"McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali"

NPR reports that the Alaskan mountain which has for nearly a century been known officially as Mt. McKinley will revert to the name under which it's been known for a much longer time: Denali. President Obama is to "make a public announcement of the name change in Anchorage Monday, during a three-day visit to Alaska." Interior Secretary Sally Jewell's secretarial order of August 28th declares the name change to be immediately effective, and directs the United States Board on Geographic Names "to immediately implement this name change, including changing the mountain's name in the Board's Geographic Names Information System and notifying all interested parties of the name change."

Comments

"There are no comments."

[Anonymous Coward]

Sinde when was Slashdot a politician?

Re: "There are no comments."

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was named when the mountain was explored in 1896, when McKinley was being elected.

Re: "There are no comments."

[sizzzzlerz]

Don't argue facts with the wingnut faction infected with Obama Derangement Syndrome. They simply roll off like water off of duck's feathers. They have their own reality and won't acknowledge any other.

Re: "There are no comments."

[cayenne8]

So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.

Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?

Re: "There are no comments."

[fightinfilipino]

So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.

Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?

every time i see someone whine about "political correctness", i notice what they're really asking for is continuing permission to be a jerk to others.

Denali was originally known by that name not only by native peoples in the area, but also locally by the state of Alaska.

so not only are you really asking, "hey, why can't i continue being disrespectful to native Alaskans?", you also hate states' rights. good work there.

Re: "There are no comments."

[dkman]

Except that it was Denali long before it was Mt McKinley. It simply had 2 names during the time McKinley got slapped on it.
McKinley never visited the mountain, so his name being attached to it was pomp theater to begin with. What's ridiculous is how long the indigenous people who named it in the first place had to fight to get his name removed.

Re: "There are no comments."

[moronoxyd]

Re-writing history? Like changing the name from Denali to Mt. McKinley in the first place?

Re: "There are no comments."

[smithmc]

Actually it was named when the mountain was explored in 1896, when McKinley was being elected.

I'd imagine it was named before that, by the people who actually lived there.

Re: "There are no comments."

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already in a national park with that name and a GMC truck, so what more do they want? "I'm going to drive my Denali through Denali to get to Denali".

Re: "There are no comments."

[MachineShedFred]

Well, for one thing, Mount McKinley was just named that by some asshole during William McKinley's Presidential campaign, and somehow it took. It was still 'Denali' right up until Woodrow Wilson established McKinley National Park when the name was made official. There's no historical reason for naming that particular mountain after William McKinley, who's sole contribution to Alaskan history basically involves not offering to sell it back to Russia (who, while owning Alaska, named the mountain "Bolshaya Gora" which means "Big Mountain").

Of all the things to get upset about, this just isn't one of them.

Signed,
Someone sitting in Ohio right now, where we're supposed to be all fired up and angry about a mountain that bore the name of an Ohioan President being renamed by Presidential fiat.

Re: "There are no comments."

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be a dig at the Republicans, since William McKinley was a republican.

Also, this might give something of a balance in terms of the Civil War: after the statue of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis came down in Texas, now the name of the Union-veteran US president McKinley comes off of the mountaln.

Re: "There are no comments."

[Camel Pilot]

The mountain got the name Mckinley out of PC at the time. This is just a reversal of the out-of-place PC.

"Let thing be and build from there, eh?" - It is now back to what it was before PC'ness renamed it.

Re: "There are no comments."

[DamnOregonian]

Like Cape Canaveral?

Re: "There are no comments."

[Darinbob]

Renaming it back to the original name though. Not like it's political correctness gone amuck or it'd be named after someone liberal who never visited Alaska.

Besides, no one has called it Mount McKinley in decades. Even the big ass truck driven by white cowboy wannabes is called a Denali. I was honestly surprised that it was still officially called McKinley when everyone in Alaska says Denali.

Re: "There are no comments."

[Darinbob]

But that was before Republicans turned into a hard right conservative. Although McKinley was known for being pro-business and pro-interventionism.

Wait, they had a statue of Jefferson Davis in Texas? That state that rebelled twice? Can't we give them back to Mexico if we apologize?

Re: "There are no comments."

[Anonymous Coward]

The ignorance is strong with this one.

In layman's term, PC is really just about not being a d--- to others, 'others' typically being a collective group of people defined by some shared characteristic.
Those who oppose it, simply want the ability to treat groups of others badly (or continue to do so).

In the south they honor Confederate generals and soldiers, with place names, feast and holidays, etc. They actively honor people who actively fought to keep black folks enslaved. And black folks are forced to see reminders of that every day, a constant reminder of how the south tried to keep them enslaved, and effectively how those in power in the South still see them to this day.

Changing these things isn't re-writing history.
Rather, it's acknowledging the actual history, and admitting that it was wrong.
There is a difference between lamenting those who died for cause, the tragic loss of life, and honoring the abominable cause they fought for as some cherished memory or forgotten golden age.

Re: "There are no comments."

[jamthecat]

So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.

Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?

C8, you reveal nothing but your ignorance and intolerance with posts like this. Alaskans wanted the name to be Denali; Obama just made it official. What, you don't think a state run by Republicans should be allowed to determine what happens on lands within its borders? Guess that means you're against states rights. Interesting. Usually jerks like you are all for them and against anything non-WASP and anti-rich-guy.

Re: "There are no comments."

[mjwx]

So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.

Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?

every time i see someone whine about "political correctness", i notice what they're really asking for is continuing permission to be a jerk to others.

Denali was originally known by that name not only by native peoples in the area, but also locally by the state of Alaska.

so not only are you really asking, "hey, why can't i continue being disrespectful to native Alaskans?", you also hate states' rights. good work there.

This.

I'm sure when the native Alaskans claimed changing the name of Denali was political correctness, they got a rifle but to the face.

I firmly believe that anyone who whinges about "PC" needs the same. After all, that is the world they're so desperate to bring back.

ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

ok.. but why?

Re:ummmm

[devman]

More to the point, it is what the locals wanted. Nobody in Alaska calls it Mount McKinley it has always been Denali. The Alaska state government calls it that as well and petitioned the US Govt to change the name in the federal government back in the 70s. Had it not been for some twat Congressman from Ohio this wouldn't have taken 30+ years. There is no liberal conspiracy, it just people who don't know whats going on making mountains out of mole hills.

Re:ummmm

[rockmuelle]

Indeed. In mountaineering circles it's always been Denali as well. Pretty much every group that has a physical connection to the mountain has always called it Denali.

-Chris

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

ok.. but why?

Poltically correct bullshit. Mount McKinley is dead, long live Mount McKinley.

So Informative. Much Helpful. 10/10 would read again.

Re:ummmm

[Applehu Akbar]

"...making mountains out of mole hills"

In this case, it was making a mountain into a speed bump.

Re:ummmm

[AK Marc]

The name was Denali before the White Man reassigned the name to honor a white man. It'd been unofficially Denali to locals ever since. The feds refused to let the locals name it until 1980, when the federal park was renamed to Denali National Park and Preserve. It'd been officially Denali to locals ever since. Why should the feds disregard the local names for things, and force their own names on local features?

Re:ummmm

[AK Marc]

Poltically correct bullshit.

States rights are good when you want to break federal law. But state rights are shit when the state wants to name something in it.

Reminds me of the Civil War, where the States Rights issue was that the south was rebelling against states rights and wanted a strong federal government. But 150 years later, it's forgotten by the losers, and they assert they were on the other sides of the states rights issue. Always changing their story, because reality is against them.

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been in denial on Denali?

Re:ummmm

[bondsbw]

Or, it's you who is rewriting history. You're focusing on the fact that the South supported using federal power to back the Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution, and then to expand federal regulation of slavery via the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

But slavery was pretty much the only case where the South was for federal intervention. In practically every other matter, they favored local rights over federal regulation. The Civil War was about slavery, not states' rights. But because the North won, they got to abolish slavery and weaken states' rights at the same time.

As a friend often tells me, before the Civil War people would say "the United States are", and since the war they say "the United States is".

Re:ummmm

[hmadrone]

When I lived in Alaska, I never heard anyone call it anything else. Denali is its name (no Mt. in front of it). Only imbeciles from the Lower 48 think it should be referred to any other way. Living up there gives you a different view of the country, that's for sure. Seattle is the capitol of the world, Texas exists to be used as the butt of size jokes, and inhabitants of the Lower 48 are wimpy and clueless.

Re: ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in Alaska 10 years ago Denali is what people called it, so that's what I've called it ever since.

Re:ummmm

[rahvin112]

Because there has been at least one senator from Ohio that is a prick and deliberately obstructed the renaming.

Re:ummmm

[I'm New Around Here]

The name was Denali before the White Man reassigned the name to honor a white man. It'd been unofficially Denali to locals ever since. The feds refused to let the locals name it until 1980, when the federal park was renamed to Denali National Park and Preserve. It'd been officially Denali to locals ever since. Why should the feds disregard the local names for things, and force their own names on local features?

Do you mean like Pike's Peak, Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, the Columbia River, and hundreds of other geo-graphical or -logical features that were named by white men who didn't care what the dark-skinned natives called them?

Re:ummmm

[bjdevil66]

This is a reasonable response to my first gut instinct of, "WTF?", and it sounds like something that in a year this mountain of a "controversy" will be a mole hill. And it doesn't sound anything like the "liberal bias" behind then Arizona governor Janel Napalitano's push to rename "Squaw Peak" (the name every local knew it as) in the Phoenix metro area to "Piestewa Peak" (which few people were happy with).

I have to say, though, that it would've been a little easier to deal with if "Mt. McKinley" was the answer to a fairly common trivia question. And it seems like there are more important things for the federal government to be dealing with than fixing mountain names.

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in AK and for the longest time didn't make the connection that Mt. McKinley was Denali. I mean the surrounding area is Denali National Park. Everyone calls in Denali. Every time we flew into Anchorage, the pilot would invariably say, 'if you look out your [right/left] window you will see Mt. McKinley', and I was always like 'WTF, the only mountain above the cloud line is Denali. Where is this Mt. McKinley and why don't they ever point out Denali, it's way bigger'. OK, finally when I was a teen I put it all together. You know what's weird about AK, too? I learned way more Canadian geography than US geography in elementary school. Seriously I knew every province and every capital and lots of Canadian history before I knew all of the names of the lower 48. I always wondered if Alaskans secretly wanted to be Canadian. Maybe Mt. McKinley was the reason way. :)

I'm an expatriate now, but man do I miss AK. Cheers on Denali, though.

Re:ummmm

[Coren22]

But because the North won, they got to abolish slavery and weaken states' rights at the same time.

Funny how they only abolished slavery in those pesky southern states. Maryland was allowed to keep their slaves for a year after the emancipation proclamation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Re:ummmm

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's not true at all - otherwise it means 300,000 white men died so that blacks could be free. That is incredibly noble - and also incredibly unlikely considering white racism was even worse back then (hard to figure but it's true). Try again.

Re:ummmm

[bondsbw]

You fail to consider that there is a vast distance between racism and slavery. If I nod my head at a random white person but don't do the same to a random black person, I'm being racist. If I whip a person for not performing the hard labor that I have required of him without compensation, that is slavery.

Don't you think there is at least the possibility that some of those 300,000 white men died because they didn't believe that slavery was good, but also didn't necessarily find much common ground with black people in general?

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"In practically every other matter"

What other matter? 1860 is not like 1960. The emergence of the regulatory state was still almost 60 years in the future. The federal government did almost nothing except control trade and promote Westward expansion. The areas where federal law might conflict with state law were few, and arguably non-existent. In fact, the only issues other than slavery that pertained to states rights in any degree involved import and export duties. On those issues, both the North and South were variously for and against states rights on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether the federal laws at issue favored the agricultural South or the industrial North.

Most conspicuously, until the South began to fear abolitionists would upset the balance of power by admitting more non-slaving holding states to the Union than slave-holding states, the South quite often _opposed_ the Compact Theory of the Federal Constitution--that the constitution was merely a contract. This is because for most of the time since the founding, federal trade laws disfavored imports of raw materials in order to promote Southern agricultural, which increased the cost to industry in the North. And so the North more typically saber-rattled about leaving the union, arguing that the Federal government was effectively taxing them to subsidize the South, in the same way Parliament had unfairly taxed the Colonies to support England.

