buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 5:02:19 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 5:03:13 AM

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People forget why Columbus was obsessed with reaching "the Indies"---i.e., Asia---in the first place. There were two reasons: spices and Muslims.

The Europeans were eager for spices---primarily pepper and cinnamon---which were very expensive. Pepper was an essential preservative for foods in those pre-refrigeration days, and, before Columbus discovered the New World, cinnamon was the primary flavor used (when combined with sugar or honey) for sweetened things.  Muslims had, if not entirely closed the trade routes between Europe and the East, at least made the journey, and the cost of spices, much more expensive.

Vasco de Gama, circumnavigating Africa for the Portuguese, had attempted to evade the Muslim trade block---but the voyage around Africa was long and difficult, and the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa was treacherous. The Spanish monarchy, in competition with their Portuguese neighbors and bankrupt from the expenses of the Reconquista which drove the Muslims from Spain, were eager for a shorter route to the riches of the Eastern spice trade, which is why they bankrolled Columbus' voyage.

Let us consider the riches that Columbus' voyage brought the world, in addition to the gold and silver that the Spanish took from the New World.  All of the following additions to world cuisine came from the New World, and were entirely unknown in Europe, Africa and Asia until the era of colonization:
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Avocadoes
Chocolate 
Maize
Hot peppers

lucius septimius 10/12/2020 7:11:32 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 2:

Don't forget tobacco.  America was built on that stuff.

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 7:13:45 AM

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In #3 lucius septimius said: Don't forget tobacco.  America was built on that stuff.

True.  All the anti-smoking legislation is a racist denial of America's Indian heritage.

lucius septimius 10/12/2020 7:55:43 AM

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In the seventeenth century tobacco was the only product from British North America that anyone wanted in sufficient quantities to form a staple. In the 18th century the economy diversified, but for well over a century tobacco was America.

The sheer volume of tobacco exported from Virginia alone is breathtaking, 100,000,000 pounds a year at the time of the revolution.  That's roughly 4,000,000,000,000 cigarettes, or 200 packs of Lucky's for every man, woman, and child on the globe at that time.

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 7:57:24 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 5:

And now they're trying to snuff it all out...

JCM 10/12/2020 7:58:40 AM

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lucius septimius 10/12/2020 8:03:06 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 6:

When I was in college my friends and I found a tobacconist who sold varieties of snuff -- the stuff you put up your nose, not the chewing variety.  As I recall it packed a wallop. Nicotine straight to the brain. 

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 8:12:42 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 8:

I tried snuff---the sniffing kind---in high school, having read about it in a number of books.  Maybe it wasn't the good stuff, or maybe I didn't do it right, but it never did anything for me.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 8:21:42 AM

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In #9 buzzsawmonkey said: I tried snuff---the sniffing kind---in high school, having read about it in a number of books.  Maybe it wasn't the good stuff, or maybe I didn't do it right, but it never did anything for me.

Probably wasn't very good; just not up to snuff.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 8:38:14 AM

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I never could figure out what people got out of smoking cigarettes. Pipes and cigars, yes. There was something to that smoke other than dry smoke.

Until I worked at a place where people traveled often to the ESA, in Holland, and came back with Virginia tobacco for roll your own cigarettes. Smelled like pipe tobacco.

Never did try any.

BTW, this was mid 1970's,  so they could smoke inside. And the system admin would smoke a joint and have a beer at the end of the day, before riding home on his motorcycle. 

JCM 10/12/2020 8:41:42 AM

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I smoked for awhile.

During basic training.

We ran everywhere and always got to our next training event early. While waiting the instructor would yell "smoke 'em if you got 'em". If you smoked you got to go over to a 20x20 foot red square with a butt can. You could relax and talk with your friends. If you didn't smoke you had to stand at parade rest in formation.

Everyone smoked during basic.

Occasional Reader 10/12/2020 8:46:19 AM

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In #2 buzzsawmonkey said: Maize

I remember being puzzled by a passage in Gibbons in which he mentioned the production of “corn“ in the Roman empire. I did not realize at the time that the word was used in the English language at the time to refer to grain, generally.

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 8:48:42 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 13:

I had the same confusion/revelation.

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 8:49:40 AM

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Occasional Reader 10/12/2020 9:10:10 AM

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In #13 Occasional Reader said: I did not realize at the time that the word was used in the English language at the time

Oy. Need more coffee.  But you know what I mean.

Occasional Reader 10/12/2020 9:11:08 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 15:

It’s not “packing” it’s “rebalancing”.  Time to update the newspeak dictionary, comrades.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/10/11/team-biden-just-pushed-out-insane-new-talking-points-on-packing-the-supreme-court-n1036329

vxbush 10/12/2020 9:23:35 AM

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In #17 Occasional Reader said: It’s not “packing” it’s “rebalancing”.  Time to update the newspeak dictionary, comrades.

Sigh. And I'm guessing this rewording is going to be seen as acceptable by all the Cool Kids. 

