Make The Call

Here is the current polling for the presidential election to be held tomorrow:

NBC/SM: Clinton +6 Ipsos: Clinton +4 NBC/WSJ: Clinton +4 ABC/WaPo: Clinton +4 Herald: Clinton +4 Bloomberg: Clinton +3
Rasmussen: Clinton +2

LA Times/Dornsife: Trump +6
IBD Trump: +2

On Fox News this morning Joh Roberts reported his data showing Trump winning enough battleground states to net 270 electoral votes.

And Nate Silver just tweeted that Trump will win FL, making his election probable.

Who will win?

More specifically - (1) Who do you think will win, and (2) Who do you believe will win?

Who you think will win is the objective intellectual call. Who you believe will win is the emotional hope placed in the outcome. Assume that there will be no intervening event between now and when polls close tomorrow night.

My mindset this morning is: I think Hillary will win by +3, and I believe Trump will win by +2. I don't see how Trump overcomes the likelihood of rigged voting, the hammering by an in-the-tank media, and the permission given by Obama for illegals to vote. I don't like my answer, but there it is.

Who To Believe?

The polling numbers are all over the place.

Which poll do you believe?

The broadcast media often quotes the Real Clear Politics poll, currently showing Hillary Clinton at +3.  Except it's not actually a poll.  It is an average of multiple polls taken by multiple polling organizations on behalf of multiple clients.  And because it's an average of polls previously taken, it tends to look backward rather than represent a snapshot of voter preference today.

Bill Mitchell, a radio talk show host and political researcher, does a good job of unpacking the data behind the polling results. (If you are on Twitter, follow him at @mitchellvii).  The polls that have Clinton ahead are always found to have oversampled Democrat voters compared with the percentage of Republican voters.  While the voter base does, in fact, include more Ds than Rs, that number is only about 3%.  Most of the polls that predict a Clinton victory include samples that are Democrat voters +7 or greater.

Those oversampled polls are included in the Real Clear Politics average.

The LA Times/Dornsife poll is interesting for several reasons.  First, it got the results of the Romney/Obama presidential election exactly right.  Second, it is taken every morning using the same 3,000+ carefully screened voters each time.  It is more accurate in measuring the mood of the electorate on any given day than other polls, and especially better than an average of backward looking polls.

The LA Times/Dornsife poll has Trump +5.6 this morning.

Here's another thing about polls:  They don't measure what may be really important.  Say a new poll comes out that screams [Candidate X] is +11 in Texas!!  Guess what - the +11 doesn't matter.  To win the Texas electoral college votes (what really matters) all that's necessary is that a candidate is +.01, or some number greater than the electoral margin of fraud and corruption.

Did you read the article linked by Drudge this morning, by the way?  Pollsters have contributed heavily to the Clinton campaign.  Not so much to the Trump campaign.  And per the leaked Podesta emails, the Clinton campaign has given (most) polling companies sets of instructions on how their sampling should be done.  And that stooge Frank Luntz has been doing polling work for the State Department (aka the Clinton campaign) for several years.

So.  Take the polls with a grain of salt.  The propaganda is baked into most of them.  Watch the LA Times/Dornsife poll with interest.  Wait for the "surprises" to dump sometime this afternoon in time for the Sunday morning talk shows.

And Tuesday night keep an eye on the vote tally in Pennsylvania.  Who wins Pennsylvania wins the election, that's my projection.

That Time Barack Obama Said "Pussy" In a Library.

In case you missed it.  A public library where there were women and girls.  Not a private conversation in someone's motorhome.

It Isn't Easy, But It's Easy

The attached video has a moral and religious theme.  That may be of interest to you, perhaps important.

Or perhaps not.  And that's okay.

If the topic is uninteresting to you, no problem.  Just skip over it and go to the next topic.

Thanks.

*Waits for the room to clear*

_________________________________________________________________________________

I don't like either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.  I've been listening to my conscience and thinking through which candidate I'll vote for, and it's been a challenge at times.  For a while, I toyed with voting for one of the alt candidates, but that would be wasting a vote and taking the easy way out of making a decision.