Basically, this whole "state rights" rationalization for the break-up of the Civil War is pure poppycock. It makes absolutely no sense in the context of the time. The only state right that mattered to the South was the extra-juridicial enforcement of states' definitions of property--specifically, slavery.

The distinctions in the Confederate constitution bare this out. They only differ from the Federal constitution on the issue of slavery and on import and export duties. Regarding the former, it made it more difficult for the Confederate congress to impose duties on states' exports, and required uniform import duties such that the government could not promote industry over agricultural. Shocker!

Seriously, dude, _you_ learn history. I had to unlearn the crap my high school history teacher tried to teach us about states' rights. Interestingly, I learned most of it at a very conservative, southern law school. (Incidentally, at least.. The scholarship coming out of the school was all about states' rights. But even they couldn't honestly spin the _actual_ legal history to try to color the reasons for the Civil War.)

Re:ummmm

[sudon't]

People support state's rights when it's to their benefit, and support Federal primacy when that's to their benefit. It's as simple as that. Notice how some Republicans are wringing their hands over legal weed issues?

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If I nod my head at a random white person but don't do the same to a random black person I'm being racist.

no... you are not

Re:ummmm

[sudon't]

Basically, this whole "state rights" rationalization for the break-up of the Civil War is pure poppycock.

Well, the particular "state's right" in question was slavery. That southern schools try to teach the Civil War in dog whistle, at least, shows they're embarrassed about it. It's like saying the Confederate Battle Flag is about "heritage" and "pride". You just have to understand that the heritage in question is that of Jim Crow and slavery, and the pride in question is white pride.

Re:ummmm

[AK Marc]

Many things so names were not named with names of meaning. Also, the forced naming of the already-named mountain didn't stick because there were still enough natives in the area to use the old name. In most cases, the feds take the state's name for something and run with it. They didn't in this case because Alaska wasn't a state for a while after the naming. Also note, the "inconsequential" names aren't being fought over. Note the Pribilofs are not using their native names, nor does anyone care. They are named for the Russian "explorer" who found the inhabited (and named) islands. There are many more such examples.

Is the real issue that if you let "those people" win, then you have to admit an error? And The Great White Race is never wrong?

Why must you use such force to hold back the natives? Why does it harm you so that the name of a mountain has changed on the federal records to match what the locals have been calling it since before the records were kept?

Re:ummmm

[DamnOregonian]

Many abolitionists were racist. Slavery was considered evil by most of the western world at that time period, but racism was more or less expected due to beliefs of white supremacy.

That's not to say that you aren't at least in part correct. I'm confident the majority of Union combatants weren't really fighting to end slavery. Most likely they were simply marching to their nation's drum, which was currently fighting to preserve the Union after the South opened fire on a Federal fort, but there was a very solid belief that slavery was in fact an intolerable evil in the north.

Re:ummmm

[shutdown -p now]

In other words, they wanted strong federal government for the issues where it was convenient to them, and strong state government otherwise. Which is exactly how the North was, too, it's just that the issues were different. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that CSA wouldn't have ended with more federal power were it to remain independent, for the same exact reason as USA did.

Re:ummmm

[bored]

States rights are good when you want to break federal law. But state rights are shit when the state wants to name something in it.

Sounds like business as usual. I live in TX where the idea of "local control" is translated as "local control as long as you conform to the political ideology of the state government" The state government that caps all forms of local taxes (from sales tax, to property taxes). The same state that mandates everything from the education curriculum to limits on what counties/cities can do with zoning regulations, to whether a city can ban plastic bags (ok the latter didn't pass... yet).

The "conservatives" in TX usually manage to pass a couple hundred new laws restricting things that were previously free or the ordnance of local government every time they go to Austin.

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, those from the lower 48 probably don't know the names of the lower 48.

Re:ummmm

[Darinbob]

Because no one has called it Mt McKinley in decades. Everyone in Alaska calls it Denali.

Re:ummmm

[Darinbob]

Even after the war, the federal government gave up on trying to make the south grant political rights to freed slaves. For a few years during construction the freed slaves got the right to vote but then they were systematically denied it for nearly a hundred years. Official slavery was replaced by official segregation.

At one point I would have thought the "war of northern aggression" myth would die out over time. But it seems they are still preaching this to the confederate offspring.

Re:ummmm

[Darinbob]

During the Civil War centennial, the war was presented as something in the past with no modern resonance, and war veterans from both sides were honored. The issues of slavery were whitewashed, both sides treated as being equal. We still have re-enactments today that don't attempt any distinction about who was right and who was wrong. There was an article from the Negro Digest at the time of the centennial entitled "Did The South Win The Civil War?", because so little had actually changed in the South and so little mention of the causes of the war were discussed.

In that sense "heritage" meant "my grandfather fought for our country" even though that country meant the losing side of a treasonous split. Do people today in Germany honor their father's Nazi heritage? No. And neither should we celebrate Confederate heritage.

Re:ummmm

[Darinbob]

And if President Reagan had renamed it, it would have been hailed as yet another conservative triumph in solidarity with Alaska.

Re:ummmm

[I'm New Around Here]

It doesn't matter to me what the mountain is called. I'll never see it, since I hope to never see snow again in my life. :^)

I just thought that your argument was weak in the regard I mentioned. Please don't take it too personally, as most of the arguments in this discussion are weak in similar fashion.

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really hypocritical, though. States' rights is not synonymous with local control or devolution of power. Quite the opposite. In legal matters states' rights is invariably brought up as an issue when a state wishes to regulate or discriminate against some person--a municipality, corporation, or real person--in contradiction of a federal right--constitutional or statutory.

States' rights is fundamentally an issue about political sovereignty. States' rights was never an independent, cohesive concept at the turn of the Civil War because the powers of the federal government and the states didn't actually overlap in practice.

Unlike today, the federal government had no authority to regulate local businesses. The Bill of Rights didn't even apply to the states--that first happened with the passage of the 13th Amendment--so you couldn't petition the federal government for redress grievances related to state actions. For example, before the 13th Amendment and enacting legislation, if the state threw you in jail without any kind of criminal charge, federal courts couldn't even issue a writ of habeas corpus. (Some legal scholars erroneously believe the first federal habeas corpus statute was promulgated under 14th Amendment authority, because of a poorly researched Supreme Court opinion 70 years ago.)

Basically, the only real limitations restricting a states authority to govern local matters in the original constitution concerned 1) bankruptcy and 2) nullification of contracts. Federal courts interpreted both of those restrictions quite liberally, preserving a significant amount of authority with the states, so it never proved an issue.
So the only real conflict states had with the federal government involved regulation of imports and exports and, of course, enforcement of slave codes.

It was only until _after_ the Civil War did the federal government gain authority to override state laws governing internal affairs. And it wasn't until the rise of the regulatory state and the expansion of commerce clause jurisprudence did "states' rights" become a meme in legal and political discourse. And it's only in the past 30 or so years have conservative pundits tried to equivocate the legal concept of states' rights with individual liberty. Which is just the height of irony--states' right and individual liberty are contradictory in many respects.

Denali: It Ain't a River in Egypt!

[elwinc]

According to http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... Mark Twain?

Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Native Americans there who wanted the renaming, correct?

If they were their own sovereign nation in the truest sense, does it matter what the USA calls that mountain? Or do foreign entities agree on the naming of specific mountains?

Serious question. Not trying to troll or anything. I do know that some foreign entities do call some mountains by the same name. Not sure how many have different names.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get is why so much focus is placed on so-called "Native" Americans, the entitlement mentality surrounding them, and the preferential treatment they still get today.

It's not like their ancestors were even the first in North America. The people we call "Native Americans" today are merely descended from the people who came in the latest of many waves of migration. They displaced earlier settlers of the Americas. So they're not really any different than European or any other settlers who came later. Both these "natives" and the Europeans came from Eurasia, even!

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

Foreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?

Re:Just a question

[Kierthos]

Yeah, I can't possibly figure out why we would want to do anything for a people that were systematically killed, evicted off their lands, repeatedly lied to by the government, repeatedly had treaties broken by the government, kept from practicing their religion, had their kids taken away, had their sacred lands taken away for mining if anything valuable was found on those lands, shoved onto reservations (which could also be taken away if anything valuable was found there), and treated as inferior in every way.

Gosh, it's almost like we realized we were giant assholes to a particular group of people for a few centuries and feel bad about it.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: 500 year old (from roughly 1500s) bad Portuguese pronunciation, Monday morning and my brain isn't completely up and running.

Re:Just a question

[ColdWetDog]

oreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?Correction: 500 year old (from roughly 1500s) bad Portuguese pronunciation, Monday morning and my brain isn't completely up and running.

You can start with 'Indians'. 'Ol Columbus was a tad confused at times.

Must of been the wine.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Like every other population at one point or another? Most, if not all humans are related to someone who has been a slave or some other sort of oppressed person in the past.

Don't get me wrong, we should be moving past our evil ways from the bad old days, but we're never going to make amends for things in the past that we didn't actually do.

Renaming the mountain again is fine, it has always been called that locally, and it was renamed for a bullshit reason to begin with. However, for the most part, we need to keep moving forward rather than trying to revise the past to suit our tastes.

Re:Just a question

[Carewolf]

Foreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?

Germany vs Deutschland vs Tyskland... All the same place but named after different tribes living there 2000 years ago plus some language drift.

Also pretty much all major cities in Europe that doesn't have super easy names have different names in every single neighbouring language.

Re:Just a question

[psyclone]

So they're not really any different than European or any other settlers who came later.

Except they didn't have new technology or new diseases, nor did they emigrate in masses faster than ever before.

Yup, some people slowly walking into another area over a land bridge was exactly the same as European settlement into North America.

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

Gosh, it's almost like we realized we were giant assholes to a particular group of people for a few centuries and feel bad about it.

Wait a second there. I was born a few decades ago, so could not have been an asshole to anyone for centuries. Second, every group has been shit on by someone else over the course of the centuries you are crying about. The Mongols invaded Europe from Asia, many white people died. The Vikings invaded from north Europe to the rest of the continent, even sacking Rome, and many white people died. Europeans invaded Africa and the Americas, many dark skinned people died. Now the descendants of the Spanish invaders are complaining that they aren't being allowed to invade more areas they feel entitled to. In Africa, just a decade ago, one tribe killed a million people from a rival tribe.

So when you make it sound like only one group in all of history has ever been an asshole, and one or another group of people has always the victims, your argument falls flat. As the AC said, it's happened between groups for all of history, and everyone can find a centuries old grievance if they want.

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

So you agree that it is the same in principle, but different in speed.

Re:Just a question

[fightinfilipino]

Wait a second there. I was born a few decades ago, so could not have been an asshole to anyone for centuries. Second, every group has been shit on by someone else over the course of the centuries you are crying about. The Mongols invaded Europe from Asia, many white people died. The Vikings invaded from north Europe to the rest of the continent, even sacking Rome, and many white people died. Europeans invaded Africa and the Americas, many dark skinned people died. Now the descendants of the Spanish invaders are complaining that they aren't being allowed to invade more areas they feel entitled to. In Africa, just a decade ago, one tribe killed a million people from a rival tribe.

So when you make it sound like only one group in all of history has ever been an asshole, and one or another group of people has always the victims, your argument falls flat. As the AC said, it's happened between groups for all of history, and everyone can find a centuries old grievance if they want.

it's almost like we should recognize a history of people being dicks to others and try to do better, not try to outdo dickery.

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

Yes, I agree that we should recognize the history of people being dicks. However, all that some groups want to remember today is white people being dicks, and black people solely being the victims.

Re:Just a question

[CrashNBrn]

Gee almost sounds as effective as the English (India, Hong Kong). Oh right, Americans are English.

Re:Just a question

[smithmc]

Also pretty much all major cities in Europe that doesn't have super easy names have different names in every single neighbouring language.

Even the ones with easy names. I mean, how hard is "Wien" really? Or "Milano", how lazy do we have to be to knock off an "o"??

