The Seventh Sense

Opposing A Marker Acknowledging Slave Labor

The United States Capital Building, its wonderful dome, and the Statue of Freedom that sits atop it, were built by slave labor.

Yeah, I know.  Bit of national shame and embarassment.

Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives sought to redress that grievance in some small way with a resolution acknowledging the role slaves played in the Capital's construction.  The purpose of the resolution, according to its text, was to direct "the Architect of the Capitol to place a marker in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center which acknowledges the role that slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol."

A casual observer of national politics might watch the 24 hour news or read blogs and come away thinking that everything that happens in the halls of Congress turns into a divided partisan bicker.  But in fact, Congress tends to agree a lot on a lot of things, especially relatively minor things like the slave labor resolution.

And indeed, the resolution passed 399-1.

Of course, one wonders what was in the mind of the sole congressman who voted against it.  His name is Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

So why did he do it?

Well, his first explanation was this (I'm paraphrasing): (1) Congress had already changed the name of the Great Hall in the Capital Visitor's Center to Emancipation Hall in honor of all them slaves -- ain't that enough???? and (2)  Congress has been reluctant to plaster "In God We Trust" on every portico, doorknob and urinal in the Capital building.  So his vote was to defend religion.  (His actual words were:

"The architect of the capitol has been for years trying to eradicate any sign of faith or Christianity from the capitol itself and from the historical documents that flow from it," King says. "...I'm out of patience with these kind of maneuverings.")

But in an interview with Radio Iowa yesterday, King, after he established his "I'm no racist no really I'm not" bonafides, offered a new explanation for his vote, complaining that the slave labor resolution wasn’t a “balanced depiction of history”:

KING: I would just add that there were about 645,000 slaves that were brought to the United States. And I’m with Martin Luther King, Jr. on this. His documents, his speeches – I’ve read most of them. And I agree with almost every word that came out of him. Slavery was abhorrent, but it was also a fact of life in those centuries where it existed.

And of the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be forcibly put into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery. And I don’t see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitor Center, and I think it’s important that we have a balanced depiction of history.

Riiiiight.  A balanced depiction of history.

How many monuments are there in Washington D.C. which acknowledge slavery? ZERO.

How many monuments are there in Washington D.C. which acknowledge the contributions of those who fought in the Civil War?  Enough to fill a book... including the Grant Memorial just outside the Capital Building itself.

But setting that aside, a marker noting that the Capital was actually built by slaves seems highly related to the, uh, Capital Visitor Center -- the place which provides visitor information for people who want to learn about the Capital Building.  On the other hand -- while the deaths of Civil War soldiers bears historical importance, I'm not quite sure what those deaths have to do with the Capital building itself.

And finally, King wants to honor the "over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to end slavery".  Someone needs to tell him that about 360,000 of the 618,000 war casualties actually died to end slavery.  The other 258,000 or so died to preserve it.  Just sayin....

Who Says We Won't Have Nixon To Kick Around Anymore?

Just yesterday, a Nixon tape was released in which he expressed approval of abortion for children of interracial couples.

Today, from other newly-released tapes, we learn of his sexism.

In February of 1973, President Nixon called future president and then-Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush, and recounted a recent visit to the South Carolina state legislature.

"I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature," Nixon told Bush. "I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let's look for some… Understand, I don't do it because I'm for women, but I'm doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not… So have you got that in mind?"

Bush replies, "I'll certainly keep it in mind."

Yeah, God forbid Nixon be "for women".

Pat Boone Cannot Tell The Truth

Lot of really good over-the-top anti-Obama wingnuttery these days. 

Over at Renew America, Marie Jon No-More-Apostrophe has penned her solution to deal with Obama in a piece entitled "How do we stop Communism? Pray!"

And Sher "It Appears That" Zieve is still using her favorite rhetorical devices -- capital letters and the phrase "it appears that" -- to gin up the coming ObamaArmageddon.  Here's an example:

By the way, ObamaCare will also him to control virtually all of the actions — what we can and cannot eat, do, say, think etc. — of American citizens. It will also allow him and his adherents to ultimately decide who will live and who will die. This will be called ObamaTotalControl.