My indecision came to an unexpected end Tuesday while watching this video of Reverend John Lankeit delivering a sermon from the pulpit of Saints Simon and Jude Cathedral in Phoenix.

Clarity.

This means everything to me. Which I am moved to write about it. It may not mean a thing to you, we each have free will to think and believe as we have chosen.

I no longer have any question about which candidate will receive my vote, and why.

Canopies

How may do-overs do you get in life?

In your twenties, you get do-overs for mistakes you made as a teenager.

In your thirties, you can get a do-over for mistakes you made in your twenties.

In your forties, and maybe even in your fifties, you can still get do-overs, although you'd hope not to need them for having acquired wisdom.

But in your sixties and beyond,  you really don't have much opportunity (or time) for do-overs.  Which is why we traded Mr's. Haz's responsible, proper, staid, level-headed, right-thing-to-do, economical, four door, fuel-mizer sedan on a convertible.  A three hundred twenty horsepower convertible.  Because we might not get the opportunity again.

We took a drive on this spectacular autumn day.  When this day ends, we won't get to do it over.  Days (and years) are like that.

Perfect blue skies, not a cloud in sight.  Temperature in the sixties, crisp, clear air. We played the Elvis station on Sirius, and drove narrow two-lane back roads.  Roads where the hardwood trees form a canopy over the lanes; a tunnel of gold and red and green and brown leaves, with the sun shining through in places like God smiling on us.

The dry aspen, birch, and poplar leaves made a light crunching sound when we drove over them; the wind from the car scattering them to the shoulders.

We laughed, we chatted, we smiled non-stop.  If you miss a day like this, you don't get a do over.  The day is gone.

Take a break from what you do.  Find a moment or an hour for peace and contentment.

You might not get to do it over.

Rhythm

Autumn arrived in the northwoods two weeks ago.  One day it was 85, humid and muggy; the next day it was 65 and dry.  The air cleared, the wind direction changed, and the weather was best described as "crisp".   I love autumn.

More than any other season, autumn has a rhythm of activities that repeat each year.  It's the season of preparation, the other three are seasons of waiting.  Spring is waiting for warmth and greening; summer is waiting for heat and thunderstorms, and winter is waiting for snow and darkness.

The Autumn rhythm is ticking along here at the cabin.  It's a syncopated rhythm sometimes, and irregular at other times.  Either way, things we have done every Autumn are being done again.

A winter's supply of propane has been purchased, the price is locked in no matter what the market does.  Price risk has been passed off onto others.  Five cords of firewood are due to be delivered this weekend, enough to keep the fireplace warm all winter.  New service doors were installed in both the car garage and the boat garage.  Old siding and trim was replaced and repainted.  Gutters damaged by last winter's snow and ice are being replaced.  Old Fiberglas insulation in the crawl space is being replaced by high-tech sprayed-in foam insulation that will tighten up the cabin a bit.  The furnace is getting a check-up, the septic tank will be pumped, and the well will be chlorinated, pumped and checked.

Interestingly, autumn is the season when Mrs. Haz and I have our annual medical checkups.  That's part of the rhythm, too, I suppose.

We cleared out a lot of old crap from the cabin and garages.  It filled a dumpster.  It had been accumulating for years, and most of it was of no use to us.

A nice but unused canoe was given to the 16 year old daughter of a friend.  She loves paddling and will make far better use of the canoe then we will.  A paddle boat will be picked up Sunday morning by another friend who will give it to his wife.  We didn't need it any longer, and giving it to a friend is a far better thing than putting an ad in the local paper and dealing with what ever doofuses call and then don't show up when they said they will.  Besides, it feels good to do things for friends.

A few other things will be taken to the local parish's thrift store for re-use by whoever is in need.  It's the seasonal clearing out of things we no longer need, but that may help someone else with their preparations for the coming winter.

