Just So You Know
Guys, I am having a ball on vacation. This week Bubba, me, Bubba Jr, and the lovely Mrs. Bubba Jr. had VIP tours of the Harry S Truman Library and home in Independence, Missouri, thanks to customer Deb and her Bubba, Craig. It was the experience of a lifetime.
I’ll have loads of pictures to share but I just opened my computer machine for the first time and want to share this with you. It is a draft of a letter that President Truman sent to Joseph McCarthy. This photograph was taken through glass so you’ll need to click the little one to see the big one.
I wish that President Obama would make a copy of this letter and send it to Ted Cruz. Hell, Cruz even looks like McCarthy.
Harry Truman rocked.
Owwwwwch!! That still has to hurt all these years later. Forgive me. Wingnuts have no conscience,therefore they cannot be hurt. HST-you rocked!!!
1He rocked and all … except for that whole dropping the atom bomb on a civilian population.
Just sayin’.
2Great to hear you are having a fantastic time with the family and friends, Mrs. B.!
Too funny, as I tend to read left to right, top to bottom, and had not read your final comment. Had the exact same thought about HST talking about Ted Cruz.
The physical resemblance between Daffy Cruz, Jr. and McCarthy is amazing. Forget his birth certificate; he and Mama Cruz should be DNA tested.
Truman’s dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur is another part of history President Obama should consider.
3Mark J, good instruction for all presidents to heed: beware the MIC. They screwed JFK, LBJ, Clinton and currently Obama.
4Lots to think about. I think it’s neat that it looks like Truman typed his letter himself. and he walked alone to the barbershop from the White House. Wish we could go back to that. So very sorry re: atom bombs. We need to not let things get back to that.
5Beautiful! Thank you JJ have a fun vacation.
“If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it.”
6http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/09/1053088/-An-open-letter-to-the-people-who-hate-Obama-more-than-they-love-America#
I rarely see Cruz without thinking of McCarthy. It’s the smirk, the rush to any microphone or camera within ten miles, and the willingness to tear down anything, including his own (is it?) country, if he thinks that by so doing he can lift himself up another inch.
What I would send to him wouldn’t be this courteous– it would be Truman’s letter to a music critic who said that Margaret Truman couldn’t sing for beans: “If we meet, you will need a new nose and perhaps a supporter below.”
7Rhea, as much as I’d like to gohmert punch Daffy Cruz, Jr., he’s an insignificant shiny object in the Koch scheme of things. Maybe sent to us by the Koch’s to take our eyes off the real pair of gohmerts needing a punch, Paul Ryan?
8Marge Wood, for a mere percentage of the cost of arming the Middle East and Israel, we can provide everyone with solar technology and green solutions. Fresh water and food for all through cooperation.
9Dear PKM, that is what our new bumper stickers should read.
Make solar panels, not bombs.
Keep the air and water clean, use solar.
Be kind. Cooperate so everyone can have fresh water and food.
Why is that so hard for people to understand? One of my cousins said he hated to rain on my parade but solar wouldn’t work. I just sent him a news article about solar that worked.
10and Rhea, I LOVE that comment from Truman. I’ve never heard her sing but her papa loved her. I’ve never read one of Margaret’s novels either but wonder if she can write.
And while we’re talking about Kochs and water and food, note that there is a Koch industry for cleaning water, and the Kochs are mixed in with Monsanto for GMO foods. The Kochs go after what people have to have. Except for solar.
11I wouldn’t give HST’s troubles to a monkey on a rock. He was told by the military, in particular the on-scene generals, that invading the Japanese home islands would entail hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides and might take years to subdue the populace. Dropping the atomic bomb forced the Emperor to the surrender table. Or so that is what I have been taught. Events of 1945 are crystal clear in hindsight.
12Marge Wood, “Why is that so hard for people to understand?” If we only knew, it would make it easier to educate enough Americans to make a difference in the world.
Kochs and solar? Maybe if they thought they could get their greedy paws on a piece of the sun, they’d be all in for solar. May they have all the luck of Icarus with the sun.
13I believe I need to read more about HST. Does anyone have a recommendation for book/biography/whatever? He sounds like a man I’d definitely like and support!
14Marge Wood: The letter that Truman wrote (and which was published in the Washington Post) was to the Post’s music critic and it turned out to be a dreadful mistake. He should have left it in draft form and saved it for his library, along with the unsent draft of the letter to McCarthy. It just forced everybody to take another look at Margaret as Singer and the overwhelming opinion was that she was a Grade A Amateur and would never have a professional musical career.
Back in the days when I read mystery novels like they were M&Ms, I read a few of hers. There were not bad and, living in DC, the local settings were of particular interest to me. None of them (I believe, could be wrong) are considered “classics” of the genre; and, God knows, I have read worse ones (Mickey Spillane, anyone?). In other words, she didn’t embarrass herself by writing them.
I wish our President would publicly slap Cruz upside his head. That would be great fun!
15Micr, the history I was taught revealed that WWII with Japan was avoidable, and that having failed that the surrender of Japan was days away. Then we dropped the bomb anyway.
History and people baffle me. Who would have thought the Japanese would have gone all in on nuclear energy?
What I think I know about American history is that we sure waste a lot of money destroying things; sometimes rebuilding them or not. Then have the hubris to wonder why everyone doesn’t love our form of democracy.
16More true thing (per Frederick deBoer):
Another definition of white privilege is being so steeped in the language of emotive politics that you think the system cares whether you as an individual are terrified or outraged. I promise: whether you as a white person feel outraged, terrified, delighted, or indifferent, the system that ensures cyclical state violence against black men is utterly unconcerned with how you feel. It just doesn’t matter.