But I'm kind of partial to Pat Boone's brand of earnest lunacy, which is found in his latest Newsmax column, "Obama Should Emulate George Washington's Truthfulness".  He starts out:

I doubt that it’s ever taught in school today, because it seems that the National Education Association has different ideas about what our kids need to know.

What is "it"?  Pat's going to tell us:

But most adults over 40 surely are familiar with the story about young George Washington, who had been given a small hatchet for his birthday.

Yes, Pat.  The kids NEED to know made-up stories about the founding fathers instead of this shit.

Eager to try it out, the boy looked for something to hack (the word had a different meaning in our forefathers' days). And he found it — a little cherry tree. When his father found that a perfectly good cherry tree had been destroyed, he asked George whether he knew what had happened.

“Father, I cannot tell a lie,” said the future first president of the United States of America. “I did it.”

Yeah, I think it is important to teach kids not to tell a lie, too.  But we kind of undercut the lesson when we use a story which is itself a lie, don't we?

An insignificant story, perhaps, just a little morality tale for kids. No one today can verify whether it actually happened. I, for one, believe it did, mainly because if its apparent insignificance.

In other words, if it has significance, it really happened.  Really, that's all it takes. 

If there weren’t a factual basis for the story, who would make it up?

Um, this guy maybe?

Mason Locke Weems (October 11, 1756 – May 23, 1825), generally known as Parson Weems, was an American printer and author. He is best known as the source of some of the apocryphal stories about George Washington, including the famous tale of the cherry tree ("I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet"). The Life of Washington, Weems' most famous work, contained the story. Creating a moral tale to emphasize a character trait was a commonly used literary device in 18th century biographies.

Emphasis mine.  But back to Pat:

Surely a fableist would conjure up something more dramatic than a little boy cutting down a cherry tree with his new hatchet.

Surely.  After all, is there a book more gripping and dramatic than Aesop's Fables?

But what makes it significant is that it underscores, from a very early age, the character of the man who became our first president — and a role model for all who would follow him into that office. His honesty never was questioned throughout his distinguished military career, his political leadership, and his virtually unanimously elected two terms as president of the United States.

His slaves also never questioned his honesty.  Oh, sorry.  Why did I have to bring that up?

In fact, his admiring friend Thomas Jefferson wrote about Washington: “His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known. He was, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man.”

That was just before Jefferson wrote about how "naturally irritable" Washington was.  No, really.

Is it any wonder, then, that parents and teachers have pointed to the man we call “the father of our country” for nearly 200 years as an example for our kids to emulate? That, too, makes the story of the apple tree meaningful and important: Children can understand the moral and learn a valuable lesson from their earliest years.

Oh, so now it's an apple tree?

Pat then compares Obama to George Washington -- not the real George Washington, of course (which is an unfair comparison anyway) -- but the fake hatchet-breaing, cherry-and-or-apple-tree-chopping George Washington.

I'm not exactly sure that Pat is any position to criticize the NEA or extol the virtues of truth in a column so riddled with inaccuracies.

Quote Of The Day

More Nixon tapes released, and buried in them is Nixon discussing his views on abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade:

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white.... or a rape.”

Nice, Dick.

Dick Cheney Blames Richard Clarke For Failing To Warn Of 9/11

Former Bush National Security Council’s counter-terrorism director wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post this past weekend, saying that "trauma of 9/11" was a piss-poor excuse for the response of Cheney and the Bush Administration in the weeks and months that followed (Iraq invasion, Gitmo detention, illegal wiretapping, etc.):

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques -- but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

Speaking at the National Press Club today, Cheney struck back at Clarke. When asked about Clarke’s argument, Cheney — once again — invoked the “burning ashes” of 9/11 and the victims who leaped to their deaths from the World Trade Center. Then, quite succinctly, Cheney pinned the entire blame for 9/11 on Clarke:

CHENEY: You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it. The fact is that we did what we felt we had to do, and if I had to do it all over again, I would do exactly the same thing.