Re:Just a question

[fightinfilipino]

Yes, I agree that we should recognize the history of people being dicks. However, all that some groups want to remember today is white people being dicks, and black people solely being the victims.

the quickest way i can explain what you're missing is in a comic: http://i.imgur.com/1S139Cq.jpg

the longer explanation? the U.S. owes a lot of its current position as the leading economy on the backs of black slaves. yes, there were white indentured servants, too. the vast majority of enslaved people were black folks. and we're talking about generations of black people made to work under a white majority.

explain to me what happens when you continually subjugate one people over centuries and many generations? to the point where that people have lost almost all of their economic, social, and political power? just "freeing" that people does not even begin to repair the damage. just saying "hey, you're free and equal now!" doesn't magically wave away centuries of destruction.

and in fact we know that the whole equality bit has not even come true. from Jim Crow to the striking down of significant bits of the Voting Rights Act, to the almost daily extrajudicial police executions of unarmed people of color, racism hasn't actually gone away. and white persons still benefit from it

here's the part where you protest that "hey but I'M not racist!" on a conscious level, sure. great. but you still benefit from that racism. i'm making the assumption that you're white simply because if you were black, you would know. your perception would be different. you would not be inherently afraid of police. you would not mistrust schools or "traditional" forms of career advancement. you would not have to exclude certain neighborhoods when considering a home for fear of being unwelcome. there's an entire world of which you're unaware.

so instead of complaining that you're not part of the problem, listen instead and come to realize it's not about you. it's about a society that has an addiction of breeding success by treading on an underclass.

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

You are talking about one country in the world, and part of its history that ended within a century of its independence. I'm talking about humans through history, and not just 'indentured servants'.

I was going to give an example in my previous post, but thought it would dilute the point too much. I guess I should have kept it in the final draft.

Do you know why American tap dancing and Irish dancing are so similar to each other? Despite one having a historic association with blacks, and the other comes from a group as white as white can be, the two dance styles have almost the same mechanics. This is because they were developed to their modern forms on the British plantations in the Carribean. Why would Irish dancing be developed on a tropical island? Because the British enslaved the Irish, and sent these slaves to work on the sugar plantations alongside the black slaves. The two groups of slaves realized that their dances they did after supper were similar, and developed them together. As the slaves, black and white, were eventually freed, the dancing styles were carried to the American mainland. For every famous black tap dancer in the US, there was a white slave who was his ancestor's dance partner.

Add to this the fact that Europeans enslaved whites whenever one side won a war, or some petty 'kingdom' of two villages and a pig sty overran the village and pig sty next door. The Chinese rulers enslaved the Chinese commoners. The muslims of the Middle East and North Africa enslaved many black Africans to sell at the Mediterranean seaports to any ship that needed bodies, or that wanted more goods to sell at the European seaports. And all those Africans brought over to America from Africa were enslaved by black Africans first, then sold to white Europeans at the slave markets along the coast.

So whatever point you think you are making has squat all to do with relevant history, if you are trying to limit the discussion simply to whites owning black slaves.

Re:Just a question

[BoberFett]

Deutschland/Allemagne/Germany and god only knows what other people call it in other languages.

It's crazy, almost like people can refer to the same geographical feature with totally different names...

Re:Just a question

[BoberFett]

Don't forget their next door neighbors who call it Allemagne.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how much of that applies to NorthWest tribes. I know some of the Alaskan natives fought Russians (cue rants about evil Russians now).

Some of those groups aren't even federally recognized as tribes (I don't know how the hell that works).

Re:Just a question

[Whorhay]

Sadly enough I don't think being black, or part of any minority, automatically confers that knowledge and or point of view. I work with a relatively speaking, very ethnically diverse set of professionals. Among many of my coworkers, because the system has worked for them, they feel like the American Dream is alive and well, and the people living in the ghetto's just scraping by are there because they deserve it. It's a psychological thing, people don't like to ascribe to luck what they can claim as personal effort.

People will go to some incredible lengths to devalue luck when it comes to success and failure. Pretty much every organized religion is setup to directly feed off that urge. That's right, it wasn't luck that you picked the winning lottery number, it was gods will because you've just been so righteous and patient all these years.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

With specific geological features shared by more than one language/culture it is at least in the realm of reason, but you would think that other countries could at least call each other by the chosen/common names used in those countries. Its kind of like having the name "Bob Smith" in one country, but when you jump on a plane and head to another country everyone suddenly calls you "Zhang Wei", jump on another plane and it becomes "Kazuto Miyamoto". Its needlessly confusing, I realize that pronunciations vary from language to language so the name could sound a bit different from being spoken in a different language but it should at least be in the ballpark.

Re:Just a question

[mirix]

It's Nemacka in Serbian (and similar in all the Slavic languages, AFAIK).

Germans themselves being 'nemci' - in English this is something like the "Mutes" from "Muteland", since they couldn't speak slavic. Which I've always found rather funny...

Re:Just a question

[dywolf]

Also known as the "Bobby did it too!" defense.

Re:Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

The country is as of this day 239 years old. Your opening statement just ignores the history prior to 1776, as if the people here just popped into being that year.
The reality is that slavery of Africans has existed in the new world practically from the beginning, from the founding of the very first colony of Jamestown.
And yes, slavery was abolished. But not the oppression.

as for the rest of your post, it's just the same tired BS people like you (racists) always spout.

Re:Just a question

[tehcyder]

Also known as the "Bobby did it too!" defense.

Cousin to the "but at least it's not as bad as North Korea/Nazi Germany" argument.

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

I wish you were logged in so I could keep track of the truly ignorant people on this site.

fightingfilipino limited his argument to the US, I responded that my argument encompasses slavery in it entirety. Maybe you should get your eyes checked, because that part was pretty clear.

As for (racists) (oh no, someone on slashdot called me a name, boo hoo) you are ignorant once again. Before I got married, I dated women that were white, black, hispanic, asian, or native american. My wife is not the same race I am. The group of friends I hang out with also runs the gamut of ethnicities.

So, yo are 0 for 2 in your attempts to teach me a lesson. Now hurry up and finish breakfast, the bus will be here soon to take you to school. And when you get to school, remember, the sign on the door says "PULL".

Re:Just a question

[I'm New Around Here]

No. It is no defense at all.It's more like "The horrible situation you are trying to blame on only one group, is something that every group has done, including the group you want to be seen as 'the victim'. So any argument you make for modern compensation for past injustices better at least acknowledge reality, or your hypocrisy will make it moot."

As to your attempt at figuring out my intent, it is far from crying "Bobby did it too." I am fine with the US ceding entire states to the native tribes who lived in certain areas. Unhitch Washington and Oregon and cede them to the tribes who once lived there. Same for the Carolinas, Arizona, Minnesota, and a few others. Cut the ends off of California and Florida, and give Mt Shasta and the Everglades back. This wouldn't bother me in the least, as compensation for past injustices. But I'm not going to make it seem like that is simply another example of how evil white people are, and every other race is their innocent victims.

So, in closing, you should maybe figure out what someone is actually saying before jumping to conclusions.

Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Alaska has been trying to get this change done since 1975, but all the Congressfolks from Ohio have continually blocked it and/or introduced laws to try and make it permanent...for stupid Ohio-ego reasons?

It's also worth noting that McKinley never set foot in Alaska, never did a damn thing for them, and the mountain was named after him BEFORE he was elected. It'd be like Trump buying Pike's Peak and renaming it Trump's Peak or something.

Re:Not a new idea

[Hognoxious]

It'd be like Trump buying Pike's Peak and renaming it Trump's Peak or something.

If that happens I suspect I won't be the only one photoshopping a squashed cat onto the summit.

Re:Not a new idea

[msauve]

Ohio should feel free to ask Obama to rename the highest mountain in Ohio to "Mt. McKinley."

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's a better place for this. New Hampshire has a range of mountains known as the Presidential Range. Mount Washington is probably the best known of these. There are several peaks in this range that don't have names associated with Presidents (or patriots like Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin). I'd propose renaming one of those mountains after McKinley. New Hampshire actually renamed Mt. Clay (named for Henry Clay) to Mt. Reagan, though the US government still considers the peak to be Mt. Clay.

Re:Not a new idea

[donscarletti]

and the mountain was named after him BEFORE he was elected.

Well, given it was named after him 16 years after he was assassinated and unless they let dead presidents stay in office, I would say that at the point it was named after him he had already been president as long as he would ever be.

Re:Not a new idea

[Hognoxious]

I think he was having a dig at how flat Ohio is. The highest mountain there is like a speed bump.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, maybe if it had been named Mt Washington I'd agree, it was named after a person who was not really all that special though.

Re:Not a new idea

[LWATCDR]

As long as President Obama is will to pay the 300 million dollars or so to replace every textbook and reference book that says the highest mountain in the US is Mount McKiney out of his own pocket I am fine with it.

Re:Not a new idea

[nbauman]

Ohio should feel free to ask Obama to rename the highest mountain in Ohio to "Mt. McKinley."

Right next to Mt. Czolgosz.

Re:Not a new idea

[danbert8]

Nope, it's a highway overpass. Well at least in NW Ohio. The eastern part of the state has some pretty decent hills. The southern part of the state has some gravel piles the glaciers left behind too.

Re:Not a new idea

[Ol Olsoc]

As long as President Obama is will to pay the 300 million dollars or so to replace every textbook and reference book that says the highest mountain in the US is Mount McKiney out of his own pocket I am fine with it.

I wonder who paid the money out of their own pockets to change all the textbooks when the changed the name of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy, then back to Cape Canaveral.

Perhaps that is not as important, depending on one's political stripe?

Re:Not a new idea

[mu51c10rd]

It'd be like Trump buying Pike's Peak and renaming it Trump's Peak

Please don't give him any ideas...

Re:Not a new idea

[sizzzzlerz]

And then another $300 million to change the textbooks from Mount McKiney to Mount McKinley.

Re:Not a new idea

[ThatsDrDangerToYou]

Actually, there's a better place for this. New Hampshire has a range of mountains known as the Presidential Range. Mount Washington is probably the best known of these. There are several peaks in this range that don't have names associated with Presidents (or patriots like Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin). I'd propose renaming one of those mountains after McKinley. New Hampshire actually renamed Mt. Clay (named for Henry Clay) to Mt. Reagan, though the US government still considers the peak to be Mt. Clay.

Sorry, nope. All peaks shall be named after President Trump. No other names shall be permitted. For convenience, all peaks shall be helpfully numbered, so Mount Washington may be referred to as Mount Trump 371.

It's OK, you'll learn to love the new naming conventions like I did!

Re:Not a new idea

[LWATCDR]

From my experience most history books I had stopped well before 1960. Heck they almost did not get past WWII.

Re:Not a new idea

[tompaulco]

It was named after McKinley in 1896 by an explorer when he heard that McKinley had won the primary. It was 17 years later that D.C. got the paperwork to name it permanently. Also, the definition of permanently has been changed to "about 100 years".

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be like Trump buying Pike's Peak and renaming it Trump's Peak or something.

Good God! Don't give him ideas!

Re:Not a new idea

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This. It already had a name anyway.

See, if you let the states control their own territory instead of giving most of the last 20 or so states' land to the feds as a condition of entry, you wouldn't have this prob...NO DON'T DOWNMOD ME NOOOOOOOOOOooooo!

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Waah, someone I don't like did something I am ambivalent to so I am going to whine about it, and somehow paint them as a bad person for doing it. Why, because I am a partisan baby.

Re:Not a new idea

[SvnLyrBrto]

Yeah, but since it's Alaska and he's Obama they'll probably find some reason to be outraged and demonize him for it. Political correctness run amok; or 'cuz he's nothing more than a trumped-up community organizer with no real experience at having actual responsibilities... don'tcha know?

Re:Not a new idea

[Mandrel]

Actually, there's a better place for this. New Hampshire has a range of mountains known as the Presidential Range. Mount Washington is probably the best known of these. There are several peaks in this range that don't have names associated with Presidents (or patriots like Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin).

Two interesting facts about Julian May's Galactic Milieu science fiction books from the 80s/90s: (1) In the first, published in 1987, a character wonders why one of the peaks in the Presidential Range was named Mount Clinton. And (2), A prominent snow-bound planet settled by North Americans is called Denali.

