Three Amigos.

The last man whose presidential bumpersticker was disgraced by the back of my rust bucket of a car was "JOE!" Lieberman, in...2004? McCain ran in 2008 and today the last of the Three Amigos, Lindsey Graham, announced that he is running for the Republican nomination in 2016.

Those three guys were friends, not just political allies. That's rare in politics today. Hell, that's unknown in politics today.

They made each other laugh.

They thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.

They traveled together.

Their fun was contagious.

I'm just sayin'. It's not the most important thing in politics, not by a long stretch, but it's something. Politics doesn't have to be so serious--so serious all the time! Boehner, Obama, McConnell, they have no close friends who are also in politics, they have political allies, they have friends outside politics, but none in politics. McConnell--"Why don't YOU have a drink with Mitch McConnell!" (One of the best lines I've ever heard.)--actually did what Obama fretters took as a favor a few weeks ago: "No, the president doesn't have many close relationships on the Hill but it doesn't matter, it's all business."

No, it's not all business.

Good night.

Haven't written anything lately about some old friends and wish them to know that they are not forgotten.

Vladimir Putin:

Fuck you.

Baltimore Democrats:

Fuck you!

Islam:

FUCK YOU!!

Check out this video brace of dogs

"Jest of the Division." Part II.

Humphreys was blaming the Sergeant for the dogs' failure to understand and obey Humphreys order. The men in the division saw this. They sized Humphreys up:

After swearing most dogmatically [Armstrong's punning emphasis]...he turned to resume his ride to the head of the column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the dogs.

Someone in Humphreys command was calling the dogs to keep following them.

Squab [For descendants of the 133rd PA., this is Armstrong's nickname for Colonel Peter Allabach, regimental commander and a favorite of Humphreys.] was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling increased...

"The whistling increased," it spread, it was spreading!

...and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were engaged in an attempt at its suppression. 

Picture the scene: First, Humphreys can't get the miscreant dogs to obey him, then sicks his Staff on them. Then the whistling starts and Allabach gives chase, it spreads and now Humphreys' entire Staff again are furiously riding back and forth trying to put out the fire of the whistling. Not a wise use of manpower, Armstrong says. Taking a sledgehammer to an ant--and then breaking the sledgehammer! This is a devastating rebuke to Humphreys. The men had sized Humphreys and were now mutinying. Mutiny by whistle!

But in vain. Whistling in Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the adjacent Regiments. 

From man to man, then Company to Company, then to adjacent Regiments, it spread like a prairie fire. The men of the Vth Corps were "mocking at obedience" of Andrew Atkinson Humphreys. Devastating to Humphreys, devastating commentary on his shortcomings as commander.

Shocking. Shocking that the men acted as they did. Humphreys did not deserve that. If he took a sledgehammer to an ant, they did too. You don't humiliate your boss like that, over "a brace of dogs." The men had the intelligence to size Humphreys up--and accurately! Having done that they saw his deficiencies and eccentricities but did not have the intelligence to to let it go. If Humphreys ever had his men he lost them. And the reverse: if the men ever thought Humphreys would have their backs, they lost him there. They were both callow, equally green, it was the blind leading the blind.

The blind commander was shortly to lead his blind troops into their first battle at Fredericksburg.

"Jest of the Division." Part 1.

Armstrong then goes on to relate a shocking anecdote. PAUSE: It has been the observation of the undersigned on occasion that people who are uneducated or not highly educated sometimes nonetheless possess an ability, almost a sixth sense it has seemed to me, to size a person up better and quicker than does an educated person. UNPAUSE.

Humphreys was a "micromanager," Arner's term, and he frequently devoted time and effort to the unimportant at the expense of the important, Armstrong's opinion, and there is some support for it. Humphreys was also obsessive, everybody's opinion; he did not know when to let go of a thing. Once started on a purpose he just kept at it. The men of the Vth Corps saw instance after instance of these character traits in Humphreys, which brings us back to Armstrong's anecdote:

In one of these rapid rides ["galloping furiously and purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front...cursing"], his eye caught sight of a brace of young hounds following one of the Sergeants.

