statements several times that Africans were not inferior to whites, either intellectually or in any other way.
Compared to the other Founding Fathers, the only one who was better on slavery was Adams.
Redshift
@SiubhanDuinne: I think the real problem is that unlike many countries, we only have one person on a denomination at a time. There are plenty of people who should be honored, and we shouldn’t have to debate “taking it away” from someone else to do it. (Other than Jackson, who I am entirely happy with it being taken away from.)
RobertB
@Felonius Monk: Not as cool as John Clayton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGfVVBMTIQ
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I’m admittedly reading all of this stuff on my phone, but my understanding is that they’re still in the design phase and the actual currency wasn’t scheduled to be produced until 2020. Which, scary as this may be, is only 4 years from now.
Just One More Canuck
@schrodinger’s cat: that may be one of the most inappropriately named blogs I’ve ever seen. I felt some brain cells crying out in terror before they were suddenly silenced
Germy Shoemangler
Saw a great comment on LGM:
Brachiator
@Chyron HR:
I’ve heard this before. It’s probably not true. But I will take Fivers off the hands of racists along with any new Tubmans they want to pass along.
Origuy
I thought that they were leaving Jackson on the watermark. There may be a technical reason for that. The watermark is made by pressing the damp pulp onto a wire mesh. It’s probably pretty expensive to change and Congress hasn’t allocated the funds to change that.
FlipYrWhig
@Germy Shoemangler: ZING!
Paul in KY
@ET: Chief Joesph or Sequoya would have been another 2 good ones for the 20.
Very glad Ms. Tubman is going to get the 20.
dww44
@Brett: I second that idea. I was given a bio of her a couple of years ago. Accomplished, indeed. What about the idea that they were going to swap different women on and off the twenty, just so’s more women would finally get recognized for their contributions?
FlipYrWhig
@Origuy:
I think that’s the same process they used to make Ted Cruz.
Gerald
@Brachiator:
ME TOO!
I am glad to help!
BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: That was a reject.
Librarian
I included a link in my previous post, but somehow it ended up in the reply button. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis
Gerald
What a wonderful surprise!
Can’t wait to have one of those bills!
Will frame the first one I get!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: How you feeling?
Germy Shoemangler
@FlipYrWhig:
I thought Cruz was a failed attempt to reanimate the corpse of Joe McCarthy with the brain of Abbie Semple McPherson Normal.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
I’ve heard it’s good, so I’m being a little tongue in cheek. Jackson’s life just can’t compete with that “Les Miz” one-two tragedy punch that you get from Hamilton’s, though.
Trabb's Boy
@Brett: I have a picture of Frances Perkins on my (civil servant) desk. She is awesome. Still prefer Tubman for the money, but would love to see Perkins acknowledged eventually.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: From what I’ve read, the new $10s will be released in 2020 — the design and loads of other shit that has to be done to make that happen is already in the works. Then they’ll announce the design of the new $20s in 2020, but they won’t be put into circulation until 2030. Bottom line: we’ll have to wait another 10 years to get our mitts on the first ever bill with a distinguished black American female on it. Lord knows there are more pressing issues, but, le sigh.
dww44
@Betty Cracker I think it’s a good thing that Hamilton remains on the Ten because he is largely responsible for the fact that we have a national banking system. Indeed, his accomplishments are legion and from the get go I was never in favor of this honor being taken from him. After all, if not for Aaron Burr, he coulda been President!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
Jackson wasn’t an all-out crappy president like, say, Warren G Harding, or several of the 1840s and 1850s presidents (like Fillmore) who kept kicking the slavery can down the road. But he’s definitely problematic today.
Southern Beale
Tennessee people aren’t happy about the Andrew Jackson thing but jesus it’s not supposed to happen until 2030, like I need to worry about this now? Meanwhile, check out this unhinged rant by a TN GOP state rep. Courtney Rogers from Monday night. She was talking about the beleaguered office of diversity & inclusion at the Univ. of Tennessee, which the House just voted to defund. And she went on this rant about how we didn’t need this “intellectual rubbish” because of “light meat and dark meat.” WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
jl
@FlipYrWhig:
‘ The watermark is made by pressing the damp pulp onto a wire mesh. ‘
” I think that’s the same process they used to make Ted Cruz. ”
They use much lower quality paper for the Cruz.
