Dream West (Part 3)

It is 1847.  General Kearny arrests Lt. Col. John C Fremont with plans of court martialing him for mutiny, among other things.  The trial takes place in Washington, where Senator Thomas Hart Benton sits behind his son-in-law; the long break between Benton and his daughter Jessie is at an end.  Fremont is found guilty and ordered dishonorably discharged.  He counts on a Presidential Pardon, which comes but does not absolve him entirely.  He resigns the army and sets out on his 4th expedition.

Kit Carson was unavailable, so Fremont hired Bill Williams (Anthony Zerbe) as guide.  The expedition is a disaster as the men are stranded in the snows of the Rocky Mountains.  Several die of starvation.  When Fremont finally gets to California and reunites with Jessie, he is a rich man.  There is gold on the ranch he purchased.  With this, he financed yet another expedition, his 5th and final one, mapping a path through the Rockies for a railroad.

In 1856, Fremont is the first Republican nominee for the presidency.  Abraham Lincoln (F Murray Abraham) is among the delegates who nominate him.  He loses by a large margin.

1858.  Thomas Hart Benton is on his death bed.  Jessie visits.  Her father agreed that she was right about Fremont all those years ago.  She chose a very fine man.

In 1861, the Civil War has begun and President Lincoln named Fremont to command the Western Department, with a particular interest in preventing Missouri from joining the Confederacy.  In St. Louis, Fremont immediately confronted the rebel sympathizers in the city.  Time to stop treating them with kid gloves.  He went so far as to post a proclamation freeing slaves from rebels.  Lincoln viewed this as a huge overstep on Fremont's part and sent General Hunter (James Cromwell) to replace him.

It 1887, Fremont and his wife live a modest life on Staten Island.  All their wealth was lost on bad investments in the railroads.  They depend upon Jessie's writing to support them.  In a final train journey back to California, they encounter a man and his son.  The man gushes about Fremont and his book enabling his parents to travel west and thus provide him the prosperous life he now has.

The final chapter is a hodgepodge.  Where the first two episodes had a smooth flow with the rise of Fremont (episode 1 covered 4 years or so) and Fremont at War (episode 2 covers 4 years or so), this one covers the rest of his life (40 years). That's a lot of time to cover and it feels rushed.  The disaster of the 4th expedition is fully explored, even dragging at times.  The 5th expedition, which sees the return of Kit Carson, felt rushed by comparison.  The presidential campaign started with Fremont's nomination at the Republican Convention and ended almost the next scene with his defeat.  Next thing you know, it's the Civil War.  None of Fremont's battles are filmed; it is all camp and HQ.  This chapter feels more like a history lecture than an engaging story.

Though I like F Murray Abraham, he is badly cast as Abraham Lincoln.  He is in so much makeup that he almost looks to be wearing an Abe Lincoln mask.  The look is unconvincing to the extent of being distracting.  He lacks the towering stature of Lincoln.  His conversation with Jessie where she chides him for withdrawing Fremont's emancipation proclamation made Lincoln look small.

Overall, the miniseries is good.  It is too lenient on Fremont, but it is telling the story from his point of view.  My reading of the man shows him to be brash and arrogant.  He had a high opinion of himself and was not prone to humility.  Chamberlain's Fremont does not come across as a man who grew up in South Carolina.

Recommended.

Presidential Rankings - The Great Ones

I have long disagreed with the regular presidential rankings that are published every few years.  Invariably, the most recent Republicans are at the very bottom and the most recent Democrats rank very highly.  No bias there.  A couple of weeks ago, I came across one by Robert Graboyes that did not follow the usual rankings.  The presidents are separated into quintiles: highly positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, and highly negative.  There is a 6th category for those who died so early in office that they don't merit ranking.  Let's start with the greats (i.e., highly positive):

Graboyes defines highly positive as leaving "at least one blockbuster accomplishment that swamps any negatives."

George Washington:  He was the first president and established what the office would be.  Everything he did became a precedent, including his resignation after 2 terms.  He defined the presidency.