None of this happens during other seasons.  It's autumnal, rhythmic work that prepares for winter, the most difficult season here.

I think about that sometimes when I'm in the woods.  The French Jesuit missionaries who explored this part of North America in the 16th and 17th centuries made their way on foot and horseback through thousands of miles of dense woods, mapping and surveying as they went.  They ate what they caught, killed, or harvested.  No electronics, no polartec fleece.  Indians, wolves, and bears were a constant threat to their existence.  How on earth did they do it?  Marquette, Joliet and others survived in uncharted wilds in horrible conditions; I whine when I can't get enough bandwidth to watch a movie in the comfort of a heated cabin.

Tomorrow we are driving a couple of hours to visit the monks of the Society of Saint John up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the Keweenaw Peninsula.   We travel there every autumn (and sometimes in summer) to visit the monks' wonderful store The Jampot where they sell the wonderful jams, jellies, cakes, cookies and confections they make.  That and donations are their sources of income.

We'll spend too much money, but it will be worth it to stock up on small gifts to give family and friends at Thanksgiving, the celebration at the end of the Autumn season.  You can order the monks' goodies online, and you should.  It's worth it.  Their retail store closes part way through Autumn, and they spend winter praying, studying, worshipping, and preparing for the next year's tourist season.

We do the same here, in our own way, I think.  During autumn we prepare for winter, then spend winter quietly, waiting for the next tourist season to begin.

Time to leave the keyboard for a while.  The sun is out, and I need to sweep pine needles off of the roofs of the buildings.  That, too, is part of the autumn rhythm.

We Expected This, Didn't We

"At the event, MAS leader Khalilah Sabra openly discussed the importance of Muslim support for Black Lives Matter, and urged ‘revolution.’ Comparing the situation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Arab Spring revolutions, she asked, ‘We are the community that staged a revolution across the world; if we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?’” And with the mass murder of police in Dallas last night, we’re getting there."

Link to article.

We Know What Happens When Politicians Are Above The Law

Posted on Facebook by Danielle Vermeule

Today, I took my civil test for naturalization. I was sitting with all the other applicants who came to this country legally, despite all of the legal hoops, tomake a better life. The news was on, and we were watching Comey give his report on Clinton...

There I was, the South African, speaking with a Mother of 4 from Mexico, an attorney from Venezuela, and a Greek student. Flabbergasted. All of us with a feeling of deja vu. We have seen this before. We know what happens when politicians are above the law. We know what it is like to watch your country crumble before your very eyes because of corruption.
We also know the heartache of having to leave your country and everything you know because you fear for your safety and that of your children. 

You will always be a foreigner in a new country, despite your love, loyalty and gratitude toward that country. But, in 20 years, where will Americans go? Who will be America's America?

I don't care which party you support. If you can't see that today was a sad day for this country, then you are a fool.


(h/t Darcy)

It Is Your Fault

At least according to The Advocate, and online news source for LGBTQ people.

Their current headline is: "Orlando is An Extension of the Marriage, Bathroom Wars".  In the article that follows, appears this copy:

There will be many right-wing Christians who will jump to the front and say, “The shooter was Muslim!”

The man who pulled the trigger might have identified as Muslim, and a perversion of Islam even so, but Christian rhetoric really killed 50 people on Sunday — the fruit of the last two years of conservative vitriol lays on an Orlando dance floor this morning, covered in innocent blood. [emphasis added]

In the minds of progressives, the shooting, done by an Afghan man who was taught by a homosexual-hating Imam, who went to the middle east twice for training, who was on the FBI watch list, who was known as homophobic by at least one co-worker, and who transported illegal aliens into the US, the one that witnesses saw do the shooting, the guy the police killed - that guy - had nothing to do with the shootings.  It was those Christians, you and me probably, who are at fault.

And remember, Hillary Clinton, the beneficiary of millions of dollars of money donated by Arab kings and princes and dictators believes the phrase Allahu Akbar is Klingon for The NRA Made Me Do This.