Germy Shoemangler
http://notesironbound.blogspot.com/2015/01/andrew-jackson-still-lives.html
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
The tears at Frei Republik taste like the finest ambrosia.
Mnemosyne
@dww44:
Never gonna be president now!
That’s one less thing to worry about!
One less to worry about!
Seriously, though, after reading the Chernow book and a few others, Hamilton would have been a TERRIBLE president. He picked awful subordinates and stayed loyal to them far past the point he should have. And that’s leaving aside his tendency to pick fights with people — quite literally during the controversy over the Jay Treaty, where he was running around NYC challenging people to fisticuffs.
lurker dean
neat story tweeted by @YAppelbaum:
1. Harriet Tubman’s first biographer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, tells a remarkable story about the anti-slavery hero.
2. Tubman had an intimation that her parents, still held as slaves in Maryland, were in trouble. She needed funds to effect their rescue.
3. Tubman marched into the New York office of abolitionist Oliver Johnson, and staged a sit-down hunger strike to secure the necessary funds
4. The Lord, she said, had told her to come and demand twenty dollars. Incredulous, Johnson ignored her.
5. When she fell asleep, people who heard of her plight stuffed $60 into her pockets. She journeyed south, and brought her father to freedom
6. “I want twenty dollars,” Tubman said. Now, she’ll be on all of our $20 bills.
there’s also the story about Tubman’s pension being $20, rather than $25 as it should have been.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/13/8601379/harriet-tubman-20-bill
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Among the Founders who did not own slaves were both the Adams, Samuel and John, and Oliver Ellsworth, Robert Treat Paine, Thomas Paine and Roger Sherman.
Ben Franklin was a complicated case.
Germy Shoemangler
Harriet Tubman leads an army:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpTf1GFjCd8
(story told and reenacted on Comedy Central’s “Drunk History”)
Germy Shoemangler
@Brachiator:
Sarah Palin was right!
singfoom
@Southern Beale: State legislatures really make you appreciate evolution and how far we’ve come and how easily we can regress.
After reading and then listening to her rant, I have only this Billy Madison response:
Billy Madison “Everyone is now dumber”
Peale
@Southern Beale: Could someone explain to me why, 20 years after it ended, we are suddenly losing the culture wars everywhere? All of this fear over what? Its so 1992? It’s like white people completely destroyed affirmative action and whatever is left of it, including having black people and Asians on campus is still proof that they lost.
Mnemosyne
@Germy Shoemangler:
I saw that episode and was like, “Yes, I’m not the only person who can see that Olivia Spencer was born to play Harriet Tubman!”
I mean, damn, she was 007 in the frickin’ 1850s!
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Brachiator:
People are complicated and can change long-held biases and views over short periods, contrary to what conservatives strive to inculcate.
rikyrah
AP: Ted Cruz now mathematically eliminated from clinching GOP nomination before convention
POSTED 9:03 PM, APRIL 19, 2016
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention.
Ted Cruz was mathematically eliminated Tuesday after Trump’s big win in the New York primary.
Trump won at least 89 of the 95 delegates at stake. John Kasich won at least three and Cruz was in danger of being shut out.
rikyrah
I’m going to put the first one I get into a picture frame.
singfoom
@Peale: I think it’s the tealibanicals that got voted in the last couple years at the state level. In a lot of states, the Rs control all 3 branches of government:
Map of Party State Trifectas
You know, because the important things that legislatures need to do is make sure poor/black/brown/others know their place and no money is spent on anything that could be recognized as progress.
See, Kansas, Wisconsin, etc, etc…
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne: I wish I’d been taught that in elementary school. Instead, all I remember from my (most likely southern published) history book is “carpet baggers! carpet baggers!!!”
Regnad Kcin
@MattF: Atsa alright, he no like-a you much either
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Imagine the quality of paper they’d use for the Baud.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
C’mon, dude. We’re talking about the originals here, not the expanded universe. That means Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. None of this “Matter-Eating Lad” stuff.
SiubhanDuinne
@Redshift:
Fully agree.
Bubblegum Tate
@Chris:
“Also, where’s the gratitude for freeing the slaves? You’re welcome, black people!”
