@snoopydawg pretty mild so far. We got some snow a few weeks ago, with some more forecasted for later this week. No sub-zero temps in the immediate forecast either; each mild day is a blessing!

A Merry Christmas to all! pic.twitter.com/9WnMc7Dv5y

— PEANUTS (@Snoopy) December 25, 2019

Again you just can't have Xmas without Snoopy and the gang.

[video:https://youtube.com/watch?v=00gXEn1ehDg]

We got the bare minimum amount of snow this morning to say that we're having a white Xmas.

ETA..big shoutout for JtC who keeps the lights on for us. Hope you have a wonderful holiday, JtC!

@mimi

in the strangeness.

...
there are many thoughtful comments in Alligator Ed's essay related to the title's subject areas, and many more sprinkled in the threads of other essays as well - at least in a more or less round about way.

Battle of the Hürtgen Forest: lessons learned from studying useless death on a personal scale.

Some commentators (and me as well) are struck that we discuss memories of the parent generations' war experiences and how they haunted them and their families, often for three generations to come.

I wished we could have a thorough discussion about the different symptoms and causes for the conditions mentioned in the title.

a. combat war veterans (from wwI to the latest wars in Afghanistan, Middle East and North Africa) - they go under the category PTSD these days, but were called differently before.
b. for family members who have lost loved ones, children, husbands, wives, cousins aunts oncles either in wars or for other reasons like unexpected, unforeseeable death.
c. symptoms in the elderlies like severe depression in comparison to symptoms of dementia and the way they react to all of the above mentioned losses in their lives.

t's interesting to me that we are telling and re-telling war scenarios at Christmas. - Dawn's Meta

I asked me that question as well.

The patterns of behavior inside the US are not universal in the world. Selectively and subjectively they can be seen that way. But, those with expertise in the origins and characteristics of different parts of the world may not see a matching pattern. The American experience is very unique — It has a minuscule history and n alien population of non-indigenous strangers who dwell on a continent that is isolated in the miconverging oceans. The US is nothing like other place - ... Since the early 20th century, the PTSD pot has simmered in US households and social organizations, and their vapors have enveloped American society - Plutos Republic

hmm I am somewhat doubtful about that uniqueness...

American exceptionalism is a virulent disease which has escaped the the American hemisphere and has afflicted the rest of the world. There are conservatives, including Libertarians, who are anti-war. For whatever reason any party is anti-war, it's alright with me. Failure to recognize that other parties on the Left-Right axis results in a useless division preventing a unified anti-war front. - Alligator Ed

I always wondered why my dad was so changeable. So scary sometimes. I knew he had been in WWII. ...- It was many years later when I learned that he’d volunteered while he was still 17, leaving high school before graduating. His parents signed the papers. He lived the rest of his life in the shadow of that war and especially of one horrific night in a shell hole. - Lily O Lady

The working class who fight the battles, the working class who make the sacrifices, the working class who shed the blood, the working class who furnish the corpses, the working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war. The working class have never yet had a voice in making peace. It is the ruling class that does both. They declare war; they make peace. "Yours not to ask the question why; Yours but to do and die." - Pluto's Republic citing Eugene Debs

I am or was surrounded by loved ones, who had all the above mentioned life experiences. So the questions don't fade away in my mind. My grandfathers', fathers', my own post wwII born generationt and the generation born in the sixties to seventies all suffered from very mild to severe levels of PTSD, depression or dementia.

I can't stop wondering what are the differences. Especially when dementia symptoms in the elderlies might be rather PTSD symptoms (as one physician explained to me). When do people with PTSD are severly depressed and have severe outbreaks of anger at the same time? How to understand lack of anger control and falling in a depressive apathy interchangingly. And when do elderlies with such symptoms are dement, as they either deny or can't remember or can't understand their own behavior.

And all of this on Christmas Day. This was my strangest Christmas Eve and Chistmas Day so far in my life.

Heh, in two days it's over here in Germany, (still the 26th is our second Christmas day I have to go through ...)

Peace. And Merry Christmas belatedly to all.

