Today I learned, via the Daily podcast, that Lincoln's plan, after the slaves were freed, was that they would emigrate to another country. He didn't see an America with free blacks and whites co-existing as workable. This isn't what they taught us in grade school.#
There was a long piece on the BBC this morning why Brazil's Bolsonaro is burning the Amazon. They had academics theorizing, but none said the obvious reason why all Russian-inspired autocrats do anything -- to squeeze every dollar of value that's available to them by selling off some asset of the country. Usually at small fractions of a penny on the dollar. They don't care. Everything the country owns is ripe to plunder. Bolsonaro (and Trump et al) has enough bullshit to throw at journalists to keep them debating every reason but the real one, which for some reason no one seems to be able to say. They're looting their country. Same reason the Repubs in the US want to kill Social Security and Medicare. They want the money for themselves. .#I watched a Mets clip from 2015, and remembered the story of Wilmer Flores that was spark that lit the fire for the Mets amazing late summer and postseason that year. He isn't on the Mets anymore, he's with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Seeing his picture makes me worry for his mental health. Here was a boy who cried when he thought he was traded. We all loved him for that. This is sad. #
Tom Watson makes an excellent point. With today's news about RBG's health, it's imperative that impeachment start asap. Tie up DC until a Democrat is in the White House. This is the whole game. #
Starting with tonight's email, linkblog items will appear, labeled as such, after the main blog items and before the footer. Here's a screen shot that illustrates. These are the links I publish during the day to Twitter, to the linkblog RSS feed and to the Links tab on scripting.com. #
I was looking through Netflix last night for something to watch, and they had this Woodstock title, so I clicked on it, thinking it was the Woodstock movie from 1970, but it was something new, from PBS, and it told the story from the point of view of the promoters. How they got the idea, how it morphed from being a studio in the town of Woodstock to an outdoor concert on a field in Wallkill, the town limited the attendance to 5000 (there were already hundreds of thousands of tickets sold) so they had to scramble with just a few weeks to go, find a new location, build a stage, etc. #- They told story of how they made it such a peaceful cooperative event (it wasn't by accident). They were competent, smart, and driven -- and obviously under a lot of pressure from all sides, but they pulled it off. Remarkable and as it turns out, historic.#
- When I started watching i thought I'd watch for five or ten minutes, but I went all the way through. A great story well told. #
- It could have melted down#
- They had to do a lot of stuff to prevent it from being a disaster.#
- For example, they chartered a jet to fly in Wavy Gravy and Hog Farm to do security. An inspired idea. #
- Then the NYS governor (Nelson Rockefeller) wanted to send in the National Guard to clear the place without any thought to the scale of the event. They had to somehow prevent that from happening. #
- They relied on army helicopters to shuttle medical personnel in, and that started rumors (remember this was 1969, it was as much an antiwar event as it was a music festival), and the guy on the PA system had to keep everything positive. #
- Then it rained.#
- There was no food. #
- Not enough toilets. #
- Bad trips. #
- People who knew how crowds work said there's no way this won't melt down, but it didn't. A lot of forethought went into it. Worth watching the show just for that part of the story.#