Thomas Jefferson: The third president bought Louisianna from Napoleon, dramatically expanding the United States.  Where most nations were paying protection to the Tripolitan pirates, Jefferson sent the Marines.

James Monroe: Other than Washington, Monroe is the only president to run unopposed for re-election.  His time in office was known as the Era of Good Feelings.  He announced the Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere as off-limits to European powers.

James Knox Polk: Nearly doubled the size of the United States and established treasury autonomy.  As a longtime Polk fan, it pleases me greatly that he was placed in the highly positive group.  This surely impacts my view of his overall picks.

Abraham Lincoln:  He saved the Union.  Enough said.

Theodore Roosevelt: He strengthened the presidency and established America as a superpower.  Indeed, he is the first US president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: He led the allies to victory.

Harry Truman: He began the containment of Communism.

Ronald Reagan: He turned the economy around from the Ford/Carter mess, starting a 25-year economic boom.  More importantly, his strategy ended the Soviets without a war.

Generally, this is a good list.  I will quibble about FDR, whose actions regarding the Great Depression and threats of packing the Supreme Court should cost him a great spot.  However, FDR has been listed as one of the three greats - with Washington and Lincoln - in almost every list.  If Mount Rushmore had been carved in the 50s or later rather than the 20s and 30s, FDR would be on it.

Minimum Wage is Always Zero

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

Thomas Sowell

Whenever someone talks of raising the minimum wage, I think of this quote from Thomas Sowell.  Is it better to raise the wages and thus shove the least productive into unemployment or abolish the minimum and let employers pay what the employee will accept.  No person will voluntarily accept a job that does not make them better off and no employer will hire an additional employee if that does not make them better off.  The minimum wage is just a case of self-declared do-gooders deciding what is 'fair' according to them, without regard to the market, the employee, or the employer.

Along those same lines, taxing the rich does not improve the lot of the poor.  It may please some to see the wealthy punished through taxation, but it harms the economy.  The government is always less efficient in spending money than private individuals.  Had the money remained in the hands of the wealthy, they would invest it with an eye toward profit or spend it on goods, both of which spur growth.  By contrast, government will spend it with no concern of a financial return, which is how we get expensive boondoggles with huge cost overruns.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. 

Abraham Lincoln

Twitter

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter and panic has ensued.  I am reminded of the election of Abraham Lincoln, of all things.  No sooner had Lincoln been elected than the South commenced to secede.  There was no waiting to see what policies he might pursue, just immediate panic.  Despite Lincoln winning with less than 40% of the popular vote, the South chose to secede.  Had the South remained, an additional 12 Democratic Senators would have tipped the Senate to the Democrats: 35 Democrats, 29 Republicans, and one Unionist.  There were 7 Democrat Senators from Union states and 7 more from Border States.  Instead, the balance was 29 Republicans, 23 Democrats, and 1 Unionist.  As more Confederate states departed, the balance was further unbalanced.  Even with the Republican dominance that followed, Northern Democrats were still needed to pass the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.  Clearly, this could never have been ratified if the South had not seceded.

Musk has only just purchased Twitter and has implemented little, if anything yet.  Why not wait to see how things shake out?  If it goes to hell, then tweet your prescience and delete your account then.  By staying on the platform, you have the ability to shape the platform.  By leaving, you have none.  I am also reminded of all those who proclaimed that they would leave the United States if Bush or Trump were elected.  Amazingly, they never did leave.

Musk has declared himself to be a free speech absolutist.  As such, one would expect a much higher bar for banning people from Twitter under Musk.  Twitter has, over the last few years, clearly chosen sides in many debates, banning or suspending those who dare to voice opinions on the 'wrong' side of the issue.  One hopes that Musk will let the two sides argue.  Time will tell.

Words Mean Nothing

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?  Four.  Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln

A young man in Canada was shopping for car insurance and didn't like the price.  So he asked how much it would cost if he happened to be a woman.  Well, the price dropped by over $1000.  With this bit of information, he conceived a brilliant plan.  He declared that he was a woman and is now saving $91 a month on car insurance.  Who needs Geico?  Here is one of the unintended consequences of the current insanity regarding sex.  Science is pretty clear on the male/female dichotomy but law has abandoned biology.  The insurance company should have quoted him the same price because saying a man is a woman doesn't make him a woman.

