The Wine Commonsewer™

Repeal Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers, 

 

H L Mencken celebrating Repeal Day, December 5, 1933.

The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.~~ Reverend Billy Sunday, celebrating the prohibition of alcohol in the United States 

Reverend Sunday's proclamation didn't come to fruition in any meaningful sense. Prohibition ushered in years of gangster warfare and made guys like Capone and the Gallo brothers wealthy. However, in the seven years following repeal of prohibition, the US murder rate dropped by nearly 50%.

One of those murder statistics that can be attributed to Prohibition was my grandmother's first fiancé. He was machine-gunned to death by the Federals at the Canadian border for attempting to import intoxicating liquors into the US. She had no idea that he was a bootlegger until she read about it in the morning news. 

My missus once asked: How was it even possible to ban alcohol in the United States?

Despite the political influences of the Temperance Movement, it remains an eminently baffling question that is as unthinkable as the French banning wine making. After all, the American Revolution and the subsequent creation of the United States of America all happened in taverns.

46 states signed on to Prohibition. Mississippi was first to jump on the bandwagon to ratify the Prohibition Amendment and was the last to end Prohibition in 1966. Connecticut and Rhode Island were the only states to reject Prohibition.

The only thing that Woodrow Wilson got right during his entire presidency was to veto the Volstead Act, which was Prohibition's enforcement mechanism. Sadly, as history tells us, the veto was immediately overridden by CONgress.

As Always,

What Public Schools Taught About 9/11

 Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Mrs TWC wrote this in response to the way in which public education reacted to the criminal terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The essay appeared September 15, 2001 on Mrs TWC's blog and was reprinted elsewhere a number of times. In re-reading it yesterday I realized that it is as salient as the day it was written......

I have a three year old and a five year old and I want them to feel safe. Having said that, the media coverage of the impact of the terrorist attacks on America's children is sickeningly trite and leaves one with the impression that our school children are extremely coddled. I have been following Education Week's coverage of the terrorist attack "Terror Touches Schools," which has collected newspaper stories about terrorism and children from around the nation.

 

Leaving Lost Wages (Sanity Retention on the Drive Back to So Cal)

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

The key to a relatively painless car ride across the vast Mojave Desert from Las Vegas to LA Metro on a Sunday is to get the heck out of Dodge early.

By the time I packed my trash, got downstairs, forked up a half-hour's wages for an overpriced dark roast~~leave some room for cream, thankee, and got out of the parking structure, it was already 7:37 AM. That's not too bad. There was a bit of traffic on Metro I-15, but it was rolling. I hit a few knots of traffic caused by knotheaded drivers on some of the antiquated stretches in California. Here's the thing; if there is a mile of empty road ahead of you in the fast lane and 15 cars stacked up in your rear view, you need to get out of the way.

Even with the photo-op at Halloran Springs, a fuel stop, and a crappy mid-morning burger at Chit-In-The-Box, I was home and unpacked before noon. Under four hours actual drive time. Bonus: 34 mpg in Mrs TWC's Sonata at speeds that are pretty much legal in Montana and Utah.

That's sunrise in Las Vegas as seen from our room at Planet Hollywood, which is pretty dilapidated and desperately in need of an upgrade to the 21st Century. Many of the rooms are dark and dingy with poor lighting, which helps hide the overall shabbiness. PH upgraded us to a suite at the end of the hall. Securing the inner door silenced the din from the gorram drunks staggering down the hall, screaming and slamming doors in the middle of the night. WTH is wrong with these people? 

By my way of thinking, one definition of Post Modernism is sitting in dead stopped traffic in the middle of the Mojave Desert anywhere between the Nevada border and Cajon Pass. In part, the fault lies with Cal-Trans and dates to the first Moonie administration, which took the position that the more excruciating driving becomes for Californians, the more likely it is that they can be driven from their cars and onto mass transit. Pun intended. Certainly, there have been some improvements, notably between Barstow and Victorville, where truck lanes and lane restrictions have ended the practice of one truck lumbering along at 54 mph in the fast lane while passing another truck in the slow lane that's zipping along at 53 mph. On an upgrade. All of these improvements are welcome, but they are decades late and not sufficient to ease Sunday afternoon traffic jam headed west.

As Always,

File This Under C.S.