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Imagine what might have been had Charles Lee been named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army instead of George Washington, won the war and later became president.
(Charles Lee is the subject of “Ten Duel Commandments” in Hamilton).
“Okay, so we’re doing this.” Cool line
SiubhanDuinne
@FlipYrWhig:
I need spoiler alerts if I’m going to be reading this blog while drinking coffee and FlipYrWhig is commenting.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Sore and achy and stiff. I could have done that part just by getting old, didn’t have to fall down the stairs for it.
Edit: Thank you for asking, that was nice of you.
Mnemosyne
@Germy Shoemangler:
I was a history buff from a young age, so I knew a lot about Tubman’s exploits. One of the simplest was the time she was on a train and saw a guard giving her the stink-eye, so she picked up a newspaper and pretended to read it even though she was illiterate. That was enough to fool the guard into thinking she was not the
droidsuperhero he thought she was.Punchy
So that new iPad will cost me 2 Benjis, 4 Tubbys, and an Abe and change?
jl
@Redshift:
” I think the real problem is that unlike many countries, we only have one person on a denomination at a time. There are plenty of people who should be honored, and we shouldn’t have to debate “taking it away” from someone else to do it. (Other than Jackson, who I am entirely happy with it being taken away from.) ”
I agree. Get rid of the boring US paper money and all the dead presidents. (Hamilton and Franklin can stay, they weren’t presidents). Put other famous people on it. Sweden has Greta Garbo on one of their bills. Harriet Tubman is a good start.
List of people on banknotes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_on_banknotes
ruemara
@raven: gracias.
Linnaeus
@Germy Shoemangler:
Yeah, Dunning School US history was pervasive in school textbooks for years, but I remember getting a more accurate telling of the Civil War and Reconstruction by the time I reached junior high, for which I’m glad.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
“I’m a general! Whee!”
G always says that’s the song where you really see the Washington/Hamilton conflict at play, where Hamilton hopes he’s about to get a battlefield promotion (“Ready, sir!”) and is told to have Lafayette take the lead.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
It’s time to play that game, “Know Your Founders.” Roger Sherman:
Sherman is an OG Founder by any definition of the term.
Descendant of Sherman: Archibald Cox, who served as a U.S. Solicitor General and special prosecutor during President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
Linnaeus
@jl:
Canada used to put hockey on the back of their $5 note. Kinda wish they still did that.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: Damn, I wish I’d said that!!
Immanentize
@Brachiator:
And a damned fine gentleman was he.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA:
” Imagine the quality of paper they’d use for the Baud. ”
Put Baud on the new Zig Zag bill! Roll it out (har har) on 420 day. Let’s watch for the announcement.
Maybe HRC will put Bernie on something a consolation prize. BernieBucks.
Germy
@jl: Don’t Bogart that Baud.
Mike J
@jl:
The $27 bill.
Paul in KY
@Regnad Kcin: Well played!
jl
Putting the president who issued the Specie Circular, which (some say) sparked the 1837 panic, on paper money always seemed odd to me. On the other hand, Jackson started the era of free banking, which was when we had gazillions of pretty bank notes.
But, lots of other reasons to kick Jackson off our money.
jl
@Mike J:
” The $27 bill. ”
I’ve often needed one of those. Great idea.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I’ll look forward to the announcement of the Baud bill say arround 4:20pm today then.
Chris
@singfoom:
I think it’s also simply that they never stop fighting. Lots of liberals think that after a victory like, say, the Voting Rights Act, society eventually settles down and learns to accept the new rules. Society “progresses,” as it were. Not these guys. As we saw with the VRA, they keep right on fighting for fifty years if they have to to bring back their goddamn dystopia.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
One of the wags on the Sci Fi Partyline podcast refers to the “hot Harriet Tubman” in the surprisingly good movie, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Here, Tubman is played by a tall, sultry Afro Danish actress Jacqueline Fleming. Not quite historically accurate.
It also sets up the surprise reveal of the hotshot immigrant warrior who is the primary subject of the song, “Guns and Ships.”
I listened to all of the first Act again, and now ready for the second half of the cast album.
Trollhattan
This is all driving a certain group of North Korean engravers certifiable.
gindy51
@jl: It wasn’t damp pulp they were using to create Cruz, it was poop.