"Where did those dogs come from?"

"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."

"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. Damn you, sir, I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General, deploying his staff at the same time to assist in driving the dogs back...notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant...they crouched at a respectful distance and eyed him wistfully. "Damn you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by God, sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to the other in front of the Sergeant. 

...the dogs would turn tail but for a short distance. 

Red-Tape and "Pigey" Humphreys.

His nervous system had doubtless been deranged by the removal of his favorite Chief, or rather Dictator, as he had hoped he might be. "No one could command the army but McClellan.'...his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command, cursing the officers,--and that for fancied neglect of duty,--poorly concealed the workings of his mind. 

That last is part of the the same paragraph as the sentence ending with "but McClellan" but I do not know what it refers to.

Red-Tape and "Pigey" Humphreys.

...there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division--while they were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety habits of body.

The "jest of the division." Don't want to be that if you're the general!

Senate Lets Patriot Act Expire.

"...NSA stopped collecting American phone records at 3:59 p.m. EST Sunday, officials said."
-Washington Post.

Saturday really was a day the stars all aligned for me. Today, not so much. Read more of Red-Tape. It really is an amazing book, an important book. Unique. Frederick Arner has commentary afterward also (Didn't see that till today.). Very inn-teresting commentary: "The Many Faces of Andrew A. Humphreys." Humphreys really was nuts. (Arner doesn't say that.) Arner did a lot of research into AAH. He deserved to win a Bancroft Prize for resurrecting this book and doing the research into Humphreys that went into his afterword. He didn't. He's not an Historian.

Inn-teresting search keywords lately:

-autumn calabrese upskirt.
-8hlavi drak.
-a bridge in france that my uncle cap...
-aah warrington. [I figured that one out. "AAH" is the deliberately sighful abbreviation I often use for Humphreys and the Vth Corps bivouaced in Warrenton, Warrenton, Virginia. So someone sighing about Warrington online was close enough for Googs to redirect them hither. Bet they were disappointed in that.]

Countries:

-Uganda-2.
-Qatar.
-Dominica.

3,744 readers in May.

I'll always have May 30.

Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals.

This book is unique. It is the only book, not a diary, not a collection of letters, written by a soldier while on active duty! Amazing. How? Col. Armstrong used his down-time convalescing from "camp fever" to write it. Amazing. It was published, pseudonymously in 1864, while the war was on going. Amazing. And it went "unrecognized" by Civil War historians for 133 years. Amazing.

"Secretary of State Kerry Breaks Leg in Bike Crash; Ends Overseas Trip Early."- Los Angeles Times.

Hello. When did you give up power walking? No brain damage, we trust?...New! not pre-existing.

How was your day? This was a spectacular day for me. My concentration was more intense today than I can remember it being in a long time. When I am like that I can see my writing in my brain...Didn't explain that well, don't know how to explain it better.

Most importantly, when I went back and reread what I had written I really liked it! Thought it was good. A lot of times I don't. I will work hard on something and then go back and read it and it's crap. I had some trepidation when I went back to read today: "A lot of times when you work this hard you produce crap." Not today. I don't know why today. I only took two adderal, every other day I take three, but I was so focused I thought if I took the third it would wire me too much.

So, anyway, spectacular day for me. Hope yours was too. I'm gonna remember this day. 

"Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals:" Andrew Atkinson Humphreys

In the novel the writer introduces a character by name and then provides a meticulous physical description. He's a fictional character! You can't google an image of him. The writer has to provide us an image of him. In historical writing the writer never provides the meticulous physical description of his subject that the writer of fiction does. How tall was "Stonewall" Jackson? That you would get from the fictional writer. I have no idea how tall Stonewall was. What you get from historical writers is sometimes one specific physical feature, Stonewall's eyes were steely blue, I know that, or a physical characteristic, a manner, Robert E. Lee was dignified, rode Traveller with his back straight, or you often get from historical writers, in lieu of meticulous physical description, a description of the subject in action. That is how the writer of history saw his subject, right? He saw him riding a horse or directing a battle, he didn't see him sitting as still as a statue for a photograph. This is how chapter one of Red Tape opens:

"Our new Division General, boys!" exclaimed a sergeant of the 210th Pennsylvania Volunteers whose attention and head were turned at the clatter of horses' hoofs to the rear. "I heard an officer say that he would be along today, and I recognize his description."