Oh, really?

Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, showed that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings [all dates are 2001]

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)

"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (June 23)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30),

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)

All that before the infamous August 6 2001 PDB.

And did Rice heed Clarke's warnings?

When he finally got his security clearance and was allowed into the reading room, [9/11 Commission investigator historian Warren] Bass discovered he could make quick work of Rice's emails and internal memos on the al-Qaeda threat in the spring and summer of 2001. That was because there was almost nothing to read, at least nothing that Rice had written herself.

Either she committed nothing to paper or email on the subject, which was possible since so much of her work was conducted face-to-face with Bush, or terrorist threats were simply not an issue that had interested her before September 11. Her speeches and public appearances in the months before the attacks suggested the latter.

So Clarke didn't miss it; in fact, he was warning about an impending attack repeatedly.

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to “roll back” al Qaeda — a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, “Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.” … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

Cheney don't know Dick. 

RIP Milvina Dean

98 years ago today, the Titanic was launched.

And we know what happened a couple of weeks later.

706 passengers survived.  And the last survivor of the Titanic died this morning.  She was 97.  Milvina Dean was just over two months at the time of the sinking.  She was in lifeboat 13.

She was in the news a few months ago when she had to auction of her Titanic memorabilia in order to pay nursing home costs.

But Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet stepped in paid her nursing home fees....

This Day In Theatre History

250 years ago today:

On this day [May 31] in 1759, lawmakers in Pennsylvania adopt a law forbidding the performance of plays. The law was adopted in response to pressure from religious groups, particularly Baptists, who found theatrical performances immoral. Anyone found guilty of putting on a play was fined 500 pounds.

Fuckin' religious right.

A Plea For Public Broadcasting

Everytime pledge week rolls around on NPR, I am reminded of Fred Rogers (aka "Mr. Rogers", of "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood") in 1969 testifying before Congress.

Public television was in danger of having its budget slashed dramatically.  Mr. Rogers, still a relative unknown, went up to Captial Hill.  He not only urged that the public broadcasting budget not be cut, but he also weighed in on a hot issue at the time: whether VCRs should be allowed to record TV shows from the home -- his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family.

He gave a 6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens.  In a style only Mr. Rogers could deliver, his message was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed.

Six minutes later, it was all over.  Before Rogers' testimony, the public broadcasting budget was slated to be slashed to a mere $9 million.  Thanks to Mr. R, funding for public broadcasting was actually increased over the prior year -- to $22 million.

Here's the testimony:

Ira Glass ain't got nothing on F-Rog.

Time In A Bottle

On September 9, 1944, Waclaw Sobczak, a Polish Catholic confined to the horrors of Auschwitz, was on work detail.  Very quietly, he fashioned a scrap of paper from a cement bag and scrawled his name, camp number, and hometown.  Six other prisoners names were also on the paper.  The paper was placed in a bottle; the bottle was placed inside a wall and perhaps covered with cement.

None of the inmates whose names were on the paper expected to survive the brutality of the Nazi concentration camp.  That's why they the message was created -- as a way to say, "Hey, I'm a person and I was here."  The note also said they were "all between 18 and 20 years of age".

That bottle was recently discovered by a construction crew renovating a vocational school in Auschwitz (now Oswiecim).  That, located a few hundred yards from the actual camp.

Remarkably, Waclaw Sobczak and two others who signed the small piece of paper not only survivied the Holocaust, but are still alive today.

It is extremely rare to find original "documents" from concentration camp prisoners.  Full story here.

Another article details the story of another man whose name is on the list:

But possibly the most interesting name on the list, and the one who sheds the most light on its background, is that of Albert Veissid, 84, a Jew who lives in Marseille, France. 

Veissid stashed stolen marmalade for his six fellow prisoners in an Auschwitz bunker, and in exchange, the Christians gave the Jew their extra soup – and included his name on their list.  Veissid told an Associated Press reporter that he never knew about the list of names in the bottle.  "I'm so very, very surprised," he said. “A bit troubled, too.”