Trollhattan
And in newslike news.
Bob In Portland
We came, we saw, they died.
Linnaeus
@Trollhattan:
Let’s hope so, but I’m skeptical. It’s entirely possible that the charges he’s filed are warranted and credible, but part of what’s driving this is, IMHO, Schuette’s ambition to be governor after Snyder’s out in 2018. Not sure how far he’s willing to go.
Southern Beale
@Peale:
Republican inferiority complex. It’s their inability to deal with their cultural power so they try to exert political power. They have actually LOST the culture wars. They have lost their influence over the culture at large. Multi-culturism is real, Christianity is dying as an influence. so all they can do is try to assert what power they do have, mostly in places like Tennessee. And as they do, they become even more the stereotype of themselves crafted by the liberal elites they despise.
Basically they need therapy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trollhattan:
I heard most of his announcement. Very impressive guy. He said (slight paraphrase) “We will go wherever the facts take us. Wherever the emails take us.“. Boom.
I also loved the way he said, very clearly and deliberately, “No one is above the law. Not on my watch.”
I have an idea he is not a big fan of Governor Snyder. Just a wild guess….
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Hang in there.
Mike J
@Southern Beale:
I don’t think this is quite true. I think the Moral Mondays movement is incredibly important.
More accurately, Christianity is no longer allowed to be a cudgel to silence dissent in political arguments.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@SiubhanDuinne: The hell? That’s no fun at all. Here’s to a speedy return to form.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
C’mon. You know that’s like when Ant-Man shows up at the superhero party.
And make sure you have the Kleenex ready for Act 2. You will need it, even if you think you won’t. LMM is an evil genius.
gogol's wife
@Brachiator:
“Guns and Ships” is my current favorite song. It keeps changing.
I ordered the piano/vocal score this morning. That should be a trip.
gene108
@ET:
Nah…he’d be glad to be off filthy fiat currency, issued by a central national bank…
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
I didn’t hear you fell down the stairs. I did that last October. No fun. I hope you feel better soon.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brachiator:
Never would have happened.
First, he wasn’t native-born. There were several other options for CiC who were.
Second, Lee wanted to be paid to do it. One reason the Continental Congress loved Washington is that he volunteered to serve without pay.
Annnnnd…. There’s some argument over whether he intended to do a Benedict Arnold. Something about papers discovered the Howe family archives in the 1850s.
Linnaeus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Schuette wants to be governor after Snyder (who is term-limited), and wants to avoid any impression that he covered for Snyder or soft-pedaled the investigation, or the Democrats will pounce on him for it.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Have you gotten to the part in the Hamiltome where they talk about creating the sheet music for the orchestra? I had no idea that musical director Alex Lacamoire is partially hearing-impaired.
jl
@Mike J: I think it is the incarnation of a very intolerant and reactionary Xtianist version of Christianity as a political movement that has failed, where Xtianist refers to the weird Dispensational Edntimes fundamentalism that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and either right from the start, or soon after it gained popularity, was co-opted by the GOP. That is what has failed.
I think this is the image of Christianity peddled by the corporate media. Actually, it is the only kind of religious or spiritual sensibility the corporate media understands: weird and arbitrary moral codes and weird and arbitrary dogma enforced by some kind of violence (physical, or legal).
Not really something that dominated US politics all through the past. It is more like white Southern (or Confederate, or Rebel) Heritage movement which was invented long after the Civil War ended to support continued white supremacy and segregation.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Sure thing, thanks.
gex
@Mnemosyne: You mean, apart from Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock?
jl
@Brachiator:
” Imagine what might have been had Charles Lee been named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army instead of George Washington, won the war and later became president. ”
Charles Lee would have had to win the Revolution in order to become president, rather than be hanged as a traitor. I’m not sure he could have pulled off a win.
Applejinx
@Southern Beale: Yeah, and they lived to see the White House lit up in rainbow colors.
Next, it looks like we’re making it the Pink House. I swear I’ll grin for a week, on so many levels ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOfkpu6749w
(if you know much about John Mellencamp, it’s funnier)
SiubhanDuinne
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
Thanks. Very stupid and clumsy. Wouldn’t have said anything about it except I had to let the Boston-area Juicers know I wouldn’t be making the drive after all.