Re:Not a new idea

[PatientZero]

It was 17 years later that D.C. got the paperwork to name it permanently. Also, the definition of permanently has been changed to "about 100 years".

But it already had a permanent name: Denali. What was the definition of permanently prior to 1896?

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a political move by our dear leader and second tier symbol of the nation was unilaterally renamed without consultation or notice. Of course people are pissed.

Moves like that erode national unity.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually traveled across Ohio? I don't live there, but have traveled across the state twice, once on US Highway 50 and another time on US Highway 30 (on coast-to-coast trips traveling the pre-Interstate highways). The eastern border of Ohio abuts West Virginia and Pennsylvania. 1/4th of the state is literally in Appalachia hill country, complete with mountains and valleys.

Also, a quick Wikipedia read shows the highest point in Ohio is over 1500ft above sea level, in the middle of the flat, low-land region in the central west. By contrast, the Ohio river is about 450 ASL.

If you want to see flat, try Kansas. The western 3/4ths of the state is basically a plane with an incline of a few degrees, sloping away from the Rockies. From the perspective of a satellite, the deviations from the plane are the same as those of a pancake (the smooth side, not the bubbly) as viewed from a human.

And I grew up in Florida, which is pretty flat but nothing like Kansas. Plus, the trees in Florida make it difficult to appreciate the flat terrain, whereas in Kansas you usually can see to the horizon in all directions. It's crazy.

So, please, Ohio is anything but flat. I'm going to guess that you're relatively young, grew up in Ohio, and haven't traveled much. Pro tip: every kid thinks their state is 1) stupid and 2) special. When they grow up, they realize #1 is wrong, and #2 is right but for completely different reasons.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, I remember spending half a semester studying the naming of Cape Canaveral.

Re:Not a new idea

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Yes but now they can cover more material since they no longer use scrolls.

Re:Not a new idea

[I'm New Around Here]

Ask the town council in Constantinople.

Re:Not a new idea

[I'm New Around Here]

Mine had some hand-written pages taped in the back to cover recent events. I don't know where he was from, but he signed them "the Half-Blood Prince".

Re:Not a new idea

[rwa2]

Names out West are not like names out in the Old New World, but rather an exquisite form of trolling... even many of the native american names for territories were derogatory references to "those crazy tribes over the hills", like if we officially called places Redneck Forest and ValleyGirl Valley.

Washington State was so named because they originally asked the US Congress to name them Columbia (hey, the Columbia River flows through here, and we're right under British Columbia, and Lady Columbia features prominently on the state flag. But no, Congress was busy forming the District of Columbia from swamp lands generously annexed from Maryland and Virginia at the time, and they didn't want to get confused with a bunch of rowdy Westerners. FINE, the rowdy Westerners responded. We'll pick something ELSE.

That said, it'd be neat to have Mt. Rainier renamed to the native Mt. Tacoma, which means something like "mother of the rivers". But it will never fly because that's one of the things the City of Tacoma tried to do back when they were trying to wrest money and prestige from the City of Seattle back in the railroad prospecting corruption days.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I believe the highest spot in Oh. is a landfill near Canton, Oh.
seems pretty fitting to name it after a politician.

Re:Not a new idea

[arth1]

It's also worth noting that McKinley never set foot in Alaska, never did a damn thing for them, and the mountain was named after him BEFORE he was elected.

Very much like Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. It was named after Washington before he became a president, displacing the native name that had been in use also by the settlers for a long time, Agiocochook.

That's the next mountain that needs to get its old name back. It's not like Mr. Washington doesn't have enough places named after him already (including three other mountains).

Re:Not a new idea

[tepples]

From my experience most history books I had stopped well before 1960. Heck they almost did not get past WWII.

I wonder how much of that is due to the cost to license photographs illustrating more recent events.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's about as stupid as renaming King County Washington in memory of MLK Jr instead of the original founder.

Re:Not a new idea

[BoberFett]

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Re:Not a new idea

[operagost]

Alaskans have actually been asking for this for decades, so take your uninformed, intolerant, partisan rhetoric elsewhere.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry troll, but the OP is right. The republicans are already on the warpath:

http://takingnote.blogs.nytime...
http://www.politico.com/story/...
http://www.sanduskyregister.co...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oh...

Re:Not a new idea

[Howitzer86]

Impressive.

I can see it now, a post card that says: "Greetings from Ohio!" and in the background, their famous highway overpass.

Re:Not a new idea

[Camel Pilot]

That is an excellent and helpful suggestion.

Ohio should feel free to ask Obama to rename the highest mountain in Ohio to "Mt. McKinley."

Right here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Remame Campbell Hill -> Mount Mckinley Hill

Done deal - everyone wins (except perhaps for whoever Campbell was)

Re:Not a new idea

[tompaulco]

It was 17 years later that D.C. got the paperwork to name it permanently. Also, the definition of permanently has been changed to "about 100 years".

But it already had a permanent name: Denali. What was the definition of permanently prior to 1896?

Nobody had had the good sense to write it down.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but nope.

Denali actually sounds cool.

Agiocochook sounds like a a cock infected with venereal disease.

Re:Not a new idea

[arth1]

Agiocochook sounds like a a cock infected with venereal disease.

And HwæsingatÅn doesn't?

Re:Not a new idea

[Darinbob]

At least Washington had been a president and a well respected figure long before the state was named Washington. At the time Denali was renamed to McKinley it wasn't even a part of the US and McKinley was just a candidate.

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the entire textbook racket makes sure that $300 million is paid per year to rotate out all the textbooks. After all, while the content may be pretty static, one has to change all the problems. The same problem done in two successive years is ANARCHY!

Re:Not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Ohio!

Re:Not a new idea

[ebvwfbw]

Nah, he'll rename it Big Black Cock. NWA.

Re:Not a new idea

[RockDoctor]

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

You need to revise your history. The Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 and re-named it Istanbul in 1930 ; the city had the name Constantinople (for Constantine's Polis) from it's inauguration as capital of the Byzantine empire in 330. Before then it was Byzantium for a thousand or so years.

Re:Not a new idea

[BoberFett]

Fail.

Re:Not a new idea

[I'm New Around Here]

To be fair, I had to google your posting and watch a cartoon duck video to make sure you caught on. :^)

Ministry of Truth?

[jpmahala]

Having just recently read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', I can't help but see the parallel.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize McKinley had nothing to do with Alaska or the mountain, right? It was an arbitrary president's name for ~100 years and now its not. If you can't wrap your little head around that one you would be hopelessly confused by doublespeak.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[tylikcat]

You mean, that it was named McKinley in the first place?

Because there was a totally arbitrary political renaming - but this one wasn't it.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[jpmahala]

I'm not saying it shouldn't be renamed. I'm merely noting the 'monumental' efforts needed to update all existing documentation referring to the new Mt.Denali.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now... George III probably sent a letter to the American colonies... "you can't revolt, we've got all of these maps, and do you have any idea how much work it would be to redo them?"

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[hairyfeet]

They have a lot of functioning democratic process in 1984 then? Because that is what we are talking about here.

The people of Alaska didn't WANT it named for a guy that did jack and squat for their state, tried to have it changed, hit red tape,asked for help from the POTUS in cutting through said tape, and finally the name got changed.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[saforrest]

Oh FFS. There are plenty of arguments to make to associate the office of the presidency with Orwell but this is one of the weakest.

Obama is not retracting all textbooks that reference the mountain and throwing anyone who ever went there in some Stalinist gulag. He's changing the name back to what it was before some random dude named it after a guy from Ohio who had never been there. If this is Orwellian, then so is any government-initiated change of any kind.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

The weakest? But Orwell, Obama, and Ohio all start with the letter "O"...!

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[funwithBSD]

Are you suggesting we should wage war on people that don't want the maps to change?

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Ol Olsoc]

Having just recently read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', I can't help but see the parallel.

Which part? Someone erasing the mountains name to call it Mount McKinley?

Or changing the name back to it's original name?

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm not saying it shouldn't be renamed. I'm merely noting the 'monumental' efforts needed to update all existing documentation referring to the new Mt.Denali.

Well, they should have thought of that when they had to change all the books from Mount Denali to Mount McKinley

The cost isn't all that much anyhow. You ever see a map hanging on the wall with Ceylon or East Germany or Czechoslovakia or Yougoslavia? They become a footnote in history. current things like textbooks might get a sticky label inserted to note the name change, otherwise it's life as usual.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, all local maps and all mountaineering books already refer to it as Denali, regardless what the US federal government calls it. So maybe not so big a cost

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[tnk1]

We dealt with that by leaving all the names alone. It is amusing living in close vicinity to Prince William and Prince George's counties within 20 miles of the capital of the United States.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you *agree* that it should be named Denali, like it was already named when the 'explorer' decided to rename it. He wasn't the first person to explore the mountain. Nor was he the first person to write the name for it on paper. He was just the first person to submit a form to the federal government requesting that the mountain be *renamed*.

Re: Ministry of Truth?

[maccodemonkey]

Well the good news is all the history textbooks will have to probably be reprinted anyway due to something called THE ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD PROPERTIES OF GOD DAMN LINEAR TIME

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[bored_engineer]

err. It isn't "Mt. Denali", it's just "Denali." If it's any help, nothing will need to be changed locally. I've not heard any but tourists, or the odd cheechako refer to it as Mt. McKinley.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[I'm New Around Here]

Do you refer to every creek and rock around your town by the names that Native Americans would have used hundreds of years ago?

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

We dealt with that by leaving all the names alone. It is amusing living in close vicinity to Prince William and Prince George's counties within 20 miles of the capital of the United States.

Yeah, it's crazy isn't it? Federal halo aside, you'd almost think it was much the same people living in the area.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people complaining about the cost of changing maps are not actually worried about the cost of changing maps.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Coren22]

Anne of Arundel, Mary's land, lots of names in this fine state make me chuckle.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Coren22]

Hopefully not, as it is Denali, not Mount Denali, and having to correct it twice would be double the amount of money!

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because those aren't significant land marks you morbid ignoramus.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

how bad can it be? after the ussr fell, all they did was write "russia" and cross out "ussr" in all the text books until the new ones came in...in 1994

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Ol Olsoc]

Luckily, there weren't any at the time. So nothing had to be changed. When you are first exploring an area, the first person to name something on paper wins and that is the name that it should always have.

And that name is Denali.

As I noted in another post, I don't get to rename people when I meet them for the first time (Although GW Bush was known for that, and I guess some of the new names were hilarious) That dude that named it Mt McKinley was way late to the table.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Ol Olsoc]

The people complaining about the cost of changing maps are not actually worried about the cost of changing maps.

Correct, they are still mad the present occupant is not of the right pigmentation to suit them - all the outrage occam's to that.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[MachineShedFred]

This is merely economic stimulus for the depressed cartography sector.

Re: Ministry of Truth?

[saigon_from_europe]

Errr, don't you think that non-linear non-always moving forward time would require history textbooks reprinting to be even more frequent?

Re: Ministry of Truth?

[maccodemonkey]

You wouldn't technically ever need to reprint history textbooks. You could just go back and change what was actually written in them to begin with.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Darinbob]

I don't see the parallel at all. Nobody calls it Mt McKinley. Only someone raised on doublespeak still calls it Mt McKinley. All the locals in Alaska, whether white, black, or native, call it Denali.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[Darinbob]

It's ok. Google Maps calls it Denali. Paper maps only get updated over time, it's not like the minstry of truth goes around and collects the old maps. Place names change every day and map makers know how to deal with it.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[I'm New Around Here]

So now we know you support renaming features that the natives already named, and you are just arguing about where to draw the line.

Re:Ministry of Truth?

[saforrest]

Actually they didn't do exactly that, as the borders of Russia aren't identical with the borders of the U.S.S.R. For example Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, etc. were all part of the U.S.S.R. but not part of Russia. They did temporarily call all former Soviet states the "Commonwealth of Independent States" (C.I.S.) but that only lasted a couple years before they printed new maps with everything wholly changed.

However....

[Rei]

... because it's not one of the 8 highest mountains in the world, the USGS has decided to declare it a "dwarf mountain" and says that it doesn't really count as a mountain. ;)

Re:However....

