By David Futrelle
Weird how Mueller’s conclusion that his report “does not exonerate” Trump has been taken to mean — by the White House, by mainstream media hacks, by right-wing propagandists and even by a certain segment of the left — that his report totally exonerates Trump and that the whole investigation (which resulted in 37 indictments, 7 guilty pleas and 4 people going to prison) was a waste of time.
Let’s maybe see how things look after we get the report itself — and after the House does its own investigation of the Russia matter and all the rest of the corruption in the Trump White House and over his long, sleazy career. Let’s see Barr and Mueller testify in public to start to answer some of the many questions that remain,
Anyway, here are some relevant tweets, a couple of panda videos, and an open thread.
In other news:
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@Weird Eddie: Random bit of Bounty trivia: after his return to England, one of the jobs William Bligh did was carry out a survey of Dublin Bay and recommend the construction of the North Bull Wall to prevent the estuary from silting up as it was wont to do. Both it and the South Wall are still doing the job two hundred years later!
Bligh appears to have been an intelligent man, even enlightened by the brutal disciplinary standards of his day, but he seems not to have been a “people person”…
I think I once saw someone comment that if Bligh had captained the Titanic, the ship would have reach New York without incident, but all the passengers would have been tearing their hair out from having to listen to him drone on about breadfruit the entire way there.
I understand the charts made by Bligh whilst making passage to East Timor with the other loyalists (and nigh on starving to death) were considered so accurate that they were still in use in the 1940s. Definitely seems to have had a way of putting people’s backs up though, didn’t he get deposed from the governorship of New South Wales ?
Authoritarianalways,
Sorry, can’t see your whole name on my phone.
But to your point, I give you Sarah Sanders basically threatening Trump’s critics with execution
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1110240177643872256?s=19
And Trump sending a memo to the media ordering them to go after the congressional Democrats who are investigating him
https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1110254539163291648?s=19
I’m not sure if he’s acting like this because he now feels untouchable or because he’s still afraid of what is in that report that hasn’t been made public yet. Either way, he’s clearly escalating and it’s scary.
Re: Bligh and the Bounty
The log of the journey is well worth a read; especially as it continues for the duration of the rowing boat journey.
But as to the Mutiny itself, a big problem was Bligh cared about the fitness of the crew, so he insisted they dance two hours a day. That was the drill at the time when mo
workload was slack. Naval rations amounted to 5,000 calories a day; so the Navy insisted the crew use them one way or another. But the crew especially resented this after their long skive in Tahiti.
So you had a resentful crew, who were then utilised by Christian who resented that working class Bligh wouldn’t defer to someone from the upper classes.
.
The Board of Enquiry proceedings go into a lot of detail; so they’re worth a read too.
@WWTH
It’s a little bit of both I feel. Offense is the best defense, and he is clearly trying to use the report to his advantage. Trump always lies and his base is going to believe everything he says, whilst the liberal media will always try to be “impartial”, which means that they’re not going to outright discredit him. Which works beautifully for him, because that means that to actively pursue him is an uphill battle from here on out.
So what he’s doing is just saying the report clears him of wrongdoing and using that to attack the Democrats. If he crushes them before they turn around the narrative against Trump, then they pose no threat.
Right now the narrative is in his favor, so he needs to strike a deadly blow to the opposition. The deadlier the better for him. It just feels like he’s gonna go for an “all in”. What this “all in” entails, nobody knows yet but it’s not gonna be any good.
As “AuthoritarianismAlwaysRepeats” says, Trump is known to be vindictive. But he’s not just about pettiness, he’s also about escalation. He is the “I’m going to repay you a thousand fold” type of vindictive asshole.
Pelosi needs to step up her fucking game, because this right here could be fodder for another “burning of the Reichstag” incident. They need to make Mueller’s report public as soon as possible, because this shit is downright dangerous.
You don’t let authoritarians and dictators play their little game, because that’s how you start losing lives.
Trump did not collude with people who were explicitly part of Russia’s government. However, pretty much anyone with power, wealth, or influence in Russia is connected with the Russian government, like the inverse of how the Mafia had politicians that weren’t explicitly part of it but still did its bidding.
Honestly, if I had the ability, I’d drop a RICO on everyone implicated in the Mueller report and use its power, which is well-designed to take down people who would otherwise use their money and connections to evade normal prosecution.
As it is an open thread, may i ask if someone has read the book Broad Band, The Untold story of the women who made the Internet from Claire L. Evans ? And if yes, was it interesting ?
Alan:
5,000 calories? I understand about half of that energy would be used in the work, and it’d require an athletic level workload. What do you normally do on a sail ship to consume 2,500 extra calories a day?
Also, who’d want to eat 18th century sailor food more than they absolutely need for survival? I doubt I could eat 5,000 calories of that stuff if I spent the whole day at it.