Veissid, a retired mason and clarinet player, told AP that he was born in Turkey, arrived in France as an infant, and was picked up at age 18 by the Gestapo. He was then sent to a string of prisons and camps before landing at Drancy, a transit camp northeast of Paris from where 76,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps; only about 3,000 returned.

Currently the site of a memorial to the deported Jews, Drancy was in the news just three weeks ago when it was vandalized and painted with swastikas in an anti-Semitic incident.

 "I'm surprised that these Poles put me in this bottle," Veissid said. "I knew their faces, but didn't remember the names." The Christian Poles worked on building sites while Veissid worked beneath them, securing a bunker. They would steal marmalade and other provisions during the day, give them to him for safekeeping, and come at night to retrieve them, he said.

In exchange, they brought him some of their left-over soup. "They brought it to me,” Veissid recounted, “and there was still so much that I gave it to others. I imagine they [included me on their list] out of recognition that by hiding [their supplies], I risked my life.”

In April 1945, seven months after the list was written and hidden, the Nazis sensed impending defeat and forced Veissid and many others to walk without food for nearly three weeks to another camp. Many survivors have described these ‘death marches’ as even worse than the preceding years of torture. "If the war had lasted one more week, I wouldn't be here," Veissid said.

Four Dead In Ohio, 39 Years Later

39 years ago today, the Ohio National Guard shot at protesting students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine.

It was in that immediate aftermath when Akron Beacon Journal photographer James Filo snapped this (in)famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photo:

 

The anguished young woman is Mary Ann Vecchio, who was (at the time) a 14 year old runaway.  She is shown kneeling over the body of Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, who was fatally shot moments earlier.  Vecchio did not know Miller, although she had befriended two of the other students who were hit by gunfire that day: Sandra Scheuer, who was killed; and Alan Canfora, who was wounded.

Back in 1995, Vecchio spoke at a press conference about the impact of that day on her life:

"I couldn't believe that people would kill people over what they thought, just because he demonstrated against the Vietnam War -- that they would shoot you over it. I couldn't believe... There was nothing I could do for Jeffrey or any of the other students. And that's part of history and that'll remain with me for the rest of my life."

Today at Kent State, at the 39th Commemorative Ceremony, Vecchio and Filo reunited for the first time at that spot.  (They had met once earllier in 1995, at a colloquiem at Emerson University, but never at Kent State).

Filo, who was a photojournalism major in 1970, is now photography director for CBS in New York. Vecchio is a respiratory therapist in Florida.

Manhattan: Now And Then

2009 vs. 1609, via National Geographic:

 

 

More here.

Bainbridge

The USS Bainbridge, the Navy desroyer which rescued that captain from the Somali pirates, was diverted yesterday to intervene in another pirate attack on another U.S. vessel.

I mention this only to raise that ironic fact that the USS Bainbridge is named after Captain William Bainbridge, who fought against pirates in the First and Second Barbary Wars in the early 19th century, again off the coast of Africa.  (Bainbridge himself was captured and held hostage by pirates at one point).

One Hundred Years Ago....

The New York Times headlines could have been a bit better....

Conservative Punditry "WTF?" Statement Of The Day

National Review's Mark Krikorian -- who, believe it or not, is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies -- drops in this little gem at the Corner:

During slavery and Jim Crow, a number of blacks moved abroad, to Europe or Africa or the USSR, but again, these movements never gained much traction....

Actually, I think very few slaves got the opportunity to move abroad -- like, about zero.  Because there were, you know, slaves.

And Liberia?  Yeah, that was an African colony formed by ex-slaves, with the encouragement of whites, although typically free blacks didn't elect on their own voliation to emigrate there; rather, the one-way ticket to Liberia was offered to them in exchange for freedom from the bonds of slavery.

But there really really wasn't a significant number of black who moved to Europe during slavery or Jim Crow.  There just wasn't.