[Anonymous Coward]

But.. it "identifies" as a mountain. Who the heck are YOU to be so judgmental?

Re:However....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been to Denali base camp and and from what I saw on the ground and in the air it is a massive mountain and mountain range with thousands of feet of granite cliffs surrounded by a massive glacier and huge ice falls.

Re:However....

[meta-monkey]

I sexually Identify as an active volcano. Ever since I was a boy I dreamed of towering over the landscape dropping hot sticky lava on disgusting hikers. People say to me that a person being a volcano is Impossible and I’m fucking retarded but I don’t care, I’m beautiful. I’m having a plastic surgeon install rugged peaks, a caldera and fissure vents on my body. From now on I want you guys to call me "Denali" and respect my right to kill from above and kill needlessly. If you can’t accept me you’re a ifestíophobe and need to check your geographical feature privilege. Thank you for being so understanding.

Re:However....

[wonkey_monkey]

Call me Popocatépetl.

Re:However....

[danbert8]

You should change that name. Denali isn't a volcano... I could see you being a Redoubt though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:However....

[meta-monkey]

I know it isn't. I kept it because it was relevant to the article, but "volcano" gave me more descriptive words for the copypasta than "mountain."

Re:However....

[Anonymous Coward]

It may not be the "highest," but it is the tallest, at least above water. Everest and friends have to stand on stools to overcome Denali's 18,000 ft base to peak height.

Re:However....

[danbert8]

True, mountains are about as boring as geotechnical engineering... Also, as Mugatu would say, "Volcanoes are so hot right now."

Re:However....

[Solandri]

Dude, seek some professional help before you blow your stack.

"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[tlambert]

"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

Worked on many projects code named "Denali".

Just saying...

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[Rei]

Also "nailed", "leadin", "Daniel" and "Aldine". Less common examples would be enalid (marine grass), Delian (Greek league of city states), and alined (rarer spelling of aligned).

Thank you, grep and /usr/share/dict/words!

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[phantomfive]

What command-line do you use to get anagrams?

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[tlambert]

What command-line do you use to get anagrams?

Pretty sure it's "/bin/sh and a working brain".

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[Anonymous Coward]

It fits with the rest of Obama's legacy then.

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[Rei]

I don't have a very clean way - I usually do egrep "^......$" /usr/share/dict/words (with the number of dots matching the length of the word) and then pipe it into a series of other greps - for example for two "r"s I'd do egrep -i "r.*r" while for one d I'd just use grep -i "d". There's probably a better way.

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[Anonymous Coward]

grep -Ei '^[denali]{6}$' /usr/share/dict/words | grep -Eiv '(.).*\1'

Would be harder if there were repeated letters.

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[phantomfive]

Oooh, grep puzzles! I came up with a way to do it in one regular expression, but it would be way too long to type out. So.......
This guy came up with a way that seems to work. The second regular expression there is a puzzle on its own. The -v means to invert the matching (that is, reject anything that matches, and accept anything that doesn't match). Took me a while to figure out how it works, but I think I got it.....

Re:"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"

[avarus]

$ sudo apt-get install an
$ an -wm6 denali
nailed
denial
alined
Daniel

Fun fact - the original algorithm employed in this classic GNU tool was contributed by one Julian Assange. Check the manpage :-)

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problem with the mountain being called Denali. However, I'm not sure what this really accomplishes. Many mountains in the world aren't called by the name given them by the native peoples. For example, the Sherpa refer to Everest as Chomolungma. I feel for the Sherpa people with low wages, a government who doesn't particularly care about them, and the dangerous conditions they work under. That said, changing the mountain's name won't do anything to help the Sherpa.

The reason given for renaming Denali is a gesture to the native people of Alaska. Fine. But it doesn't really address the issues faced by Native Americans. There are many issues including land, health, and poverty. Renaming a mountain might seem like a nice gesture but it's a really empty one. How about also doing something of substance to improve the living conditions of Native Americans? The issues faced by many minorities in the US comes from decades and centuries of racism. I think there's an obligation to try to undo those things and restore equal opportunity. A child living on a reservation doesn't have equal opportunity compared with a child in wealthy suburban America. Renaming a mountain is lip service. I'm not opposed to it, but Obama isn't addressing any real issues.

Re:What's the point?

[Rei]

Who said he was?

He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said it was wrong to rename the mountain. I've personally preferred the name Denali over Mt. McKinley. However, if the justification given is to help Native Americans -- and yes, that's how the White House is spinning this -- it really isn't anything of substance. There's a whole lot more that could be done with the stroke of a pen, like passing legislation that will actually improve the lives of Native Americans. There's a little of that buried in this executive order, but not very much. It's a straw man to say that I'm objecting to the name change. I'm not. I'm pointing out that this does nothing of substance to fulfill Obama's 2008 campaign promise to help Native Americans.

Re:What's the point?

[GrumpySteen]

Why fix small issues that take virtually no effort to fix when you can blow them off because there are much larger issues that are nearly impossible to fix.

I mean, my house has a foundation issue that will take a year or two for me to save up the money to repair, so it makes sense for me to stop taking out the trash and cleaning the cat's litter box. I have to focus on the big issue, right? The trash and cat shit can wait a couple of years.

Re:What's the point?

[Rei]

There's a whole lot more that could be done with the stroke of a pen, like passing legislation that will actually improve the lives of Native Americans.

What, you expect him to give them their lands back with an executive order?

Re:What's the point?

[Mr D from 63]

I have no problem with it, but I hope we don't get into an endless mountain renaming debate going forward for all the other mountains.

Re:What's the point?

[nomadic]

But that's the thing, passing legislation that will improve the lives of Native Americans can't be done "with the stroke of a pen." The legislative process is a lot longer and more complicated than what he's doing here.

Re:What's the point?

[arglebargle_xiv]

I have no problem with the mountain being called Denali. However, I'm not sure what this really accomplishes. Many mountains in the world aren't called by the name given them by the native peoples.

And if they really want to give it the name used by the original inhabitants, it needs to be called "Y'tng'ag'wlll''... ahh, dammit, can't get the typography right for creatures without facial tentacles.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he'd need to sign laws passed by Congress to do that. The window to pass legislation like that during his terms has closed. However, there are things he could do, and as I noted, there's a bit of that buried in this executive order. The NYT mentioned this and I'm sure it's been reported elsewhere, but without much attention.

The White House also announced on Sunday that Mr. Obama was expanding government support for programs to allow Alaska Natives to be more involved in developing their own natural resources, including an initiative to include them in the management of Chinook salmon fisheries, a youth exchange council focusing on promoting “an Arctic way of life,” and a program allowing them to serve as advisers to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

These are actually more substantial than renaming the mountain. I'd like to see more things done like this. Again, the window to go through Congress closed quite awhile ago, but I'd still like to see more steps like this to help the Alaskan native people return to their way of life as much as possible.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wait long enough, that trash and cat shit will form a mountain. And then you can name it Mount Anonymous Coward.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said he was?

He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?

How much money will this name change cost the taxpayers?
The problem that I have is that any action by the government (even the name of change of a mountain) has a cost to the taxpayers.

Re:What's the point?

[LWATCDR]

The cost of changing all the documents and textbooks that reference that mountain.
If the folks in Alaska want to call it chicken pot pie that is fine with me. This is useless and does nothing to make the world a better place.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should get rid of the Bureau of Land Management and welfare. How to defeat a proud people? Give them just enough money to survive and drink.

Re:What's the point?

[GLMDesigns]

Really? You'll overturn the Bureau of Land Management's right to prevent them from fishing and hunting and going on ancestral lands when they want to?

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said he was?

He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?

Sarah Palin.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you good sir, can keep call it "McKinley" if you want to, all it would lead to is people noting you being in "Denali bout teh remuval of a monumentlly stooid monment ver murican culonialism".

Have a good day sir, nobody gives a fuck about you either.

Re:What's the point?

[Ol Olsoc]

Who said he was?

He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?

His haters have spent the last 8 years going nucking futs about everything he has ever done, and a whole lot he hasn't

So even thougt he was doing by law, what he was asked to do by duly elected Alaskan politicians, the core group of haters see this as yet another abuse of his power.

So it's same old, same old. People living in the bubble.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said it was wrong to rename the mountain. I've personally preferred the name Denali over Mt. McKinley. However, if the justification given is to help Native Americans -- and yes, that's how the White House is spinning this -- it really isn't anything of substance. There's a whole lot more that could be done with the stroke of a pen, like passing legislation that will actually improve the lives of Native Americans. There's a little of that buried in this executive order, but not very much. It's a straw man to say that I'm objecting to the name change. I'm not. I'm pointing out that this does nothing of substance to fulfill Obama's 2008 campaign promise to help Native Americans.

Agree completely. I don't have a problem except that this coming from the President rather than Alaska (or it's painted as such). What's bothersome is that something like this occurs when it's fashionable to show hatred towards white men. It's almost a confirmations by the Whitehouse (another racist symbol) that suspicions about white men are confirmed.

Re: What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

A child in most countries doesn't have the same opportunities as an American, what's your point? Natives on reservations are not americans. If they want the opportunities of Americans they are welcome to dissolve their reservations and join us like so many others.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is done to prevent the Republicans from getting to do it themselves for the free brownie points. Same thing with cooling relations with Cuba. Presidents keep small "wins" like this in their back pocket as the end of their term comes near, since the public has a short attention span they only remember the last few goodwill measures. Except for Bush Jr. who was a loser from the start.

Re:What's the point?

[Quirkz]

Why AC? Honestly, I think Mount GrumpySteen has an awesome ring to it.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was supported by Alaska's two Republican Senators, who introduced a bill to rename the mountain from McKinley to Denali. There was some support besides Obama, but he preempted Congress here and did it himself via executive order. States can rename mountains, but the federal government doesn't necessarily recognize the changes. For example, New Hampshire has a series of mountains known as the Presidential Range. The most famous mountain there is Mount Washington. New Hampshire renamed one of the mountains in that range from Mt. Clay (Named for Henry Clay, a Secretary of State and US Senator from Kentucky) to Mt. Reagan. However, the federal government doesn't recognize this change and still calls it Mt. Clay. So, although Alaska could have renamed the mountain, it wouldn't necessarily have influenced anything at the federal level.

Re:What's the point?

[ColdWetDog]

These are actually more substantial than renaming the mountain. I'd like to see more things done like this. Again, the window to go through Congress closed quite awhile ago, but I'd still like to see more steps like this to help the Alaskan native people return to their way of life as much as possible.

Ummm, mining and large scale logging are hardly a 'return to their native way of life'. It is simply a sop to the Alaskan Native voting block - which tends to be Democratic in a rabidly Republican state.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example: More Republicans blame *Obama* for the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, than blame Bush (you know, the guy who was *actually* president, and in charge of the efforts at the time).

Re: What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You *do* realize that this was done in accordance with existing law, right? This is yet another example of people getting upset at Obama, and claiming overreach, because he is *obeying* the law.

Re:What's the point?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The cost of changing all the documents and textbooks that reference that mountain.

Even history textbooks are updated and replaced at regular intervals. More facts are discovered and the textbooks wear out from use. Nothing is forcing anybody into quickly replacing textbooks. It will work itself out.

Teachers can also point out the new name of the mountain. I think they can handle it.

Re:What's the point?

[I'm New Around Here]

And more people blame Bush for the delayed response rather than the Democrats in charge of the city and the state who needed to request federal assistance. I know, it's tough being a whiny child when there are rules to follow, but you still have to follow the rules, or face the consequences.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently have no concept of what the president of the united states is meant to do.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?

Unless his wife is Alaskan, I can think of at least one thing.

Re:What's the point?

[MachineShedFred]

Well, as maps and textbooks are reprinted every year anyway, the cost will be "nothing".

Re:What's the point?

[MachineShedFred]

It's not like a renaming of a street where people need to print new business cards and shit, it's a giant fucking lump of rock that all the locals have been calling "Denali" for 30+ years anyway. Who gives a shit.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, so I guess that Bush should have just illegally used the armed forces to infringe on a state's rights. No wait, we have these things called "laws" that prevent him from doing that.

Dip shit.

Re:What's the point?