The men, although weary and route-worn, straightened up, dressed their ranks, and as the General and Staff rode past, some enthusiastic soldier proposed cheers for our new Commander. They started with a will, but the General's doubtful look, as interpreted by the men, gave little or no encouragement, and the effort ended in a few ragged discordant yells.

OMG! Can't you just see that? That is horrible! THAT scene happened and that is exactly the way it happened.

"He is a strange-looking old covey anyhow," said one of the boys in an undertone. "Did you notice that red muffler about his neck, and how pinched up and crooked his hat is, and that odd-looking moustache, and how savagely he cocks his eyes through his spectacles?" 

THAT is what I alerted to. THAT is Humphreys. That is a vivid, vivid description of a specific physical characteristic that instantly captures more of the personality. That also didn't happen. That statement was not made at that time. It's too long! People don't talk like that. As Humphreys was riding by there is no way some guy said all of that. That is a writer's device: Armstrong is putting all of his impressions or a collective impression into one voice for the sake of story-telling. It is not very artful writing, Armstrong does not pull it off. Those impressions are true but one guy didn't say all that as Humphreys rode by.

Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals.-William H. Armstrong.

When a writer dons the cloak of anonymity he dons protective armor. He may now write candidly. He may write truthfully as well but to do so he must not be reckless, he must not give in to false confidence, his shirt of mail is defensive only, it is not a weapon. Now girded against assault he needs check his conscience that he not give assault.

It takes little merit to publish anything on the American Civil War these days or any days. Leo Tolstoy refused to characterize War and Peace. Was it a novel? Was it history? "It is what I intended to write in the manner I intended to write it," was Tolstoy's reply. Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals is what William H. Armstrong, as "A. Citizen Soldier," intended to write and in the manner he intended to write it.

Armstrong was a "whistle-blower"--very apt!--writes Frederick B. Arner. He invokes whistle-blower protection. We give him the cloak, he dons it. We must now know whether "Red-Tape" is novel or history!

Following the style with which Armstrong, Arner and I are accustomed to reading opinions of the court, the ruling will be given first and then the reasoning:

HELD: Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals is history.

There are some things in life you are not permitted to live down. No matter what your accomplishments, you cannot suck "just one" dick , you cannot permit "just one" intruder to roam the White House, you are just not permitted to live those down.

Civil War historians ought be compelled to affix a piece of scarlet tape to their lapels in eternal penance for missing this book, for mis-shelving it for 132 years among Civil War novels, for attributing authorship to a writer of fiction, for as to provenance and subject matter Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals is self-authenticating, it needs little explanatory introduction and Frederick B. Arner provides that little. The most cursory reading of "just one" chapter shows it to be a memoir; a little digging--Digging! Forget digging, merely scratching the surface.--removes "A. Citizen Soldier's" transparent cloak of anonymity and there standing naked before us is its author, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Armstrong, 129th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; there is Armstrong, also Judge Advocate, standing solid as a statue, his stare fixed, his arm fully extended, straight as a yardstick, pointing an accusatory finger directly at: Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, Brigadier General, Army of the Potomac, Commander, Third Division, Fifth Corps. J'Accuse.

There is no doubt of this. For Civil War historians there is no excuse for this.

Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals: Humphreys, in the Army of the Potomac, William H. Armstrong, Frederick B. Arner.

The American Civil War historian is a low form of intelligent life. Why did it take 133 years and a non-historian, a lawyer, to piece together who this book was about and who had written it?

More books have been written in the English language about the Civil War than on any other subject. More books have been written in English on Abraham Lincoln than on any person save Jesus of Nazareth. There are three biographies of A.A. Humphreys, one by his kid and two by sycophants, all three obviously hagiographic, obvious even to a non-historian. Yet Mr. Arner writes in his introduction that there was "almost universal lack of recognition" of the book by historians he contacted before republishing it with his own introduction and afterword.