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Saw four or five Boys in Green lurking behind the hundred & fifty year old oak tree on Temescal Canyon Road recently. Their murdercycles were blocked from view by a block wall, half way up the concrete driveway of the old firehouse, lined up in platoon formation. Ready to zap and zip.

John Law's radar gun was well hidden behind the thick trunk of the tree. He was the thickness of a rolling paper away from an illegal speed trap, but there he was, joking with the other motor officers, waiting for light to change. Waiting for the oncoming traffic.

They'd already nailed a thirty-something chick in an old, dull gray Honda. All she wanted to do was drop the kids at the junior high school and get on to her slavin' job to get her pay. Effectively, that check will be about 70% lighter this week, on account of a $350.00 ticket for being maybe ten over. Couldn't have been much more than that, it's only a few hundred feet from the light to the speed trap. Kids'll be late to school, she'll be late to work. No matter.

It ain't about safety. It ain't about traffic flow. If it was about serving the public, those motor officers would have been directing traffic a mile down the road  at the three way signal by the junior high school, where traffic knots up like the four-level in LA. 

Directing traffic may serve the motoring public, but it doesn't do jack for the county and city coffers. Radar tickets are the perfect scam, an easy, lazy way to tax the public. Write a hundred tickets in a morning and you've generated a cool thirty five grand.

DISCLAIMER: This isn't a personal beef, TWC was not ticketed.

Bonus: 

 As Ever,

This Means War, Trump

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

TWC was in Lost Wages for Trump's recent speech at Freedom Fest. I was really there because Mrs TWC was speaking at the conference. One of the many perks of being married to her is the opportunity to tag along on these business trips. Trump was a last minute addition and I am certain that the anticipated publicity was the grease on both ends.

The room was SRO and the back wall was stacked with media cameras. Everybody from Telemundo to the three majors. There was some scattered booing, considerably more polite applause, and more Trumpkins showing their love than I would have thought.

Frankly, I expected more heckling and that's why we stayed. In the end, that's an hour I'm not getting back and there was no wine to get through it with. I've been critical of Donald Trump on Facebook and elsewhere ever since. And now, it seems that Trump has decided to strike back.

Here's an earnest Donald Trump.....

And a protester.....

Trump ain't much of a conservative, neither.

As Always,

Snails Are Cannibals

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Although May can be windy and cold here in So Cal, rain is seldom on the calendar. Last night's rain wasn't enough to cure the drought, but it washed the dust off, freshened the air, and will help keep the green things alive for a few more days. The morning smells faintly of cottonwood and sycamore, more strongly of sage and anise. The anise aroma is from the natives we called licorice plants when we were vagrant Boy Sprouts.

After the rain, the cool, damp morning brings the snails come out of hiding which gives me the opportunity for genocide. Killing things doesn't generally do much for me, but I do make an exception for laying waste to the snail population. I hate those things with a passion and I take an unseemly, perverse pleasure in crushing the little bastages. I lost track of the death count but I crushed them for fifteen or twenty minutes this morning. That was in between tossing the ball for Beanie Boy to fetch, so there is some time loss there.

I'm sure I killed hundreds of the monsters, all of which are descendants of the snails that hitched a ride home on six-packs of annuals and gallon shrubs purchased at Home Despot and Lowes. No charge. Thankeee. Something that's rarely mentioned is the hitchhiking pests that spread like colds at an elementary school playground. And don't get me started on my infestation of nutsedge. That's a nasty weed that had to be one of the plagues dumped on the Egyptians. You can't kill it and after the nuclear holocaust there will be cockroaches and nutsedge.

Did you know snails are cannibals?

The Morning After Tax Day

 

 

The Morning After April 15th

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

 

On the morning after the night before, TWC wishes you peace and prosperity.

 

As Always,

 

TWC 🍷

CONgress Shall Make No Law.....

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

On this day in 1791 the Bill of Rights became a part of the Constitution. Bet you didn't realize it. Bet it will not be discussed at my children's school tomorrow. Bet the president will not acknowledge it. Bet EyeWitless News will not mention it.

I was going to make a long speech but I don't have the energy today. So here's a short speech:

As Ever,

TWC

What America Needs Now Is A Drink

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Taking the tone of a tent revival preacher, John Kramer, the first Prohibition Commissioner declared that.....