Saturday Quick Take

The Ultimate Latin Dictionary: After 122 Years, Still At Work On The Letter 'N'

The task of finishing is momentous enough. Upcoming volumes, like R and Q, are full of question words and conditionals that have thousands and thousands of instances. The Thesaurus' projected finish date is 2050, but Holmes worries that they might not make that deadline.

Best Rock Drummer Ever. Discuss.

Who is the best rock drummer ever?

Mick Fleetwood?

Max Weinberg?

David Garibaldi?

Ginger Baker?

Neal Peart?

Or who?

Me Before You: Dear Hollywood, Why Do You Want Me Dead?

Revisiting our conversation earlier this week about the Me Before You movie.

An 11 year old wheelchair athlete tells the culture to get over itself.

I cannot add anything that will make this story better than it is as told in her words.

Yooper Lunch

Yesterday we were in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where it is still chilly.  It's nearly always chilly along the shore of Lake Superior, although this year isn't as as bad as last year when ice along the cliffs near Munising didn't melt until mid-June,

We where hoping to get a tour of this modest cabin that would fit us well, but the real estate agent was not available to meet with us.

After a long morning's ride and time spent on backroads and fire trials in the Hiawatha National Forest  we were hungry and in need of hot coffee.  We passed an old Victorian style home that had a sign 'Bakery' on its picket fence.   Local places are sometimes the best and other times the worst places to stop for lunch, but nearly always interesting.  We turned around and parked.

The lunch menu had just one item:  hot, fresh pastys.   We ordered and were served piping hot pastys with cheap ketchup, the sauce of choice in the UP.

Thank you, Welsh immigrants,  Our mmmm mmm mmming while we were eating must have sounded like this.

We were the only ones in the bakery, so we struck up a conversation with the owner.   It turns out that, like me, he is a retired home builder.  And like me, he absolutely loved everything about building homes except the customers.  So he retired and bought an old house and started baking.  He had a folder with his late Italian grandmother's recipes, so he started with that.  He's good, the recipes are great.

We sampled cookies, cakes, pies and muffins.  He wouldn't stop giving us stuff to try; my wife wouldn't stop buying.  Hyperglycemia. We would up with the topcase and one saddlebag filled with pastries.  An elderly woman carrying a plastic bag filled with freshly cut rhubarb came in and offered it to the baker.  They worked out a swap - he got rhubarb for making pies, she got a half-dozen fresh donuts and some cookies for her grandchildren.  Americana at its best.

His kitchen was small, no real room to make pastys.  I asked about that and he said he didn't make them, but bought them frozen from this place, and heats them.  So we went there, and found that it's a family operation that has grown to the point where monthly volume of 40,000 pastys shipped worldwide.  Do yourself a favor and order some, especially the large traditional pasty with rutabaga.  It was the best pasty we've ever eaten in more than two decades of touring the back roads of the UP.

In fact, all I need is a Stormy Kromer hat and I could pass for a Yooper.

How To Argue Like A Philosopher

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. ~Plato

Interaction gets pretty ugly at times, especially during the political season.  Friendships are damaged and dashed.  Dinner with friends or relatives can be uncomfortable.  Unfriending abounds, in real life or on social media.

Can't we just all get along?  It isn't easy when flame wars break out and everyone becomes angry.

Calm down.

Listen.

Find where you can agree,

State your disagreement and why you disagree.

Agree to disagree.

Don't insult, demean or abuse.

How to argue like a philosopher.   H/T Classical Wisdom Weekly.

Where Are We?

Lem asked me to pitch a few innings while he is away attending a family wedding.  I'm happy to do so.  It's a temporary assignment, and I haven't signed up to join the starting pitcher rotation.  Let's say I've been called out of retirement.

It has been several years now since I blogged with any serious intent, and my chops have either been lessened, or the blogosphere has moved on while I remained static.  Probably it's both.

So where are we?   I want to be market driven in blog content during the few days that I'm on the mound, so what do you like?