There is no excuse for this. Historians, when they write about Humphreys at all, just quote from the three hagiographies and from the official record which, Mr. Arner advises, Humphreys did his best to sanitize after the fact when there was unflattering material!

Hastert Indictment.

Penn State Syndrome. Sexual abuse of a minor when Hastert was a teacher and...wrestling coach. A just indictment.

Saved by the knock! Two new books have just arrived: Touched with Fire, Holmes' letters...that might not save me...and Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys in the Army of the Potomac.

...forthepresentforanythingotherthanthemilitary.iamnowcompletelyabsorbedinthat&andhavenointerestforanythingelse.

Done! All over!

We are getting on swimmingly here now.

He then goes on to express jealousy toward the captain of his unit.

The men are all getting on stunningly.

So, a "swimmingly," a "stunningly," a "deuced nice time" last letter. He's enjoying it all.

...I have no doubt I should be envious, but I have lost all ambition...

September 25. The guy wrote a lot of letters.

Dear Papa, 
...
You say Sam thinks my clothes will fit him...I trust he will use them tenderly, for I still have a great affection for them...You also say Sam was a better scholar...than Ned or I. [This] I am glad to hear...
[OH YEAH! He's glad to hear that. Oh yeah.] I can say so candidly [PAUSE. What is conjoined with "candidly," like what is conjoined with "honestly," is never candid or honest. UNPAUSE.] If I any longer cared to shine as a scholar...

Excuse me I need to punch the wall.

September 25:

Dear Mamma,
...
Remember me to all my friends, married & single, particularly the female portion.
...
Send me Vanity Fair every week, will you? The last was delightful.

You know what Abbott is? Abbott is like Hemingway. My God he reminds me of Hemingway:

-Lowell/Oak Park.
-Both left for a war.
-Both cultivated the manliest of personae.
-Both had an effeminate streak.
-Both showed unquestioned bravery in danger.
-Both jealous of others-writers or officers. Both disparaged others.
-Both sought danger.
-Both quality and prolific writers.
-Both enjoyed living in the wild--with all the comforts that money could provide.
-Both were (Hemingway) or desperately wanted to be (Abbott) ladies men.

September 25:

Dear Mamma,

...we are having a deuced nice time here...
...
...I like this life...because it is a change & because I am in so much better condition, [with] so little ailments of any kind...

Life in Lowell was not real life to Abbott. It proved nothing to him about being a "man." He had to "spread his wings," "sow his wild oats," that's the obvious, easy stuff that's going on here. He alludes to something else, however: life in Lowell was not healthy. He has "so little ailments" now that he's been a soldier for three months. It seems clear he is referring to his physical condition but wanting to "try myself," last letter, is not a physical desideratum, that's a psychological thing. The war cured(!) Andrew A. Humphreys' mental illness. The guy had had breakdown after breakdown literally all of his life. Not one during the incredible stress of the war. Teddy Roosevelt was a sickly, scrawny, asthamatic child. There is an ill-understood but clear psychiatric component to asthma. Rough riding cured TR. Nervous conditions, even little, purely physical ailments--bad back--are the luxuries of upper-class life. Savages can't afford valium.

September 24:

Dear Mamma,

I think it peculiar I haven't got a single letter from home since I started.
...
By the way, while I think of it, will you ask the governor to buy me an eight dollar [$216, 2015] army trunk...Also a plain black leather sword belt. The varnished one I bought for $4.50 [$121.50] is entirely used up, besides not being regulation. [Why did you buy it, Henry, if it was not up to regulation? Huh?]
...
The [enemy] pickets are very friendly...hurrying us off at all sorts of hours to all sorts of places. However it is good fun and varies the monotony.

September 11, cont.

I have always wanted a speedy engagement in order to try myself...[but] not because I like fighting.
?
But now it is a different feeling, the same that everybody else has, that the greatest happiness is to be ordered over the river & that we should be awfully indignant if they get through a battle without us. I suppose...we...think every thing listless & humdrum except fighting...

?? Whatever. 

Fallen Leaves.

Hey.