[shutdown -p now]

It was coming from Alaska for the past, what, 40 years? Except that they couldn't get it done because it had to be done on federal level (they have already renamed it on state level), and they were successfully blocked from doing so by Ohio. Obama used his executive power - quite legitimate, in this particular case - to overcome the block.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you actually a moron or just deliberately obtuse? Geography textbooks are edited and re-released every year because nothing on Earth is static. Some border somewhere is going to shift, some city or country or mountain will get renamed, every day of every year. Local Alaskan documents already use the name Denali, and if some don't for some reason, it's no different to change the name of a mountain than it is to change the name of a street, and that happens all the time. You log into the USGS database and type in the new name.

Re: What's the point?

[Darinbob]

An act of congress is not needed to name things. There are far too many things named on federal lands to waste the time of congress on this. However congress decided in its wisdom to not act on this naming for several decades, despite the state of Alaska requesting the name change. There was no one opposed to this name change except a congress member from Ohio (and in general the citizens of Ohio don't care about the matter anyway, with a few of them heard to mutter "who's this McKinley guy?").

This is not a matter of Obama acting unilaterally against the will of congress, but instead taking action where congress has dragged its feet for decades, which is allowed by law. If Bush Jr had done this instead people would have been celebrating.

Re:What's the point?

[Darinbob]

It's federal land and so Alaska as a state can not rename it, even though everyone locally in Alaska calls it Denali. Congress was asked to rename it and congress never managed to get it done (neither to rename it nor to affirm the existing name).

Re:What's the point?

[Darinbob]

Three dollars. I'll cover it for you.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet you'd state that feeding a hungry person doesn't actually really address the issue of hunger, felt by the hungry.

Here's a hint, this is one of the issues that Native Americans care about, and while it might not solve other issues, it does solve this one.

People like you are why things don't get better. There is no room for incremental improvement, because you just want it all solved in one magical pass. That's why we can't have a better society, because you'll be arguing not to make it better if we can't make it perfect.

Better than Mt. Xfinity

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we haven't completely sold out yet.

Re:Better than Mt. Xfinity

[mwvdlee]

You sure about that?
http://www.gmc.com/denali-luxu...

Re:Better than Mt. Xfinity

[Anonymous Coward]

Mt Pepsi would be better

Re:Better than Mt. Xfinity

[Anonymous Coward]

iMountain(tm)

Re:Better than Mt. Xfinity

[Darinbob]

uJane.

perfect issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

They found something to do that nobody gives a shit about, they can't fuck it up, and it looks like they're working.

And GMC thanks you.

Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

It can no longer be said that President Obama hasn't accomplished anything during his term in office.

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

It can no longer be said that President Obama hasn't accomplished anything during his term in office.

In other news, congressional Republicans vowed that they will not rest until it gets renamed back to McKinley.

Because they want the Obama Administration to have never existed.

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

Alaska's two Senators are Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski. Both of them support renaming the mountain Denali, and introduced legislation to try to do this. Renaming the mountain Denali isn't a partisan issue in that respect. However, Ohio is a "battleground" state in elections, and renaming the mountain sooner could have risked hurting Obama's chances of winning Ohio in re-election as well as any Congressional Democrats from that state. In that sense, it's a partisan issue. But I don't think the Republican party as a whole has a problem with this.

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Obama's chances of winning Ohio in re-election"

Wut? Dude, if you wanna wax political at least know that he can't run again.

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure he can. He just "shall not be elected".
What would happen if a majority of the Electoral College voted for someone who was ineligible by the 22nd Amendment?

Re:Let it be known!

[JazzLad]

Maybe then we'd get a real conversation going about doing away with the Electoral College?

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try this again. Obama is a lame duck so he doesn't have to worry about re-election now. That allows him to do things that are politically unpopular in battleground states without facing the consequences in elections. He needed to concern himself with Ohio because he might have needed it to win in 2012. To an extent it's also true with 2014 because of Congressional elections and attempting to maintain as many Democrat seats as possible. Either you're trolling or you lack basic comprehension skills, because I made it clear that Obama couldn't have done it earlier but was able to do it now.

Re:Let it be known!

[tnk1]

So we can replace it with the actual Electoral College, the two parties.

Re:Let it be known!

[JazzLad]

haha, fair point :)

Re:Let it be known!

[I'm New Around Here]

The rest of us readers knew what you meant. Nevermind the 12 year olds on their mother's computer.

Re:Let it be known!

[Ichijo]

The Electoral College has some redeeming features that would need to be supported by its replacement if we want to avoid regression. So we still have some work ahead of us if we want to abolish the Electoral College.

So for now let's focus instead on eliminating plurality voting. It has no benefits that are not also supported by superior, alternative voting systems.

Re:Let it be known!

[JazzLad]

Agreed, I suppose there is no reason to toss the baby out with the water (just easier sometimes :) ).

Re:Let it be known!

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, nobody in Ohio cares. At least, nobody that isn't bat-shit crazy already.

Signed,

Someone who until recently lived just off of Harrison Ave. (named for either William Henry Harrison or Benjamin Harrison, as they both lived in the area and both were Presidents), in southwest Ohio.

Leave us out of it - it's the dipshit politicians that are raising a stink.

Re:Let it be known!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one favor states' rights. However, I think we need to be a bit more open about how we vote for our electors.

I would propose that once every 10 years, each state should have a state-wide vote on what method they want for choosing electors.
1. Status quo
2. Done by congressional district with two votes going towards the statewide popular vote
3. Electoral votes split reflecting the national vote
4. Electoral votes split reflecting the state vote
Etc.

Personally, I would prefer it if we had the IRV system, but it gets a bit complicated when it's done for presidential elections.

Curious

[dcw3]

How is it that the Interior Secretary can unilaterally declare a name change? There has been a long congressional issue over this. It was a congressional act that named it in 1917. Note that it's mostly an Ohio (President McKinley was from Niles, Ohio) delegation that's previously resisted the name change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Curious

[nomadic]

Yes.

Re:Curious

[QuasiSteve]

Efforts to change the peak's name back to Denali date back to 1975. The Washington Post reports that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently added language in a spending bill that would reestablish the mountain's original name.

C'mon, anon, at least elevate yourself to the type of anon who RTFA.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a different act gives the Secretary of the Interior the authority to decide such names.

Re:Curious

[Fire_Wraith]

Yes - and not just her, this is something that all of the Alaska politicians have been pushing for, for several decades now. The current governor of Alaska, who is also a Republican, also hailed the decision.

Not every issue is a Republicans vs Democrats issue, or a Right vs Left issue. This is one of the (increasingly rare) state vs. state issues. In fact, I'm pretty sure you could find any number of Ohio Democrats (as well as Ohio Republicans) that had been busy opposing this.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Curious

[Ol Olsoc]

How is it that the Interior Secretary can unilaterally declare a name change?

Guess we wouldn't have this problem then, as the name of the Mountain would have continued to be Denali, and never called McKinley.

Although it would be kinda cool if the people of Alaska would rename some part of Ohio and demand Ohio's citizens accept it. Let's just call it state's rights, Alaskans by and large wanted it to return to Denali, so why shouldn't they.

Re:Curious

[Ol Olsoc]

Efforts to change the peak's name back to Denali date back to 1975. The Washington Post reports that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently added language in a spending bill that would reestablish the mountain's original name.

C'mon, anon, at least elevate yourself to the type of anon who RTFA.

She's going to get in as much trouble as when Chris Christie hugged the present occupant.

Re:Curious

[dcw3]

How is it that the Interior Secretary can unilaterally declare a name change?

Guess we wouldn't have this problem then, as the name of the Mountain would have continued to be Denali, and never called McKinley.

Although it would be kinda cool if the people of Alaska would rename some part of Ohio and demand Ohio's citizens accept it.

Let's just call it state's rights, Alaskans by and large wanted it to return to Denali, so why shouldn't they.

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

And a side note for those commenting on Obama, and Rep. vs. Dem. The Ohio delegation has been from both parties.

Re:Curious

[Bill_the_Engineer]

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

While that is technically true, I'd give more precedence to the Alaskans since it is within their state.

The Ohio delegation has been from both parties.

Of course it was. That just shows how desperate Ohio is for the attention.

Re:Curious

[I'm New Around Here]

If it had been named Mt Roosevelt? No way Obama would have allowed it to be changed on his watch. He would have given long teleprompterisms about how historic the mountain is under the name Roosevelt. And if it did get changed despite him, it would be the fault of those evil Republicans who want him to fail.

Re:Curious

[bored_engineer]

In fact, I'm pretty sure you could find any number of Ohio Democrats (as well as Ohio Republicans) that had been busy opposing this.

yep.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

The TeaPublicans have spent the last few years renaming everything after Ronald Reagan.

Giving the mountain back it's original name, and the name that the actual people who live there call it, makes more sense to me than naming every damn post office after Ronnie "Let's sell weapons to Iran" Reagan.

I'm originally from Ohio, when the Inuit's want to rename Cleveland let me know.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

What are your real reasons for opposing this?

I honestly cannot understand why everyone has their underwear all balled up over this. It was named after an inconsequential president, that never even saw the mountain. It was renamed by the state of Alaska almost 40 years ago, and the only people complaining about the rename are from Ohio, and have most likely never seen the damn mtn.

The only reason I see people opposing this is because Obama had something to do with it. To that I say you are all a bunch of children whining and stamping your feet. Grow the hell up, I don't even like O but this is a tempest in a teapot.

Re:Curious

[I'm New Around Here]

Did I say I'm opposed to it? I think it is more useless political bullshit, but I don't care either way. I'm not from Alaska or Ohio, and have no stake in this other than taxwise (money spent to change textbooks and maps, etc.). I'm just stating what I think Obama would do if the mountain had been named for a white Democrat instead of a white Republican.

Re:Curious

[operagost]

I think it's because an act of Congress gave them the power to name geographical locations for the federal government. If Ohio wants to keep calling it Mt. McKinley, they are free to do so, but it wouldn't mean much.

Re:Curious

[operagost]

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

This just in: dcw3's yard doesn't belong to him: it's a national asset. We've just renamed it the Slashdot Valley.

Re:Curious

[Ol Olsoc]

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

And a side note for those commenting on Obama, and Rep. vs. Dem. The Ohio delegation has been from both parties.

As has been the Alaskan delegation.

My only real thoughts on this matter are that Alaska asked for it - thy wanted it - Republicans and Democrats want it.

The president did as they wished.

And sure as shit stinks, the fringers are taking another massive hissy fit about it. Their only tool is their anger, and eveything looks like a trigger event for it.

Re:Curious

[Ol Olsoc]

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

And a side note for those commenting on Obama, and Rep. vs. Dem. The Ohio delegation has been from both parties.

It definitely didn't belong to the guy who renamed Mount Denali to Mount McKinley either. It's like I'd walk in your house, and rename your children, and the fringers would be mad that you wanted their originl names back.

Re:Curious

[dcw3]

That's fine, but it doesn't belong to the people of Alaska. It's a national asset.

This just in: dcw3's yard doesn't belong to him: it's a national asset.

We've just renamed it the Slashdot Valley.

You can do that when you find the national park on my yard.

Re:Curious

[Darinbob]

The grandparents of today's angry conservatives were Southern Democrats who would strangle their own hound dogs rather than vote for a Yankee Republican like McKinley.

Re:Curious

[Darinbob]

McKinley is not a poster child for modern conservatives. He was republican, but remember that we had a big swap of the poles in politics since then, the southern Democrats are now the hard right conservatives. McKinley was far too moderate anyway to be taken seriously by any tea partier.

Re:Curious

[Darinbob]

If it was by anyone other than Obama, there would have been nothing at all political about this. It's just one more of the things that the Department of the Interior does all the time.

After all, if we allowed the Republicans to name an airport after a president that was still alive, we can at least allow the Democrats to name a mountain something that everyone in the country already calls it.

Re:Curious

[I'm New Around Here]

Actually, I'm sure most of the people in the country don't call it anything, because it's not in their backyard. As for me, I called it Mt McKinley when stating what the tallest mountain peak in the US is. Other than that point, it wasn't on my radar either.