I recommend reading the entire — 5 paragraphs short — commentary.
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/11/25/racism-is-asphalt-racism-is-a-bullet/
His closing remark:
If we ever are going to figure out how to do something about all this, it will only come from an acknowledgment that good white people being good has done nothing to prevent a world where Michael Brown lay dead in the street for hours. Until that second sentiment is more popular among them than the first, the outrage of white people will never be a force for change.
17Gosh darn everyone. Posted that last comment to the wrong thread.
Oops.
Sorry.
18HST was a little gamecock who could. Will never forget the time I was in D.C. for JFK’s inaugural. I was in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel when Carmine DiSapio, a New York City boss, walked in with his entourage. Not at all interesting. There was a break in the flow of people through the door and in walked HST in a camel colored overcoat and a greenish fedora. No entourage. If he had Secret Service men with him I couldn’t tell. The entire lobby opened up and made a road for him to cross the area. His eyes were bright and on everything in one fell swoop. Lots of pep and genuine confidence. You knew who he was and what he was. A pepper pot, but a truly talented one. Nobody fooled with Harry. Cruz et al. are not even worthy to walk in his shadow.
19I wish that Dems in general would stop being so wimpy and start being Democrats. Presenting themselves as “not Republicans” is not a sound strategy, as the recent elections just showed us.
American voters will choose a bully over a wimp every time.
20PKM @ #8: I agree that Cruz is a small boil on the bum of the nation, but there’s a German word meaning “a face that cries out for a fist in it,” and next to that in the dictionary is a picture of Ted Cruz.
LynnN, I wonder if we shouldn’t take one leaf from the GOP playbook and start calling certain elected officials and office-seekers DINOs: Democrats In Name Only. I don’t think the public wants to choose between a Republican and a Democrat who’s trying to sound like a Republican. Get more candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders out there and more Dems will go to the polls to vote for someone who supports them!
21We know about “nukular” weapons and dumbass dubya still wanted to use them in Afghanistan-on a smaller scale. And traitorious wingnuts impeached Clinton for having an affair…..
22and the little ones picked the bones,
Hey, once upon a time the late Teddy Kennedy said something like, “how can you love your country when you hate its government” and it was aimed at someone who was a forerunner of today’s Tea Baggers. Best thing Teddy ever said.
23Love it. Thanks for sharing.
24“I wish that President Obama would make a copy of this letter and send it to Ted Cruz. Hell, Cruz even looks like McCarthy.”
Give ’em hell, Barry?
25Glad you & the family are having fun, JJ. Happy Thanksgiving to the WMDBS!
26The quip about the junior senator from Texas looking like Joe McCarthy FINALLY inspired me to say something nice about the infamous senator from Wisconsin.
Say what you will about ‘Tail Gunner Joe,’ he at least served his country in the US armed forces in the nation’s hour of peril.
I should be very interested to see Ted Cruz’s military record. I’m sure it’s in some file somewhere, right next to his US birth certificate.
27Susan, as we say in the South, “Y’all come back now!”
1SmartAmerican – To learn about Truman the man I would recommend David McCullough’s “Truman” it is probably a bit on the kind side but it meshes up with the views of those who actually knew and grew up with him. To learn about his Presidency and decisions, you might try to get your hands on his own two volume autobiography, he’s not a bad writer.
As to Margaret’s writing skills, she and Bess were avid readers of mystery novels and huge fans of Agatha Christy. She never won a book award but if you were hanging out in DC she would make a diverting,unchallenging read, if you like the genre.
A few words about the A-Bomb. Truman was in the infantry in WWI, he rose to command when, during the opening salvo, his entire command structure was wiped out. The unit was in disarray and about to be run over when Truman, a young untried farm boy from rural Missouri, stepped up, reorganized the unit and successfully countered the attack. All his remaining men survived and to a man credited Harry with that.
I mention this because it is important to understand that the man who made that decision was an infantryman. A person who understood what it was like to fight a war of intrenchment. Truman was told that it would have cost a million American lives to take the Islands. He was told that the death and injury toll would have been in the hundreds of thousands every day he delayed.
Truman was told that the emperor would not budge, that the Japenese regarded him as a God and would continue to fight. His generals informed him that there were targets at both locations and that it was essential for the public to understand what would happen if the emperor wouldn’t budge. He weighed the possibility of a million American lives against the destruction of two cities and chose. He never regretted that choice. He didn’t start the war, he finished it.
You also need to remember our knowledge of the a-Bomb was incomplete, but our knowledge of the cost to take the Pacific in hand to hand combat was not.
I am admittedly biased, my husband’s father was on a ship bound for the Pacific when the bomb was dropped and there is every likelihood he would have died in the Pacific like so many others had the war not ended. I’m fond of my Bubba so I’m admittedly pleased that didn’t happen. I’m also exceedingly fond of President Truman, who for what it is worth, didn’t even know the bomb existed when he was sworn in as President, FDR had kept it a secret from him. That’s also an interesting story for another day.
This is all my way of saying, context is everything. But my money is on Harry.
28I love discussions like this. I am going to try to remember to pick up one of Margaret Truman’s novels next time I go to the main library. I’m real glad that Harry Truman was President when I was a little girl.
29I read two of Margaret Truman’s novels, and yes, she damn well can write.
For us Texans, Cruz is “our” Senator, so we can certainly copy out Truman’s letter, send it to him, and say Obama’s too courteous to send it, but we think it fits.
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