That photo of Holmes was chosen by this half clad savage from Penna. on accounta it was taken in 1884, the year of the former's "touched with fire" speech. After the latter chose the photo he noticed the name of the photog. Marion Hooper Adams, known universally as Clover Adams.

Clover married Henry B. Adams of the Adams family. Clover committed suicide the year after she took that photograph of Holmes, at age 42. It was an event that shocked and devastated her society and her husband, who thereafter destroyed all the letters between them, destruction of letters being the thing one must do if one is an Adams or a Holmes apparently. Henry, however, memorialized Clover for all time. He commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the renowned sculptors of the age, who created a memorial sculpture for the ages for Clover's grave, "Grief:"

It is about as moving a thing as this savage has ever seen. Don't know if he could ever see it in person, it would leave him so shaken. Others feel similarly and some are drawn to it in their own times of grief. Eleanor Roosevelt visited it repeatedly after discovery of the love letters between her secretary, Lucy Mercer, and her husband Franklin. FDR promised to break off the relationship on pain of Eleanor filing for divorce which would have ruined him. He did, or so Eleanor thought, but when he died he was with Lucy.

This has been an unusual 24 hours or so at the United States Department of Justice. The head of the department, Loretta Lynch, is new. Yesterday she about indicted the whole of Fifa, world soccer's governing body and today, I just saw the headlines, she indicted Dennis Hastert. "Dennis Hastert, Dennis Hastert, who was that now? Ah, yes..." Hastert was speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999-2007. Hastert has been indicted for:

lying to the FBI,
about secret hush money he was paying,
to conceal other misconduct.
?
Well, you have to read between the lines with any story in the Quasi-official New York Times and I have done did that and unless I'm very much off my mark the payments were to cover up a longstanding homosexual relationship he had. If I am not very much off my mark I resent this indictment. Hastert is 73 years old, has been out of government service for almost eight years and you are going to lie about an embarrassing personal sexual matter! A homosexual relationship is the most embarrassing, humiliating thing you could reveal on Dennis Hastert, a Republican. He is absolutely going to pay his lover to keep his mouth shut. So what? Don't indict a man for that.

Iran Deal.

I don't think this is gonna happen. I don't think they are going to sign anything by June 30 and I don't think the talks will be put off beyond that. That's just the feel I get from the way the wind has been blowing since the "framework" talks ended. There was elation in the air at the time and the consent manufacturers leapt into action immediately: this is a great deal, the "best possible" deal but it was clear even in the final press conferences that there was no deal, the negotiators couldn't even make it through the press conferences without disagreements. Everybody went home and it turned out "Parameters" wasn't even agreed to, each side made separate statements; the Russians went it alone and started shipping weapons to Iran; the ayatollah issued negative tweets; the Saudis strenuously opposed any deal; Israel. Even Democratic senators looked on bug-eyed with alarm. With Democrats agreement the Senate forced its way into gaining some say over any agreement. Obama seemed to me depressed. He rounded up his usual allies and in the 45 minute interview with Thomas L. Friedman of the quasi-official New York Times...he just seemed depressed to me. He was so invested in this and so involved in the details of the negotiations that my sense was he lost sight of the forest for the trees. When everybody came home from Geneva and he stepped back, it was a pretty forbidding forest.

Anyway, that's just the wind I feel. The Iranians say a deal is still possible by June 30. An Iranian media outlet said today an agreement would be in Iran's best interests and in America's best interests. I felt that as an ill wind (for agreement. I oppose agreement.) When the Iranians want a deal and think the deal they want is realistic they issue negative statements, tweets, whatever, against the Great Satan in hopes of getting more. When they want a deal and don't think they're going to get it they issue statements that a deal is in everyone's interests. It seemed to me Iran's recent statements concede that a deal was now not likely. Today, Wendy Sherman, Kerry's chief negotiator in Geneva, announced she's quitting the administration June 30 come hell or high water. That is prominently reported by the Times today, it seems an important development to them but why that is an important development is not in the story. Reading between the lines, as we must with the Quasi's, I felt the same wind, she's giving up: T'AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.