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[Anonymous Coward]

2015 - 1977 = 38 years

The Interior Department said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had been deferring to Congress since 1977, and cited a 1947 law that allows the Interior Department to change names unilaterally when the board fails to act "within a reasonable time." The board shares responsibility with the Interior Department for naming such landmarks.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f60262f7cb8a4363b3a38b7a035ed66b/white-house-says-mount-mckinley-be-renamed-denali

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Mr D from 63]

Mountains should be nameless. Then this problem goes away.

The mountain formerly known as Denali, then McKinley.

It must be admitted...

[Chris Mattern]

...McKinley had nothing to do with the mountain. Or even all that much with Alaska--it was not acquired by the US during his administration, became a district before he took office, and remained one for his entire term.

Who the fuck is McKinley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like some redneck. Denali sounds a lot better.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[sabbede]

The 25th President of the US. He was assassinated shortly after winning a second term.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[Anonymous Coward]

"snow nigger"

ha!

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like we should call white people "Euroniggers" and come full circle.

Then we can all call each other "MAH NIGGA!" and peace will break out.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[I'm New Around Here]

Well, my mom always taught us that "nigger" doesn't have anything to do with the color of a person's skin. It's about their actions and how they treat others. A nigger will beat up a little old lady for her pension check, and it doesn't matter if either person is white, black, asian, hispanic, or any other race. Race has nothing to do with it.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom is a cunt.

Where I come from, that is what we call people who redefine terms to suit their own purposes.

Say "Hi!" to the cunt, from me.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[I'm New Around Here]

Dad, I thought you couldn't read slashdot at work anymore. Ever since they caught you jerking off to Natalie Portman posts.

By the way, mom says get the butt plug out of your ass before coming home. Her bull has a treat for you.

Re:Who the fuck is McKinley?

[Darinbob]

Denali sounds like a big rough and rugged truck. McKinley sounds like some sort of minivan.

Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's also worth noting that McKinley never set foot in Alaska, never did a damn thing for them

George Washington also never set foot to Washington State, and that dude did nothing for the folks in WA state either ...
 
Does that mean Obama gets to change the state name from "WA" to "OB"?

Re:Let's see ...

[nomadic]

Is there a law specifically that allows it, as is the case here? Then yes, he does.

Re:Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Obama had renamed McKinley to Mt Obama, you might have a valid argument. All he did was what the state of Alaska had been asking for for nearly 40 years.

Re:Let's see ...

[bev_tech_rob]

If Obama had renamed McKinley to Mt Obama, you might have a valid argument. All he did was what the state of Alaska had been asking for for nearly 40 years.

And basically everyone else EXCEPT Ohio had been wanting. So, majority rules sucka!

Re:Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What was Washington named 100 years before it was named Washington? What do you want to see it renamed to? Are there protesters in Washington demanding their state be renamed to what it was originally named before some assholes in Washington DC renamed it against their will?

After this great act by Obama, I hope he issues an Executive Order declaring Pluto a planet again, as it rightly should be.

Re:Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Obama had renamed McKinley to Mt Obama, you might have a valid argument. All he did was what the state of Alaska had been asking for for nearly 40 years.

And basically everyone else EXCEPT Ohio had been wanting. So, majority rules sucka!

I think the Democratic People's Republic of Ohio would take issue with that.

Re:Let's see ...

[tnk1]

It *is* a planet. It's just a dwarf planet.

Of course, the correct terminology is now "Little Planets".

Re:Let's see ...

[MachineShedFred]

Hello,

As a resident of Ohio, I can formally tell you that we don't give a shit either. William McKinley doesn't even have crap named after him here like other Ohioan presidents do (Taft, Grant, Harrison [both W. H. Harrison and Benjamin], Hamilton, Garfield, etc.). In fact, if there's anything that was named for Rutherford B. Hayes, you can rename that shit back to whatever it was before, too.

This is an issue of importance only to douchebag politicians, and people that actually live in Alaska.

Re:Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't know a fucking thing about Ohio.

Re:Let's see ...

[rjstanford]

It *is* a planet. It's just a dwarf planet.

Of course, the correct terminology is now "Little Planets".

I believe they prefer "Planets of Compact Stature."

Re:Let's see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What was Washington named 100 years before it was named Washington? What do you want to see it renamed to? Are there protesters in Washington demanding their state be renamed to what it was originally named before some assholes in Washington DC renamed it against their will?

What we call Washington used to be part of Columbia District. In 1818, it was renamed to Oregon Country, and later Oregon Territory. I can't find pre-columbian names for this region.

Re:Let's see ...

[shutdown -p now]

When the residents have appealed to the Congress to carve a chunk out of the Oregon Territory and make it separate, they have initially proposed naming it Columbia Territory. It was changed to Washington during the discussions in the Congress, because someone suggested that it would be confusing because of District of Columbia...

OTOH, when Washington became a state, there was a plebiscite for its constitution, which spelled out the name. So one could argue that it was, in fact, approved by the populace in the end. There's certainly no significant movement contesting the naming at this point, unlike with Denali.

Re:Let's see ...

[Darinbob]

Majority rules is generally the rule, unless Obama is involved in which case the rule is that he has to be called a tyrant.

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Rei]

I can't remember who it was... it might have been Halldór Laxnes... who said that a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name. That is, the first thing people do once they start interacting with an object or place is to give it a name, and so once something is named it starts to become about the history of people rather than the history of the land itself. And that if you want to establish a real connection with nature, you don't go sit on top of that well-known named peak that people climb... you go to that little nameless stream or that remote nameless cliff or whatnot - places which tell only their own story.

Re:Fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

The people of Alaska have been asking for this name change for decades.

In fact, hardly anyone really calls the mountain McKinley anymore, people have been calling it Denali.

It has nothing to do with Obama or his ego.

That you think it does it purely the result of you being very stupid and gullible. It's time someone delivered you this bad news.

Re:Fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama can't have anything named after him. Only fair.

So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?

Re:Fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama can't have anything named after him. Only fair.

Too late. The health care system already is.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

He's got a socialist health plan named after him.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The socialist plan that requires people to buy something from a particular group of companies?

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know? To Republicans, 'socialist' means "something I don't actually know about, but I've been told to believe is bad".
They're the same people you see protesting with signs that say, "Keep the government out of my Medicare!"

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[RabidReindeer]

Originally known as "Your finger, you fool!"

I'm trying so hard to care about this

[Lucas123]

I'm really, really trying... hold on, I think I'm starting to care... nope, lost it. Still don't care.

Re:I'm trying so hard to care about this

[dcw3]

I'm really, really trying... hold on, I think I'm starting to care... nope, lost it. Still don't care.

Liar. You cared enough to read and comment.

In other News....

[funwithBSD]

Trump announces that he will reverse the renaming if he gets elected

Hillary says it will be renamed to Mt. Edmund Hillary.

Hell, a president can change anything to anything with a stroke of a bureaucrats pen these days.

Re:In other News....

[funwithBSD]

Life imitates "art":

http://www.bloomberg.com/polit...

Re:In other News....

[tglx]

Hillary says it will be renamed to Mt. Edmund Hillary.

That would be outright hillarious!

Re:Fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Its going back to its orginal name. RomneyCare.

Re:Fine, but

[Mashiki]

So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?

Why do that? People are happy to play partisan politics with stuff, in this case he made it, he owns it.

Naming things after politicians

[msobkow]

Naming things after politicians is stupid. Politicians are gone and forgotten in a matter of years; things like mountains are around for hundreds of years.

If you want to name a building after a politician, knock yourself out, but I fail to see why anyone would support remembering some politician for hundreds of years.

Re:Naming things after politicians

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, we shouldn't name cities after politicians either. We should rename Washington, DC to 'AC' (For Ad Council), then we can abbreviate it to "AC/DC".

Re:Naming things after politicians

[dcw3]

Naming things after politicians is stupid. Politicians are gone and forgotten in a matter of years; things like mountains are around for hundreds of years.

If you want to name a building after a politician, knock yourself out, but I fail to see why anyone would support remembering some politician for hundreds of years.

Hell yeah! Let's remove Washington State and D.C., Lincoln, Nebraska, and all those Jeffersons.

Re:Naming things after politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys have the wrong idea. Mountains, rivers, and other major natural landmarks should be given commercial names like some stadiums are. They could auction off the rights every few years. For example, I bet PepsiCo would pay a lot of money to rename Denali/Mt. McKinley to "Mountain Dew" rather than let Coca-Cola get the naming rights. Imagine how much Coors would pay for major mountains or whole ranges. Strategies like this could pay off the national debt.

Trump in 2016!

Re:Naming things after politicians

[Solandri]

Naming things after politicians is stupid.

I dunno. I could get behind naming newly discovered species of weasels, nuts, and parasites after politicians.

Re:Naming things after politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

New Earther, eh?

Re:Naming things after politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know why Lincoln Nebraska ended up with that name. It was named Lincoln to piss off the settlers south of the Platte river who had confederate sympathies. The hope was they would so dislike the name that Omaha could keep the capitol.

Frankly I am all in favor of renaming major towns rivers and mountains to Obama, because it would push some of you unhinged people off the deep end which is so humorous.

Good grief

[Ol Olsoc]

As the trolls manage to find another thing to be outraged about regarding the present occupant, expressing high Dudgeon that he would have the nerve to change a name that had been changed back to the original name it had been changed from, it merely shows how petty and ridiculous they are.

But Ol Olsoc, he isn't without a bit of sympathy, so let me tell ya a story that will gladden yer hearts.

Remember when that no good womanizing liberal socialist JFK passed away? He of turning the White house into Camelot?

Well those socialist liberals then went and re-named Cape Canaveral in Florida to Cape Kennedy. Can you imagine?

Fortunately smarter, stronger, and right minded folks re-named it back to Cape Canaveral to right that terrible wrong.

So hopefully that will help to gruntle your howls of umbrage, as the present occupant merely re-names it to what it was for all we know, it's first name.

Re:Good grief

[ColdWetDog]

It wasn't quite that complete of an accomplishment for the Right Minded Folk.

It's still the 'John F. Kennedy Space Flight Center'. It's just the physical spit of land it sits on has been dis-named.

Clothing brand change too?

[stone_horse]

There's a clothing brand that took their name from the mountain...lol wonder if they will change too? :) http://www.mckinley.eu/mckinle...

News for Nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

/sarcasm

GM Union happy

[Anonymous Coward]

GM workers are happy the Big SUV gets more free press.

On the bright side...

[RogueWarrior65]

At least the administration hasn't yet taken over more millions of acres and banned all access to evil, disgusting, polluting, scourge-on-the-face-of-the-earth humans.
Oh, dang...now I gave them an idea. My bad.

Federal Overstepping Again...

[SSonnentag]

This is the last thing the Federal Government needs to be involved in. The mountain is in a state, so let the state name it whatever they want. End of story. What a waste of Presidential time (not that he would be doing anything useful anyway) and front page news space.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[Anonymous Coward]

You could at least read the article. The state has wanted to change the name of the mountain for a very long time. The federal gov't is the entity that has the right to name landmarks in the individual states, always has. That's how this mountain got the name "Mt. McKinley" to begin with. Alaskans didn't get a choice and Alaskans had wanted it changed back, but the legislature in Ohio have blocked their efforts.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moron, learn to read.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the last thing the Federal Government needs to be involved in.

Until you realize that the US has a mapping service, a postal service, and in general, that it has been a part of the Federal purview for quite a while, from the founding of the Board on Geographic Names at the least, but earlier in some other respects.

The mountain is in a state, so let the state name it whatever they want. End of story. What a waste of Presidential time (not that he would be doing anything useful anyway) and front page news space.

Well, waste of time and meaningless to you aside, the name is a thing that means a lot to people, maybe more than you think.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the state calls it Denali. The people there call it Denali.

They've been trying to convince the federal government to recognize this for about 50 years. About f'in time.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[dcw3]

This is the last thing the Federal Government needs to be involved in. The mountain is in a state, so let the state name it whatever they want. End of story. What a waste of Presidential time (not that he would be doing anything useful anyway) and front page news space.

The mountain doesn't belong to the state, it's federal property, belonging to us as a nation.

Re:Federal Overstepping Again...

[Camel Pilot]

Not sure why someone thinks your post is insightful... that mountain is in a state but is _Federal_ property in the middle of a _Federal_ National Park.