How about food as a starter?  What was the best thing you ate over the Memorial Day weekend?

Mrs. Haz and I motorcycled 400 miles for a hamburger and a piece of pie.  Yep.  We rode to the Delta Diner, a beautiful small diner in the middle of nowhere in northwestern Wisconsin, just inland from Lake Superior.  Middle of nowhere is not an exaggeration - Delta Diner is in a forest in an unincorporated township.  No village, no city, nothing but forests and farms.

It's been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  The food is....wow.  The hamburger is made of half steak, half chuck, marinated on Sunday, ground Monday morning, and the only thing served on Monday.  They close when they run out of meat.

The burger.

Mmmmmmm.......

During the rest of the week, they serve a menu based on the fresh ingredients they have.  It's never printed; the waitresses just tell you what's cooking.

Dessert, oh boy.  The pie maker is a woman named Krista who regularly receives marriage proposals from customers.  We had raspberry cream pie.  Heavenly.  And we tasted a pie made of vidalia onions, and smoked bacon, with just enough other stuff to hold it together.  It made us seriously talk about selling our home and buying a farm in Delta just because.

The pie.

Delta Diner video.

You can also get there by riding the TWAT - the Trans Wisconsin Adventure Trail - an off-road track that runs form the Wisconsin Illinois border all the way north to Lake Superior.

That was a bit too long, wasn't it?  I'll be brief next time around.

URGENT

<ALERT>

I have been contacted by attorneys representing Lem.

Lem was taken into custody by federal agents earlier today as he was attempting to cross the border between Florida and the rest of the United States.  He handed his attorneys a slip of paper on which he had scribbled in blood my email address and whispered to them that they should give me the secret password to his blog with the instructions "carry on until I'm set free."

<ENDALERT>

The Great Post-Abortion Debate

This is not about what the title might suggest.

I'm talking about the 20 or so unfinished & unpublished posts still in "draft" stage on Lem's blog. They are invisible to most readers. Some of them are accidental -- a few errant keystrokes led to an unwanted brain child -- the one from Freeman Hunt for example is just a title (titular posts is my tag for that). Others appear quite well along in development -- those from Pastafarian and Michael Haz, and Trooper York for example. There's even one from Darcy. Some of these authors are no longer contributors to Lem's blog. What should become of them?  Of course it's Lems decision, but I wish they'd stop by here and say hello. I'd like to wish them all Happy New Year.

How Many Slaves Were Brought To America?

Monday's topic started me thinking about that question.   I thought the number would be in the millions.  We were taught that in high school, I believe.  Millions of slaves were brought to the United States from Africa in wooden ships.  Some of those millions died on the journey, but still, millions arrived here.  Yes, that was the history lesson.  Millions of Africans were brought to America as slaves.

Finding good information posed a challenge.  Finally I thought Henry Louis Gates, Jr. would be a good authority.  Here are his credentials.  Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

That works for me.  his research should be scholarly, and peer reviewed.  Here's what Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes in a blog called The Root.:

The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Salve Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial "gold standard" in the field of the study of the slave trade.)

Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.

And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage.

In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

There's a solid number.  "Only" 450,000 Africans arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade, not tens of millions of slaves as some of us may have been taught.

I emphasized the word only above because I want to be clear, one slave was one slave too many. Slavery was horrible then, and is horrible where it is practiced today.  I am not trying to minimize the evil of slavery.

In the comments section of Monday's topic someone mentioned Irish slaves.  That was also a horrible thing, although its history seems to have been given a back seat to African slavery.

From the book White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America:

They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.

Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

And from The Centre for Research on Globalization comes this:

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.

None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.

While not in the same numbers as slaves brought to the United States from Africa, Irish slaves still were  a significant number in the US.

Are you still with me?  Or has this topic droned on far too long and you've gone into skimming mode.  I'm not sure what to do here, because I've got another really good read on the subject of Irish slavery.

What to do, what to do?  I need to go think about this.