This law (Prohibition) will be obeyed in cities, large and small, and in villages, and where it is not obeyed it will be enforced. The law says that liquor to be used as a beverage must not be manufactured. We shall see that it is not manufactured. Nor sold, nor given away, nor hauled in anything on the surface of the earth or under the earth or in the air.

Shortly thereafter, Grandma's fiance got himself erased in a fire fight with US Customs at the Canadian border while importing some high dollar whiskey.

Though the murder rate rose during the teens, it soared to almost ten murders per hundred thousand people during Prohibition. Note the dramatic plunge in the murder rate that began on Repeal Day 1933. 

Prohibition also decimated the wine industry in California, pushing the evolution of high quality wines out for a half century and changing forever our cultural views toward alcohol. Many wineries collapsed because there wasn't enough market for Sacramental wine to make it profitable. Other wineries ripped out wine grapes and replaced them with juice grapes, resulting in a glut of low quality grapes that far outlasted the demise of Prohibition.

Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California, shipping the finished product in tanker cars to Chicago. Prohibition made the Gallo family wealthy. That wealth and power carried through for generations, and today, Gallo controls a huge market share as a resuslt.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War has done for the Mexican drug cartels, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. One notable difference between then and now is the sheer scale of violence. More Mexican nationals have died from drug war violence in the last five years than perished during the entire Viet Nam war. In stark contrast, neither Bud nor Coors killed anyone this year. 

 

Modern America missed the lessons of Prohibition. The US spent forty billion dollars last year to stop people you know from snorting a little coke at a party or relaxing in the spa with a joint. Forty billion dollars down a rat hole of corruption, deceit, and death, yet anyone who wants drugs can buy them. 

 

Bonus:

 

 

 

On this day in 1933, FDR signed the repeal documents with a flourish and declared.....

What America Needs Now Is A Drink

Let's celebrate Repeal Day with a glass to your health, friends.

As Always,

TWC

Tip of the glass to Polyticks for the awesome chart 

Check out the L.E.A.P website for some good documentation and information on America's longest war.

Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California, shipping the finished product in tanker cars to Chicago. Prohibition made the Gallo family wealthy. That wealth and power carried through for generations, and today, Gallo controls a huge market share as a resuslt.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War has done for the Mexican drug cartels, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. One notable difference between then and now is the sheer scale of violence. More Mexican nationals have died from drug war violence in the last five years than perished during the entire Viet Nam war. In stark contrast, neither Bud nor Coors killed anyone this year. 

 

Modern America missed the lessons of Prohibition. The US spent forty billion dollars last year to stop people you know from snorting a little coke at a party or relaxing in the spa with a joint. Forty billion dollars down a rat hole of corruption, deceit, and death, yet anyone who wants drugs can buy them. 

 

Bonus:

 

 

 

On this day in 1933, FDR signed the repeal documents with a flourish and declared.....

What America Needs Now Is A Drink

Let's celebrate Repeal Day with a glass to your health, friends.

Some growers, like the Mondavis, grew Zinfandel and shipped the grapes back east to Italian Catholics who were permitted to make their own wine for sacramental purposes. Guys like Ernest & Julio Gallo hooked up with the Chicago mob to sell wine made in clandestine wineries in Central California, shipping the finished product in tanker cars to Chicago. Prohibition made the Gallo family wealthy. That wealth and power carried through for generations, and today, Gallo controls a huge market share as a resuslt.

Like our modern War on the Bill of Rights Drug War has done for the Mexican drug cartels, Prohibition provided vast sums of cash to people like Frank Costello (Boss of New York's Five Families) and his alleged bootlegging partner Joe Kennedy. One notable difference between then and now is the sheer scale of violence. More Mexican nationals have died from drug war violence in the last five years than perished during the entire Viet Nam war. In stark contrast, neither Bud nor Coors killed anyone this year. 

 

Modern America missed the lessons of Prohibition. The US spent forty billion dollars last year to stop people you know from snorting a little coke at a party or relaxing in the spa with a joint. Forty billion dollars down a rat hole of corruption, deceit, and death, yet anyone who wants drugs can buy them. 

 

Bonus:

 

 

 

On this day in 1933, FDR signed the repeal documents with a flourish and declared.....

What America Needs Now Is A Drink

Let's celebrate Repeal Day with a glass to your health, friends.