Gives “butthurt” a whole new level of meaning, though.
Mike J
@jl: I agree, but I think it’s important not to paint with too broad a brush. Just as it’s wrong when Republicans refer to all Muslims as terrorists, it’s wrong to assume that all christians are domionist jackasses. The black church has been the backbone of the Democratic party for decades. When people say pastors should stay out of policy, I wonder if they include MLK in that. The difference for me is that MLK used his religious message to expand rights for everyone, where Falwell et al used religion to consolidate power and oppress others.
A Ghost To Most
@Mnemosyne:
Are you referring to Octavia Spencer (that makes sense)? The only Olivia Spencer I can find is a fictional soap opera character
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
Yeah, basically lost my footing/balance on the landing and did the rest of the flight on my bum. But nothing’s broken; Advil, Epsom sauce, and a bit of time should take care of it.
ETA: sauce = salts. Gosh drat you all to heck and back, autocorrect.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
It looks as if the search for scapegoats is in full swing.
Brachiator
Maple Leaf Rag
From the Globe and Mail
maurinsky
@Brachiator:
I love his line in one of the songs “I’m a general, wheeeeeee!”
RAM
Jackson hated paper money so much he crashed the entire U.S. economy with the Panic of 1837, so why he was ever put on a paper bill of any denomination is a mystery. The best that can be said about him is that when South Carolina threatened to nullify acts of Congress, Jackson flatly warned them if they tried that he’d come down and hang as many of them as he needed to, to nip their proposed rebellion in the bud. Since everyone knew he wasn’t at all hesitant to hang (or shoot) people they wisely took him at his word. The next time they tried nullification, they succeeded in getting 622,000 American and Confederate soldiers killed.
Horatius
@ET: can we hook up a turbine to his corpse? We can get some power out of it.
patroclus
Why is Barbara Bush on the $1 bill?
Mnemosyne
@gex:
;-p
Mnemosyne
@A Ghost To Most:
Yes. I’m a dope.
Brachiator
@jl: RE: ” Imagine what might have been had Charles Lee been named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army instead of George Washington, won the war and later became president. ”
I was playing extreme alternate history. Lee certainly thought that he should have been made Supreme Commander of the American forces. Things might have been interesting had the colonial leaders gone along.
Also, Lee wasn’t hanged, right? I think he died a semi natural death.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
I think Jackson deserves some credit for starting the opinion that the President was more than just the executive officer but a representative of the people. He talked about acting like a Congressman who needed to represent one district, the entire US. He entered office at a time of deep corruption and cleaned up a real mess. He did a lot for the average European-Americans. But there are several blots on his record that more than justify his being down graded. Most people know about the Trail of Tears but not many know that the USSC ruled against the relocation. The natives had an elected government and believed in the promise of the US Constitution so they fought in court rather than with guns, and they won in court. When told of the decision, Jackson is reported to have said, “Tell me, how many divisions does the Chief Justice command?” That alone should have disqualified him from the office, the thousands of unnecessary deaths, the theft of land and the hardships he put upon the Native tribes more than disqualifies him from honor in out nation. It is good to see him go.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne:
My husband says the same. I always remind him that LaFayette was already in command of part of Lee’s troops. That’s very nearly a simple “Have the second in command take over”. It’s not like Hamilton couldn’t find other ways to keep himself busy that day.
Within the play, though, it’s a nice setup for the heated exchange in “Meet Me Inside”.
(Aside: As a native Nashvillian, I was a teen before I realized that Lafayette Street (pronounced luh-FAY-ut) was named for the Marquis.)
Southern Beale
@Mike J: @Mike J:
I think Christianity is dying as a cultural influence, big-time. I live in Tennessee: buckle of the Bible belt. 100 years ago, everyone would spend Sunday in church (2 services — one in the morning and one in the evening, with Bible study in between). Stores were all closed. That was the cultural norm. Today? Sunday is about football, movies, shopping. Secular stuff. Church might or might not be part of the day but secular stuff definitely is. Alcohol sales happen on Sunday. Etc. Religion just isn’t the dominant cultural force that it once was.
gene108
@mike in dc:
Sherman was Custer’s boss.
Billie T. over saw the Plains Wars as head of the U.S. Army.