Most Qualified?

In yesterday's musing, I mentioned that James Buchanan was arguably the most qualified person elected to the presidency.  Didn't President Obama recently opine during the election that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified?  Let's consider.

James Buchanan was born in Pennsylvania in 1791.  After graduating college with honors in 1809, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1812.  He was a highly paid lawyer through the rest of the decade.  Though opposed to the War of 1812, he volunteered when Maryland was invaded and took part in the Defense of Baltimore.  Soon thereafter, he was elected as a member of the Pennsylvania House, where he served for 2 years (1814 to 1816).  In 1821, he was elected to Congress and served for 10 years, the last two as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.  In 1832, President Andrew Jackson appointed him as the Minister to Russia.  Shortly after returning from Russia, he became a Senator for Pennsylvania (1834 to 1845).  When James Knox Polk was elected to the Presidency in 1844, he offered Buchanan a nomination to the Supreme Court!  Buchanan declined and instead served as Secretary of State.  The Polk years (1845 to 1849) were exciting ones for foreign policy, involving both a war with Mexico and resolving the Oregon Question with England.  Polk had stated his intention to serve only one term.  When Franklin Pierce was elected in 1852, he appointed Buchanan to be the Minister to the United Kingdom (1853 to 1856).  With this immense depth of experience, Buchanan then failed spectacularly as the 15th president of the United States (1857-1861).  Like George H. W. Bush, Buchanan wasn't particularly interested in domestic affairs and really wanted to tinker on the world stage.

 

Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley with honors in 1969 and earned her Juris Doctor from Yale in 1973.  She served as an attorney for the Children's Defense Fund (established 1973).  In 1974, she advised the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate.  She became First Lady of Arkansas (1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992).  During this period, she was a highly-paid lawyer at the Rose Law Firm.  When her husband was elected president, she followed him to Washington where she became First Lady (1993 to 2001).  She managed the healthcare overhaul that failed so badly as to trigger the Republican wave of 1994 in which the Democrats lost the House for the first time in 40 years!  Her first elective office was that of New York Senator (2001 to 2009), where she served on many committees but chaired none.  She served as President Obama's first Secretary of State (2009 to 2013), a tenure overshadowed by the collapse of Libya and American deaths in Benghazi.

Looks like a hands down victory for Buchanan and he proved to be a disaster as president.  Of course, the man who followed Buchanan had a thin resume by comparison, having served only 2 years in Congress and 8 in the Illinois House of Representatives.  On paper, Lincoln has less governmental experience than either of these two highly qualified individuals but is regularly rated among the best presidents, if not the best.  Government experience is not as valuable as one might expect.

EXTRA! Woman gives birth!

Yes, that is what actually happened but, because the woman is a transgendered man and his wife is a transgendered woman, the 'man' of the couple gave birth because he was the one with the womb.  Really?  The reason they were able to conceive was neither had had 'corrective' surgery yet.  Corrective!  If not for the fact that each member of this couple claims to be the opposite sex - which clearly they are not - this would be a non-story.  Man impregnates woman.  Woman gives birth.  OMG!  Wait until a car identifies as a garage and a garage identifies as a car, then we can park the garage in the car!

If Machado and Rodriguez want to swap genders in their relationship, that is fine.  However, this is another in the line of pregnant man stories that isn't true but gets a big headline.  It's a hoax in which the participants want to believe.  This reminds me of the case of Thomas Beatie, the pregnant man from Oregon.  He had begun his 'corrective' surgery (double mastectomy) but still had the plumbing to get pregnant, which he did.  Pregnant man.  Sigh.

"How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?  Four.  Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg."

Abraham Lincoln

By the same token, if you call a man a woman, she still can't get pregnant.  This is obvious lunacy and yet you are a bigot if you don't embrace it.  Live as you wish to live but you cannot require my participation in your fantasy.  We have come to where a Monty Python sketch is taken seriously.