@snoopydawg

Bloomberg Campaign Exposed for Exploiting Prison Labor

Michael Bloomberg is worth $55.9 billion, according to the Forbes real-time wealth tracker. John Scallan, a founder of ProCom, told The Intercept that his company pays $7.25 per hour, Oklahoma’s minimum wage, to the state’s Department of Corrections, which then pays the prisoners. The Intercept found conflicting information on exactly how much of that money gets to prisoners. The Department of Corrections website says the maximum monthly salary prisoners can receive is $20. Scallan claims ProCom workers earn more.

According to a 2017 study from the Prison Policy Institute, Oklahoma prisons working in nonstate-owned industries typically make 54 cents an hour, at most.

Remember that Bloomberg created stop and frisk that saw lots of people go to jail and that is why this story is so abhorrent. His campaign said that they did not know that company they hired was using prison labor, but boy has it shone a spotlight on the problem.

He hired a company to do some telemarketing for him and it was discussed that the company had hired people in prison to do it. Big kerfuffle happened and he said he cut connections with them. However lots of people are tweeting this article. I knew that inmates were doing jobs and being paid pennies for their work. But I didn't know how involved the government was in it.

The federal government markets prison labor to businesses as the “best-kept secret”

Prisoners in 17 states began a three-week strike this week, with many refusing to eat or work to protest what they consider “modern-day slavery” in America’s correctional facilities.

Among other demands, prisoners want to earn more than a few dimes for each hour of work that they do, considering that their work brings in billions of dollars in revenue to state and federal prisons. Most inmates across the country do skilled and unskilled labor typically for less than a dollar per hour. (In some states, it’s entirely unpaid.) The work ranges from building office furniture to answering customer service calls to video production and farm work — sometimes without the guarantee of safe work conditions.

Prisoners and human rights activists say this dynamic is a form of exploitation and disproportionately harms people of color, who are more likely to be incarcerated in the first place. But correctional facilities argue that prison laborers learn real-life job skills while offsetting some of the costs of running a prison.

Just take a look at how the federal government markets its prisoner workforce to the private sector. In marketing brochures, the Department of Justice touts its “cost-effective labor pool” and a workforce with “Native English and Spanish language skills.”

About 17,000 inmates at federal prisons work at more than 50 government factories, farms, and call centers across the country, according to the latest annual report published by the DOJ program Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor. Prisoners make air filters, clothes, lamps, and office supplies for wages that range from 23 cents an hour to $1.15 an hour.

Most of Unicor’s customers are other federal agencies, but the program also sells millions of dollars’ worth of goods and services to private companies that can’t find workers or plan to outsource jobs overseas. In the first half of fiscal year 2018, Unicor recorded about $300 million in total government and private-sector sales, according to the program’s midyear sales report.

The big sell for this service, according to the brochure, is that companies can avoid outsourcing their customer service departments to an international company to save money, because it’s just as cheap to hire American prisoners to take calls.

That’s how one unnamed CEO described the benefit of working with Unicor, according to a customer testimonial in the marketing brochure.

“We would receive services from an onshore agent — a US citizen — but at offshore prices. It’s a win-win for everyone involved,” the aforementioned CEO said.

Federal Prison Industries was created in 1934 as a government corporation. At first, inmates in the program mostly held factory jobs, and FPI could only sell goods to federal agencies. FPI later went through a corporate makeover (hence the new name, Unicor) and began creating jobs for inmates to answer customer service calls, ship goods, print manuals, and refurbish vehicles.

But it wasn’t until 2011 that Congress allowed Unicor to start selling products and services in the private sector, within certain limits. The idea was that it would better prepare inmates to work in a business environment after their release from prison, and maybe the effort would keep some US companies from outsourcing jobs overseas.

"We can't let immigrants come here and take jobs from Americans!" But we sure as hell can let inmates do it. The problem with inmate labor is that it's not always a choice for them to work or not. In private prisons companies charge excessive amounts for things like toothpaste and brushes and basic needs. Plus they charge up to $15 for a 3 minute phone call as well as other things inmates should get for free. Just another shining example of the wealth transfer that is getting worse every year.