Sherman’s a mixed bag, very much like Jackson.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brachiator:
Caught a fever and died before the Constitutional Convention was convened.
jl
@Brachiator:
That is some wacky alternative history, IMHO.
I meant that Lee would have been hanged (very probably), with the rest of the colonial rebel leadership, if he had been the commanding general and he had lost the Revolution. I think he was court martialed after extremely odd behavior at a battle, Monmouth, I believe, and he sort of provoked his own court marital by not leaving well enough alone after the dust settled in quarrel with Washington during the battle.
Edit: I think Lee died on his estate toward the end of the Revolutionary War.
Cacti
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
No worse than Cairo, Illinois (pronounced CARE-o), or Versailles, Kentucky (pronounced Ver-SALES).
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Right, but that doesn’t change Hamilton’s hope in that moment that Washington is finally going to change his mind about giving him a command, and adds fuel to the resentment that leads to “Meet Me Inside.”
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@RAM:
He is on the 20 in large part because he was a hero of the Democratic Party. In fact many state parties held Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners for fund raising (I saw LBJ speak at on in’63(I think)). He was also a hero of people who opposed centralized power & the federal reserve bank. But I don’t know what caused the change, sometime in the late 1920s.
He and Hamilton seem to trade places in history, one falling out of favor while the other is rising.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
He was killed by Connor Kenway at the end of Assassin’s Creed 3.
gene108
@Chris:
Having billionaires in your corner with money to burn pays for a lot of fighting spirit. Turn of the flow of money and a lot of right-wing fight will disappear.
Paul in KY
@jl: I thought that was ‘Light Horse’ Harry Lee (Robt’s father).
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cacti: Conetoe, North Carolina.
@jl: Let’s see if this link will work: Mr. Lee’s Plan, 29th March, 1777
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Having the two major parties switch places 40 years ago on the basis of race has led to some odd bedfellows, to say the least.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hope you’re feeling better.
jl
@Paul in KY: ‘Light Horse’ Harry Lee was a very good cavalry commander in the Revolution. I forget how or whether he was related to Charles Lee.
Librarian
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Yes, Jackson was one of the founders of the modern Democratic Party. His election meant the end of the rule of the elites-every president before him were aristocrats from either Virginia or Massachusetts. He and Martin Van Buren invented the spoils system and the modern political party. He was a military hero and the first celebrity president.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
OK, for once a Google Books link worked. Yay! I’ll add this one:
The Treason of Charles Lee
Librarian
@jl: Charles Lee was English; he was not related to the Virginia Lees.
catclub
@Brachiator:
I wonder if that is what they drink watching the horse races at Epsom Downs.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@jl: He’s not. Major General Charles Lee was a Brit.
schrodinger's cat
OT: I saw Jungle Book, not impressed, too gimmicky. Balu the bear was annoying instead of being endearing. Older Disney animated version was better.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
I thought Epsom Sauce was going to turn out to be the name of a cocktail. If it isn’t, it should be.
jl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: IIRC, Charles Lee supposedly wrote a plan to subvert the Revolution when he was a British captive at the beginning of the war. But Lee was technically a deserter from the British army at the time, so it may have been under duress. So this book says that he was subverting away all through the war?
Roger Moore
@Librarian:
I’m pretty sure Washington was the first celebrity president.
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
I think there was a major popular history book that came out a few years ago about the election campaign between Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Jackson was a major military hero, too — he defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
Honestly, I’m sure I typed “salts.” Could have just quietly fixed it without further commentary, but “Epsom sauce” made me laugh.
And anyhow, it’s not for drinking, it’s for sprinkling on shepherd’s pie. Or spotted dick, or something. Gives it a nice little zing.
Brachiator
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I think as a high school student I kinda mashed up Lafayette and Alexis de Tocqueville. Two French dudes who had something to do with America.
And then Alexis de Tocqueville met Getrude Stein and they moved to Oakland.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
FTFY.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
After all, his men were all writing home embellishing his elegance and eloquence.