I have a thought. You know how Trump supporters keep saying that he’s playing 4 dimensional chess? I think it’s possible that Mueller is. I wouldn’t bet the house on it, but he’s far more capable than Trump, obviously. He might possibly be giving Trump and Barr a chance to obstruct justice in a proveable way. Or maybe there’s another report to be delivered by another route.
On the other hand, he’s human so he must have blind spots (less than average, but some) and since he’s a republican, they’ll be some republican blind spots.
And of course it’s possible that Trump is a useful idiot, not a conspiritor, but that seems unlikely to me.
@Lumipuna I’m no expert, but sails had to be raised by hand and big sails are very heavy.
@Lumipuna
That’s actually correct. Typical rations were very high in calories, probably 4000 to 5000 a day. In addition to being under the sun quite a bit, able seamen were climbing up and down the lines on a fairly regular basis to adjust the sails (the only means of a ship actually moving anywhere in those days), or they were undergoing gunnery drills, which requiring repositioning a heavy cannon after every shot.
Needless to say, they burned plenty on a 12-hour shift. I can only imagine an old salt was in pretty good physical shape after years on the briny.
Katamount – 4000 calories sounds much more believable. I’ve seen generally similar figures mentioned for people who did physical labor in historical settings.
Surviving in the Canadian winter outside, with collecting firewood and the like, suggests 5000 kcal per day to keep up. That is the conservation amount; no needless exertion, collecting deadfall instead of cutting down trees, sitting your butt down and resting whenever you aren’t doing something needed for survival. So yeah, I can absolutely believe that 5k/day is a reasonable amount for that sort of work.
Just going to point out that in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the participants’ intake in the six-month “starvation” portion of the study was approximately 1,560 calories per day, cut from an estimated average intake of 3,200 calories per day. These were young, fit men of military age, but during the course of the experiment they were attending classes at the University of Minnesota* which probably involves a lot less physical exertion than crewing an 18th-century sailing ship. 5,000/day doesn’t sound that unreasonable for the latter.
*I think they mostly ended up dropping courses during the starvation period, as they were too weak to focus.
It’s interesting how that study caused men to act like stereotypical weight conscious women. They hoarded food and recipes, they had obsessive thoughts about food, they felt guilty when they ate. All this on a calorie intake less punishing than most of the fad diets marketed at women.
I’m with Naomi Wolf on this subject. Diet culture is absolutely not meant to make women healthier or more attractive. Its meant to keep women weak, distracted and pliable.
Sort of a tangent, but this is a sore spot with me.
re: Sailors’ caloric intake, the 18th century British Navy’s official rations called for 1 lb of biscuit, 2 lb of salt beef or 1 lb of bacon/fat pork or 1lb fish, or 1.5 lb mutton depending on day and availability (substituted with flour, currants and suet if meat is unavailable), plus one pint of peas or 2 oz butter and 4oz cheese, plus a gallon of beer, per sailor per day.
The mere thought of having to gag down a pint of peas makes me want to throw up …
let alone another one tomorrow, and then another one on Thursday, and on and on with no end in sight.
I think we’ve found an explanation for that mutiny. 🙂
Surplus – you are in a different time zone. Look at the time your comment posted . 2:14.
Re: the site needing to be fixed – can you do it? If not, can you pay for it?
If the answer to both of these is ‘no’, you need to let it go.
You’ve had it explained to you *multiple times* why this might be happening.
Just, please. Next time you want to let us all know that there is a problem, go and re-read the replies you already have gotten. Know that we know.
ETA – It is 7:02 here, comment says 6:02.
@Surplus
If it makes you feel better, it would probably be mixed into a stew with salt beef or fish and some flour. OTOH, that’s a pint if dry peas, considerable more once cooked.
Oh dear me no. If you had a pint of peas today you’d get butter and cheese with your biscuit tomorrow. Then another pint of peas. Oatmeal might be mixed with any of the above for bulk. Anyway, the gallon of beer to wash it down with helps. Or half a pint of arrack, rum, or brandy, if you’re lucky.
I expect so. I sure as hell wouldn’t eat those peas sober.
The peas might even have been presented as ‘pease,’ a dish similar in texture to hummus (and less likely to slop about on a rocking ship.)
They could be presented as popsicles and would still taste vile. Frankly I don’t know how the blasted things wound up being cultivated in the first place. I’d have thought any hunter-gatherer who chanced to nibble on one would have promptly spat it out and mentally put an “X” through that particular plant on his “could these be good to eat?” list. I can only assume a bad season and resulting famine was involved. And even then … why aren’t they classed with tree bark and bugs in the “survival food” category?
I don’t know if I could eat a pint of pease pudding or mushy peas; but I’d be more than willing to have a go! I love em.
And vegan protein supplements are pretty much just mashed up peas anyway.