JCM 10/12/2020 9:29:23 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 17:

Oh, well then it's okay then!

doppelganglander 10/12/2020 9:35:21 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 17:

There is no requirement to "balance" the court. It could be 9 conservatives, or 9 liberals for that matter. Politics does not operate on the basis of playground rules like fairness.

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 9:48:27 AM

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In #20 doppelganglander said: There is no requirement to "balance" the court.

Indeed: just as the legislative and executive branches swing from one political side to the other, it is right and proper that the Supreme Court do so as a counterweight to those potential political excesses.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 10:06:15 AM

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Apparently Trump reads this blog/

A few days ago, when Pelosi brought forward her proposal for a 25th amendment panel, I said it was also intended to get rid of Biden once elected. The Dems have Biden as their candidate because he is supposedly electable, but they really want a leftist. So the idea is, should (G-d forbid) Biden get elected, Pelosi once more proposes her panel to get Biden out of the way.

Article on this

But Pelosi’s move backfired. President Trump hinted that the bill’s real purpose was to make it simpler for Democrats to shove Joe Biden aside, should he win in November, and replace him with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.   

doppelganglander 10/12/2020 10:17:39 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 21:

By their nature, courts are a lagging indicator due to lifetime tenure. They exert a stabilizing influence on government so the country isn't lurching from one extreme to another as the political winds shift.

Occasional Reader 10/12/2020 10:22:08 AM

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In #20 doppelganglander said: There is no requirement to "balance" the court. It could be 9 conservatives, or 9 liberals for that matter. Politics does not operate on the basis of playground rules like fairness.

Your assertion is coming from a place of privilege.

/catch-all “progressive“ “rebuttal“

Occasional Reader 10/12/2020 10:33:28 AM

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And so it appears that whatever glimmers of regained sanity Andrew Sullivan had been showing over the last couple of years, have been extinguished:

https://victorygirlsblog.com/sullivan-becomes-season-ticketholder-on-tds-train/

JCM 10/12/2020 11:19:02 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 25:

buzzsawmonkey 10/12/2020 11:22:32 AM

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Reply to JCM in 26:

C'mon, baby---do the locomotion...

doppelganglander 10/12/2020 11:29:44 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 24:

Reason is a privilege available to all, but a lot of people fail to avail themselves of it.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 12:59:39 PM

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In #28 doppelganglander said: Reason is a privilege available to all, but a lot of people fail to avail themselves of it.

Thinking is hard. -- many people.

JCM 10/12/2020 1:16:10 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 28:

There ya' go... hurting peoples feelings.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 1:27:20 PM

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Some more Clinton emails were released? Why do I only read about that in the Jerusalem Post?

And then, in an article  that lacks a lot of information.

According to Al-Ain, one of the emails, which they posted, dated January 28, 2011, reads: “Revealed correspondence of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, showing her coordination with the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera regarding Washington’s hard line stance on former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.”

Mubarak resigned as Egyptian leader in early February 2011 after protests. The email, alleged to be from Al-Jazeera because it says was written from an “Al-Jazeera Blackberry,” is addressed to one of Clinton’s team at the State Department. It also requests an interview with Obama. The letter is vague but does argue that Obama has taken a principled stance and that his views were in line with the Egyptian people. The note to Clinton says the letter should be framed. Obama had spoken in Egypt in 2009.  

Other articles make similar claims about Clinton coordinating with Qatar or the Brotherhood. The articles also assert that under the Obama administration the US sought to “bring the Brotherhood in all of the Middle East.” Oddly one article asserts that this was to be done with Turkey’s support. However, Ankara turned on the Obama administration by 2015 and began to work with Russia and Iran, and to support figures whom Ankara thought had access to Donald Trump.

Al-Ain interviewed an expert in Yemen who asserted that the “liberal left in the US supports the extreme right in the Middle East.” This allegedly destabilized Yemen and led to civil war. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2015 to stop the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from taking Aden. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are concerned about the role of the Brotherhood today. They see it as linked closely to Qatar, Turkey and Hamas and assert it is putting down roots in Europe.  

There are claims that the Obama administration wanted to reverse decades of US policy and that key figures such as Ben Rhodes, an advisor to the President, believed the old school foreign policy establishment was a “blob” and that new ideas should be fostered. That would mean changing tack to work with the then opposition Brotherhood and Iran. Ten years later it is clear that wherever the Brotherhood-connected parties succeeded they only brought another form of authoritarianism, clothed in religious militarism, rather than nationalist motifs.  

vxbush 10/12/2020 2:25:11 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 31:

I heard that some emails were released, but what I want is a full wiki-leaks style site with full search capabilities for EVERYTHING. 

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 2:44:53 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 32:

If the MSM got some of Pompeo's emails, they'd be all over them.

Clinton? Crickets.

Kosh's Shadow 10/12/2020 2:51:55 PM

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In #33 Kosh's Shadow said: If the MSM got some of Pompeo's emails, they'd be all over them.

Even if they were all quite reasonable, the MSM would find a way to spin them to make them look bad.