But Jackson was probably the first elected celebrity president.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Well, yeah, but they didn’t exactly have fast communications in those days. Nobody on either side knew the war was already over.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Sure, but since the treaty had already been signed, the battle can’t have had anything to do with the war’s outcome. It might have made Americans feel a bit better about things, but it didn’t have any historical significance.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Librarian:
GAWD! I used to be on a listserv (pre-web days) on the Civil War. There was one particular asshole of the South who regularly tried to convince people the war was not about slavery and that RELee didn’t like slavery etc etc etc. When others (the place was loaded with actual professors and scholars) would show direct evidence, quotes and actions disproving this moron his mic drop was that he was a decedent of the Virginia Lee’s and therefore all us lower life forms should shut up and learn the truth. believe we was from Light Horse and a distant cousin from Bobby.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Somebody here recommended “When Britain Burned the White House” to get more of the British perspective on the War of 1812, and basically Jackson managed to defeat the guys who had just defeated Napoleon. Whether it happened during official wartime or not, it was a pretty impressive military feat.
Stan
@ET: Jackson was a tough hombre so if anyone really could turn over while being long dead, it’d be him.
Some guy tried to shoot him when he was President and after his pistols misfired, Jackson proceeded to try to pound the shit out of him. He was 68 years old at the time.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: You never know, Ted Cruz still has a reasonable shot at becoming President.
Stan
@gene108: Sherman is quite simply one of the greatest half-dozen military leaders this country has ever produced. And racist as hell towards both blacks and native americans.
The fact that he was head of the Army at the time of Custer’s death is neither here nor there; Custer made his own tactical decisions. Custer had a brilliant record as a cavalry commander, doing some incredibly badass things during the civil war. I think his self-confidence got a little ahead of things.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
There was tons of stuff in the UK about the era, especially in 2015, since that marked 200 years since the final defeat of Napoleon. And there was one BBC History lecture in which the British historian claimed that the British did not send their best or strongest forces over here since Napoleon was seen as much the larger threat. He also dismissed James Madison as a second rate politician and also noted that the British did not send their ablest negotiators to conclude hostilities.
But you would also want to get a Canadian perspective, since one of the idiot fantasies of the Americans at the beginning of the war was that Canada was just dying to become part of the United States of America. Instead our actions only intensified Canadian nationalism. Otherwise, the end result was a return to the status quo between Britain and the US, allowing Britain and Europe to concentrate on finishing off Napoleon’s ambitions.
But yeah, Jackson’s victory was impressive even though it was inconsequential.
Peale
@Roger Moore: Yep. It’s really kind of difficult for us to comprehend just how big a deal GW was. But go into any “house museum” that tries to create period furniture for the first 100 years or so of the country’s history and there is bound to be some portrait or memento of Washington on display in one of the public rooms. I know that even into the mid 20th century it would be common for certain folks to have up a picture of a favorite president or the current president in the home, something which we just don’t do much any longer with our home décor. Nothing like the universality of the Washington (and later Lincoln) portraits that were standard.
Wallis Lane
@Librarian: Here a Lee, there a Lee, everywhere a Lee a Lee. When do you leave? Immediate-Lee! When will you return? Short-Lee! And I’ll come back triumphant-Lee!
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
No, but I’m enjoying it!
Mnemosyne
@Wallis Lane:
I got to hear a Q&A with the director of that film. He said that actor Ron Holgate had never ridden a horse before!
(Obviously, the stunts were done by a professional, but Holgate still had to do a fair amount of riding while lip-syncing.)
ETA: Also, we currently live across the street from Warner Ranch, where the fountain still exists, though the rest of the colonial sets burned down in the 1970s.
nastybrutishntall
Can this be blacker? It cannot. It can be none more black.
Brachiator
@catclub: RE: Epsom sauce,
Ha! Just caught that. I guess I mentally corrected it as I read it.
Wonderful malapropism.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@Mnemosyne:
And he gave us Jacksonian Democracy, which gave the vote to the unlanded working white men, the first of many reforms which led to a more egalitarian society.
Oh, and there’s also his roll in crushing South Carolina, Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis.
Paul in KY
@jl: Thank you for the info, jl.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: They have a Lafayette Drive in Frankfort, the state capital.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@Roger Moore:
Neither the invading Brits nor the defenders of New Orleans knew that thee Treaty of Ghent had been signed. And the battle did show that some of the best units in the best commanded army of the Napoleonic wars were not n overwhelming match against what were thought of s horribly-performing, hodgepodge militias.