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[Applehu Akbar]

We already moved - away from you, to the suburbs.

controversy for the sake of controversy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama will fly into a summer snowstorm today to rename Mt McKinley, something he has no authority to do (it was named by an act of Congress which he cannot set aside, regardless of his claims to absolute power). The point of the exercise, however, has nothing to do with Mt McKinley. The point is that he will seek out any issue, no matter how petty, to stir up controversy. That's his legacy. The most divisive president in history. And he doesn't need to fly to Alaska to prove it.

Re:controversy for the sake of controversy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is "The most divisive president in history."

Really? More divisive than Lincoln? (For whom I would have voted if I was a USA male eligible to vote in the 1860s.)

Re:Denali: It Ain't a River in Egypt!

[StikyPad]

We're living in Denali.

According to http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid... Jordan Klepper.

Rename others?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will we be renaming Everest "Sagarmth" ? I'm pretty sure Nepal natives named it long before the English.

Yet another small demographic being pandered to

[Anonymous Coward]

#ESKIMOFEELINGSMATTER

Next: Ranier back to Tahoma

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier#Name

About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

It only took about 7 years, but Obama has finally *done* something!

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Logic not present

Indeed, but not by the person you think.

First Sitting president to Visit Alaska

[Wargames]

Alaska is a huge expanse, over twice the size of Texas, constituting almost 18 percent of the land mass of the USA. Obama is the first sitting president to visit. Only like 750,000 people live there. Amazing.

At only 21000 feet, Denali doesn't even rank in Earth's highest (altitude) places. Remarkably it is in the top 3 for prominence. No longer will the mountain have to be referenced as "Denali (Mt. McKinley)" or "Mt. McKinley (Denali)". People will no longer have to explain the two names over and over and over.

If only he'd do something else reasonable like creating an executive order forcing the use of the metric system!

Re:First Sitting president to Visit Alaska

[thinkwaitfast]

Metric system is already forced (try to find some consumable in your house without metric labeling. Imperial is not forced.

Re:First Sitting president to Visit Alaska

[Anonymous Coward]

It was easy to explain the two names. Denali was it's real name, and Mt. McKinley was its slave name.

Re:First Sitting president to Visit Alaska

[Ron Goodman]

Can you imagine the GOPT heads exploding if he did?

Re:First Sitting president to Visit Alaska

[RockDoctor]

People will no longer have to explain the two names over and over and over.

To be honest, at least within the mountaineering community, "Denali" has been the recognised name for decades, possibly going back into the mid-70s. I can't remember having to connect the names "Denali" and "Mt McKinley," and I only got into mountaineering in the late 70s

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again. "...isn't really a piece of nature unless it DOESN'T have a name."

Reading comprehension FTW!

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[Anonymous Coward]

This person you're replying to is probably about as white as I am, and that's pretty white.

him: not so much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Goto http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=136:1:0::::: and start typing-in presidential surnames.

Loads of stuff each for 'bush', 'clinton', 'Reagan', 'carter', 'ford', 'nixon', 'johnson', 'kennedy', 'eisenhower', et.al., but the only things listed for that useless dingdong are THREE elementary schools.

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember who it was... it might have been Halldór Laxnes... who said that a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name. That is, the first thing people do once they start interacting with an object or place is to give it a name, and so once something is named it starts to become about the history of people rather than the history of the land itself. And that if you want to establish a real connection with nature, you don't go sit on top of that well-known named peak that people climb... you go to that little nameless stream or that remote nameless cliff or whatnot - places which tell only their own story.

Nature is everywhere, everything; named or not, altered by man or now.

Indeed, nature is all of reality.

holy fucking product placement, Obummer!

[Anonymous Coward]

GMC should be quite pleased.

Apache were calling themselves Indians

[tepples]

You can start with 'Indians'. 'Ol Columbus was a tad confused at times.

Columbus was right but for the wrong reason. Before European contact, the Apache were calling themselves Inde, meaning "the people". Words for "people" resembling Inde or Dene are common in the Athabaskan languages that were spoken in what are now the southwestern United States, Alaska, and the Northwest Territories of Canada.

Re:Apache were calling themselves Indians

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the Apache were high plains American Indians, and Columbus never ventured far from the coast.

He visted pre-Cuba, where the Taino-Arawak people lived, and pre-Domincan Republic where more Taino people lived.

In short, unless you can find strong evidence that Columbus travelled inland on the Continential US, as far as the great plains, without meeting other tribes along the coast (like the Seminole and Karankawa), your story doesn't make sense.

The closest you might get is that sometimes Lipan (one of the Apache tribes) sometimes made it through Karankawa territory to the coast. Of course, the Karankawa were happy to reward such intrusions with ritualistic cannibalisim, as eating their enemies made them spiritually stronger. Even then, it's a very small piece of coastline where that happened, and there is ample documentation that Columbus never visited it.

Re:Fine, but

[dcw3]

Obama can't have anything named after him. Only fair.

So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?

Why? Obama calls it that.

Now please rename Zion National Park

[tallpall]

Originally it was named appropriately Mukuntuweap National Monument by president Taft. The National Park Service changed it to the Morman-given name Zion to appeal to a white ethnocentric population. Past time to fix that.

Re:Now please rename Zion National Park

[Darinbob]

Are you anti-Zionist?

Re:Now please rename Zion National Park

[ebvwfbw]

Mukuntuweap? How about Tesla National monument.

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the whole point. Ignoring the existing name and people that lived under the high one diminished their role in our society, and was a reminder that they don't matter. The whole thing is a horrific genocide, and piled onto that was a cultural genocide by naming the mountain "mckinley".

Next up ...

[PPH]

... Duwamps, Washington. I mean Seattle is named after a native American. But why Doc Maynard figured it would be a good idea to change the original name I will never understand.

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what Obama want's. If he want's it, then it's bad for America. I will always call it McKinley

Re:Fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I *love* the 'he made it' arguments, especially since it was adopted, virtually whole cloth, from a Republican think-tank's proposal to fix our healthcare system. The *moment* Obama came out in favor of it, the entire Republican party scattered from it like a bunch or cockroaches from light. It was *hilarious* watching the same Republicans who had praised the plan just *weeks* beforehand suddenly turn and start trashing it. It was the 'perfect solution', devised by Republicans, guaranteed to fix all of our healthcare problems. Then it was born of the devil, guaranteed to bankrupt the country, and cause people to *die*.

Instead, it (like any other thing made by man) is imperfect, but it is costing the country *less* than we were paying before it was passed and implemented, even coming in under it's *expected* budget by roughly 20%. More people can afford to get their health issues taken care of *before* they become expensive, life-threatening problems, so expenses have *dropped* as a result.

But the Republican party is pathologically incapable of acknowledging any of the *many* things Obama has done to improve the nation, so they have to make things up in order to try to allocate *blame* for the law, rather than acknowledging the improvements, and trying to (justly) claim some credit for it, because it *started* from their plan.

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[Anonymous Coward]

I misread it the first time through, too. Double negatives aren't an unconfusing thing.

a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name.

Bush II's Goodwill Move

[Anonymous Coward]

I will always remember Bush II for his final act: getting the fsck out of office without invading Iran. Unfortunately, nearly all of the GOP presidential candidates seem hell bent on rolling back his "legacy".

Yes, let's drop a nuke on Iran to prove our resolve. I'm sure that'll certainly convince them to abort their nuclear arms program.

Good -- and here's why

[Morpeth]

Locals call it Denali, it's always been Denali to anyone who knows a damn thing about the area and its history. I've spend my fair share of time up there, and people I know roll their eyes at 'McKinley'.

Renaming it from Denali to McKinley was just political ego boosting, McKinley himself had nothing to do with Alaska, or Denali -- never climbed it, never did anything for it, or the park. And the park it's located in is DENALI National Park & Preserve.

This isn't about being PC or anything like that (there a set of people who will hate Obama for anything, if he cured cancer they'd blame him for putting oncologists out of work...), it's about restoring the correct name it's had for much longer.

unname Colorado Indian fighter mountains

[peter303]

There is a campaign to rename Mt Evans and Mt Kit Carson in Colroado because the namesakes fought in anti-Indian wars. I dont think its worth the effort.

Sandusky

[tepples]

Are you including Top Thrill Dragster on Cedar Point in north central Ohio?

Re:Sandusky

[danbert8]

No, but I guess I could include the elevation of the highest mini-golf hole at Challenge Park as that might be the highest point of terrain on the peninsula.

I don't care what they call it

[Anonymous Coward]

It will always be Sears Tower.

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[kwbauer]

Congress did not fail to act; it failed to act in accordance to the desires of those who wanted the change.

There is a huge difference.

Propaganda

[Etherwalk]

As a friend often tells me, before the Civil War people would say "the United States are", and since the war they say "the United States is".

I suspect that's because of the Union/Northern Propaganda. Part of any war is figuring out the narrative to use to sell the war to your people, both the people fighting and the people undergoing hardship at home. While that's always been true on some level, it's been particularly important since the use of the longbow in 1415 at the battle of Agincourt. (Because at that point wealth and a small number of people was no longer sufficient to win a war--mass infantry and therefore control of public sentiment became necessary to field an army.)

We have been swinging the other way for some time now, because of automation, and democracy will become much less useful to the preservation of the state over time. I'll be surprised if it survives the next Millennium. We've been raised to like it, and it has a lot going for it, but it's too inefficient in its current form probably anywhere in the world.

In any event, today's common claim is that the Civil War was a fight "to preserve the Union," and while I don't see a contemporary reference to that propaganda in a quick google search, if that was part of the narrative then the shift to "The United States Is" was inevitable, and probably started as part of that campaign.

Re:Propaganda

[Darinbob]

Compared to the southern propaganda, and outright lies. Everyone in the South at the time knew the war was about slavery, pure and simple. Not a war of Northern aggression. The splitting away from the union was done for one and only one purpose - to maintain the peculiar institution of slavery. The issue had come to a head, and the final spark igniting the war was the treasonous capture of federal forts. There was no honor about this worth celebrating as heritage.

The fight to preserve the Union was a northern concept. Because the North was actually willing for the most part to tolerate slavery as long as it didn't expand and didn't affect them much (yes, both sides can be accounted guilty on the issue). Had the South not rebelled I believe that slavery would have lasted another couple of decades during which the North continually wrung its hands and worried about what to do. Although the anti-slavery movements would have grown enough to eventually force a conflict.

Credit where due...

[MachineShedFred]

Hey! At least give him credit for not selling Alaska back to Russia before getting assassinated!

In other news...

[PvtVoid]

... GM is re-branding its SUV as "The Chevy McKinley".

Re:For me, it will always remain the mountain...

[shutdown -p now]

From now on, I'm going to name every inconsequential stream and cliff my eyes lay upon during any of my hikes, just for the sake of trolling.~

No, it isn't...

[TaleSpinner]

> "McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali"

Obama can call it anything he jolly well likes, but that peak was named by an act of Congress in 1917 and it will require an act of Congress to undo that. No "executive order" or other such malarky has the slightest effect. Obama can no more rename Mt. McKinley than he can Cmdr Taco.

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[Darinbob]

Did it act in a way that said "no we will keep the name", or did they act in a way where they kept putting it off for decades? Oh, but because it's Obama it must be some sort of nefarious plan on his part!

Biily was a mountain

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethel, a tree, was his wife.

Time to grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to grow up, your mom taught you wrong.

Re:Time to grow up

[I'm New Around Here]

So what you are saying is that only blacks are niggers.

Re:Time to grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am not saying anybody is a nigger. Specifically I will state that nobody is a nigger.

What I am saying is that it is highly derogatory and dehumanizing term that is aimed at black/brown people.

Re:Time to grow up

[I'm New Around Here]

And what I am saying is that it is a derogatory term that is aimed at people of any color that act in a certain way.

Re:Since when we gave a politician so much power?

[kwbauer]

Either way is taking action. Subcommittees and leadership considered and took the action of rejecting the proposal.

The real meaning behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eat it, whitey"

Rename the peak, rename the park

[ASM826]

Okay, now the peak is Denali. Let's name the park for McKinley.