Thoughts on politics, economics, life and creative works from the author including poetry
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Radical Change?
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Great Grandpa Truman C. Carpenter
Truman C. Carpenter
From my mom's compilation & Sarah Persons. |
Truman C. Carpenter, My Great Grandpa, was a big guy and an adventurous fellow. My cousin tells me a tale that he once met Jessie James while getting a hair cut. Evidently Jessie James came into the same Barber Shop. The story is that Truman commented that he was a mean fellow. Which makes sense. He was. That would have been in Kansas or Missouri near the eastern end of the Southern Pacific. It ran from Southern California to the Mississipi River, started right after the Civil War and didn't disappear until the 60's.
My Great Grandfather lived in El Paso, Texas, which is about the halfway mark between the two ends of the Southern Pacific, so it makes sense. He lived there from about 1905 til about 1910 when he moved back east. Long enough for his wife to have my Grandfather born in El Paso. And I thought he was born in St Johnsbury for so many years!
My Great Grandpa, took people on expeditions into the Southwest and Mexico. He took hunting expeditions down into Mexico exploring. The photo above is represented as being Hop Valley in the Sierra Madre (Oriental?) mountains. The picture apparently is of Santa Maria Canyon near Strawberry Canyon. Where-ever it was, his life intersected with the Mexican revolution.
The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910. Much of it was fought near the Border with the United States. The old President had made himself a President for Life and was ruling as a dictator, and in 1910 the democratic faction insisted on elections. That failed and so a civil war broke out. Pancho Villa was recruited to lead.
...in Potosí, Madero [had] called for revolutionary action against the Díaz regime on 20 November 1910, and declared himself provisional president of Mexico. In Chihuahua, Abraham González, reached out to Villa to join the movement. Villa joined and subsequently captured a large hacienda, a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote. Villa met in person with Madero in March 1911.
Shortly after they laid seige to Ciudad Juárez in April and May, and the city fell to the combined forces of Pancho Villa, Pascual Orosco and Madero. Subsequently Porofiro Diaz fell from Power and Madero became President. Villa and Orosco needed to pay their officers, and their plan was to give them seized properties. Madero rejected their demands, and so the revolution didn't stop. Juárez is just across the river from El Paso. It was no longer safe to travel into Mexico, so moving back to Vermont where Truman had family, made sense. And he did.
Truman C. Carpenter And the Mexican Revolution
Truman C. Carpenter left the railroad around 1910. He seems to have seen the risk associated with the Mexican revolution that was breaking out at the same time he left. I knew he was a railroadman. But he was more of a cowboy than I previously thought! I'll ad more as I find it.
For my post on Grandpa Truman E Carpenter: https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2021/01/great-grandpa-truman-c-carpenter.html
Out in the Cold January 2021
Monday, January 25, 2021
The psychopaths Advantage
Too many laws, require proof that the person telling a lie or breaking a law, did so knowing it was a law, lie or illegal. The result is that this makes it hard to prosecute officials, news presenters, tv personalities, etc... or get compensated when they harm others. At one time they simply locked up the criminal insane, but nowadays it appears they just get valium. This is beyond absurd, bad law, it is deadly to our republic, its democratic features, comity, and to many of us survival. Some of this may be bad lawyering. But the results are dangerous. An example is that Tucker Carlson just won a legal case, in September,
- From September 2020, Business Insider:
- Fox News won a court case by 'persuasively' arguing that no 'reasonable viewer' takes Tucker Carlson seriously
- https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7216968/9-24-20-McDougal-v-Fox-Opinion.pdf
Except the issue is that many viewers are not reasonable viewers, because they watch and believe Tucker Carlson! This is not a legitimate legal defense! On the contrary, the fact that he is a deliberate liar and propagandist should be an aggravating factor in McDougal's lawsuit!
The judge ruled that:
“ Mr. Carlson’s invocation of “extortion” against Ms. McDougal is nonactionable hyperbole,... This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 20-21; Levinsky’s, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 127 F.3d 122, 128 (1st Cir. 1997)). Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes.”
Except Tucker's audience sops up his lies as if they were truth, and people are engaging in violence and threats based on them. The law needs to be stricter here.
First drafted back in October