Time passes.

I'm back.  A shot of Jameson has cleared me mind.   I'm going to post a brief excerpt from the article, which is from the Daily Kos, of all places, and is very interesting, and then I'll post a link to the entire thing and you can read (or not read) it as you wish.

“...the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period,” writes Martin. “It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.”

Colonel William Brayne wrote to English authorities in 1656 urging the importation of Negro slaves on the grounds that, "as the planters would have to pay much more for them, they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was wanting in the case of (Irish)...." many of whom, he charged, were killed by overwork and cruel treatment. African Negroes cost generally about 20 to 50 pounds Sterling, compared to 900 pounds of cotton (about 5 pounds Sterling) for an Irish. They were also more durable in the hot climate, and caused fewer problems. The biggest bonus with the Africans though, was they were NOT Catholic, and any heathen pagan was better than an Irish Papist.

You can read the entire article here.

Random thought - I don't think anyone ever wrote a musical about Irish slavery.

There Are Thirty Million Slaves In The World; Including Sixty Thousand In The U.S.

So says this article in the Washington Post.  The article includes a world map of slavery showing the percentage of each country's population who are, according to the article, enslaved.

When you open the linked article the map is interactive and can be enlarged for easier viewing.

Before continuing, let's stipulate that slavery in any form is horrible. Slavery is immoral, it is illegal, and it is an outrage that all people should stand against. It should and must be abolished.

The linked article draws heavily from information provided by an organization called the Walk Free Foundation, a self-described organization dedicated to ending modern slavery. Data from Walk Free's 2014 Global Slavery Index, on which the map above was created was "developed through extensive consultations with an international and independent Expert Advisory Group" according to their website.

But it doesn't name the "Expert Advisory Group", nor does it describe the reasons for their expertise, nor the methods by which the data used in creating the 2014 Global Slavery Index were gathered, sorted, and verified.

We think of slavery as a practice of the past, an image from Roman colonies or 18th-century American plantations, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.

This is not some softened, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. These 30 million people are living as forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages and, in all ways that matter, as pieces of property, chattel in the servitude of absolute ownership.

I have questions.

Look at the interactive map. It seems to make sense, right? But where is North Korea? The North Korean government has enslaved its entire population, so shouldn't it be shown on the map in the darkest of colors? If North Korea isn't even shown, how can we have certainty that the rest of the data are correct, especially if the data source is unnamed? This is troublesome.

Why is there no breakout of numbers by type of slavery? Slavery of all types is lumped together. For example, that means that someone who has chosen to work as a prostitute is lumped together with someone who has been sold into prostitution, and with others who have been forced into military conscription, enslaved in diamond mines, agriculture, etc. The lack of specific data is cause to cast a leery eye on the story.

Slavery is bad, horrible. What the Washington Post has done is to create an article based entirely on information sourced from the Walk Free Foundation. And that information, while compelling, lacks detail that supports its conclusions. In doing that, the Washington Post published a compelling article, but also an article that appears to lack a factual basis.

And that is irresponsible, given the horror of slavery.

Until The Sun Comes Up

A story of violent deaths in Chicago, and a Chicago Tribune news reporter's story of covering them on the overnight shift.

For an overnight shift reporter in America's murder capital, the beat is an education in violence and its aftermath, marked by powerful snapshots of grief.

What does the aftermath of murder sound like?

I stood outside the yellow tape, looking at the crumpled body of 14-year-old Damani Henard, whose name I did not yet know, surrounded by an eerie quiet.

That silence, one I’d hear versions of again and again, became a powerful part of my nights. Four hundred fifteen people were murdered in Chicago in 2013, more than in any other American city — and this was an improvement from the year before. I was at the scene of more than 30 of them. Most were killed by guns; many were teenagers. In Chicago last year, more than 2,100 people were shot.

These are murders that never merit protests, nor appearances by well-dressed and immaculately coiffed civil rights activists.  And that is simply, dreadfully, wrong.  

Read the whole essay.