Isaac Laquedem

"Comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe is Donald Trump's modern-day Samuel D. Burchard. Oopsie!

The 1884 presidential contest between James G. Blaine (the Republican nominee) and Grover Cleveland (the Democratic nominee) came down to the wire.  The polls (such as they were then) placed Blaine slightly ahead, and most observers expected that Blaine would defeat Cleveland and become the president in 1885.

Then, 140 years ago yesterday, six days before Election Day, a delegation of local clergymen met with Senator Blaine at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  The chairman, the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard, included these three sentences in his welcome remarks:

"We have a higher expectation, which is that you will be the President of the United States, and that you will do honor to our name, to the United States and to the high office you will occupy.  We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.  We are loyal to our flag, we are loyal to you." 

"Rum" meant alcohol, on which attitudes crossed party lines.  "Rebellion" meant the late Civil War, when Republicans stood for the union and Democrats for secession and slavery.  "Romanism," however, meant the Roman Catholic church, which the Protestant ministers opposed on theological grounds and Blaine opposed on political grounds.  (In 1875 Blaine had proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit all government aid to religious institutions, which for him meant mainly Catholic schools.)

Blaine heard Dr. Burchard call the Democratic Party the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," and did not dissent.  The national Democratic campaign committee and some of the state Democratic committees printed signs with Dr. Burchard's remarks to swing Catholic votes from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate.  "Here's what Blaine thinks of you," the signs implied, "so vote for his opponent."

I should add that in 1884 Catholicism was New York City's largest religious denomination.

Cleveland defeated Blaine by 23,000 votes nationwide and by a scant 1,149 votes in New York State.  He received 219 electoral votes to Blaine's 182.  If 575 New Yorkers had voted for Blaine instead of for Cleveland, Blaine would have won the state and its 36 electoral votes, and would have defeated Cleveland in the Electoral College, 218 to 183. 

On October 27, 2024 at a rally for republican candidate Donald Trump, almost exactly 140 years to the day after Dr. Burchard torpedoed the Blaine campaign, a speaker named Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,"  Several of his other attempts at humor were based on racist or religious tropes.  Mr. Trump heard Mr. Hinchcliffe's remarks and said nothing about them in his own speech shortly afterward.

Tony Hinchcliffe has given Donald Trump a modern "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" moment.  Residents of Puerto Rico are citizens of the United States, but they don't vote in the general presidential election  . . . until they move to one of the states, where as citizens they are immediately eligible to register to vote.  Over 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the United States after President Trump and FEMA botched the response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, including a large contingent to Pennsylvania, one of the swing states in 2024.  It would be a delicious irony if President Trump's mishandling of Hurricane Maria has combined with his modern-day Burchard moment to switch just enough Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania to give the state, and likely the national election, to Kamala Harris.

Exodus 32 finds a modern analogue

And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.  Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.  And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.  Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. 

And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/26/politics/trump-gold-statue-cpac-2021/index.html

Thomas Jefferson: the bogeyman of the Boston brahmin?

Wendell Phillips, the underappreciated author of the fine phrase that graces our federal courthouse, "The first duty of society is justice," was not necessarily a proper Bostonian - the other Boston brahmins thought him a rabble-rouser, which he was -- but he was among the most elegant and entertaining orators of his day.  He would insert dry zingers among his serious points in support of the abolitionist movement and his lampoons of William H. Seward.  He let off one of his best five minutes after he spoke his famous line, when he criticized Massachusetts for having been "hide-bound in the aristocracy of classes for years after" the Revolution, describing his home state's bygone beliefs in these words:

The five points of Massachusetts decency were, to trace your lineage to the Mayflower, graduate at Harvard College, be a good lawyer or a member of an orthodox church, -- either would answer, -- pay your debts, and frighten your child to sleep by saying "Thomas Jefferson."

The Fourth Circuit still knows what the Constitution stands for

A challenge to President Trump's executive order to bar citizens of certain Muslim-dominant nations from visiting the United States came before the Fourth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, which issued its opinion today blocking the president's travel ban.  The opinion goes on at some length, but all that a constitutionalist need pay attention to is the opening, written by Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory:

The question for this Court, distilled to its essential form, is whether the Constitution, as the Supreme Court declared in Ex Parte Milligan (1866), remains "a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace."  And if so, whether it protects Plaintiffs' right to challenge an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.  Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles - that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another.  Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute.  It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation.

What did the court rely on for its 10-3 decision?  Largely, and ironically, the campaign speeches of Mr. Trump himself. 

Republicans remember Daniel Berrigan in their own special way

Daniel Berrigan came to prominence in 1968 when he and eight others invaded the office of a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, gathered up the registration records, took them outside, and burned the papers.  On many other occasions during the Vietnam War, protesters burned their draft cards.  The stories and images of Father Berrigan's anti-war protests came back to the public mind when he died last week at 94.

Conservative Republicans are remembering Father Berrigan in their own way, burning not their draft cards but their voter registration cards, to protest Donald Trump's securing their party's nomination.  If Father Berrigan's views on immortality have turned out to be correct, he's doubtless looking down, pleased that the means of protest that he helped to start has become bipartisan.

Safeway offers rye bread for the unorthodox

At least, that's what I make of Safeway marketing an Oroweat product described as "Jewish rye bread" with a sticker that suggests using it to make sandwiches of ham and cheese.  Gastronomically it's a fine idea, but theologically it leaves something to be desired.

The first western pope takes the name "Francis," in 1979

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is the first of the 266 men elected pope to choose the name "Francesco," and is also the first pope from the Western Hemisphere.  In an interesting coincidence, he and the church are 34 years behind the world of fiction.

In "The Vicar of Christ," a 1979 novel by the late Walter F. Murphy (1929-2010), a professor of political science and jurisprudence, the cardinals elect an American as pope, who in Professor Murphy's fictional world is the first pope from the western hemisphere, and who is the first pope to take the name "Francesco," in his case after St. Francis of Assisi.

Coincidence?  Prescience?  Either way, Professor Murphy would have loved to see this day.

It's not eternal happiness, but it's pretty close

I haven't noticed anything special happening today so far, but I did go into rapture a few months ago, when my home mortgage adjusted down to 3%.

China tanstaafls its Uighur Muslims: eat the free lunch or lose your job

During the month of Ramadan, which this year began on August 22, observant Muslims refrain from eating during daylight hours.  The Chinese government in Xinjiang wants the Uighur ethnic group, who are Muslims, to give up religious observance during Ramadan, and is threatening the Uighurs who do fast during Ramadan with being fired from their jobs.

As the Epoch Times reports, during Ramadan government offices in Xinjiang are offering free lunches to their workers.  That's the carrot.  The stick is that anyone found not eating lunch may lose his or her job and income, giving a new meaning to the phrase "eat or starve."

Captain Sullenberger was a hero. LaGuardia's ATC was pretty special too.

This is what it sounds like in an airport control tower when a pilot radios that his plane has lost power and is going to land in a river.

It's also why we don't subcontract air traffic control to the lowest bidder.