Pictured below: A black family contemplates their upcoming move to Paris, hoping to trade their forty acres and a mule for frequent flyer miles

 

UPDATE:  National Review's Mark Krikorian responds in the comments below, providing cites.

From what I gather, Krikorian's assertion that there was black emigration during slavery and Jim Crow eras rests upon the fact that some blacks, after serving in Europe during WWI, decided to stay there, mainly in Paris.  The actual number of black emigres amounted to "several hundred", out of over 200,000 black Americans who served in the Army (according to Krikorian's sources).

Oh, and then there was a handful of prominent black artists -- like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker -- who found havens in various European cities.

Still, to suggest that these rare examples represent a "movement" that "never gained traction" certainly overstates the factual truth.  Rank-and-file African-Americans -- those without benefit of military service or fame -- certainly were not in a financial position to move abroad during the eras of Jim Crow and slavery.  Especially slavery.

Fun Fact Of The Day

John Tyler was this country's 10th president.  He was born in 1790.

Amazingly, two of his grandsons are alive today.

[NOTE:  Wikipedia only says one, but still....]

The Last Photo Of Lincoln?

A descendent of Ulysses S. Grant may possess the last known photograph of Abe Lincoln before his assassination, some believe:

If it is indeed Lincoln, it would be the only known photo of the 16th president in front of the executive mansion and a rare find, as only about 130 photos of him are known to exist. A copy of the image was provided to The Associated Press.

Grant's 38-year-old great-great-grandson, Ulysses S. Grant VI, had seen the picture before, but didn't examine it closely until late January. A tall figure in the distance caught his eye, although the man's facial features are obscured.

He called Keya Morgan, a New York-based photography collector and Lincoln aficionado, who helped identify it as Lincoln.

"I was like, 'I don't know who this is, Keya,'" said Grant, a Springfield, Mo., construction business owner.

Although authenticating the 2 1/2-by-3 1/2-inch photo beyond a shadow of a doubt could be difficult, several historians who looked at it said the evidence supporting Morgan's claim is compelling and believable.

Prior to this discovery, the last known photograph of Lincoln is widely believed to be this, taken on March 8, 1865, a little more than a month before he was assassinated:

Well, let's have a look at the newly discovered photo:

 

Let's blow it up to see (supposedly) Abe:

 

There is handwriting on the back of the photo saying “Lincoln in front of the White House”, as well as the date 1865 and the seal of photographer Henry F. Warren.

I can buy that the tall man, apparently with a beard, is Lincoln.  I'm not convinced it is necessarily the last photo of him.

Warren took the photo at the top of this post, widely believed to be last photo of Lincoln.  So the newly discovered Lincoln photo bearing Warren's sesal may have been taken on the same photo session.

But Warren's notes suggest that he took three photos that day.  The first one was supposedly a "standing shot"; the latter two were head and chest.  Warren's first photo (or its negative) have never been seen. 

Which raises the question: is this [the newly discovered photo] the first of Warren's three photos?  If so, then it is not the last photo of Lincoln.

This doesn't undermine the historical importance.  Any photo of Lincoln is an historical find.  And if this "new" photo is, in fact, Lincoln, it is the first known photo of any President in front of the White House.

"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another."

-- "Hamlet", Act 3 scene 1

We all know what Shakespeare looked like.  Or at least, we think we know.

It's this guy:

 

But guess what?  Probably not.

The above engraving was by Martin Droeshout.  It appeared with the First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare's work that was published in 1623, seven years after the Bard's death.  In other words, Shakespeare didn't pose for this.  Like most engravings of the time, the engraving was probably based on something else (another engraving, a painting, etc.).  It may even be a third generation representation of Shakespeare.

So what did Shakespeare really look like?  Scholars have tried -- and failed -- to unanimously find a contemporaneous portrait.

But maybe we have a winner, as of today:

Professor Stanley Wells, Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and one of the world’s leading experts on Shakespearian studies, has announced the discovery of a portrait of William Shakespeare, which he believes is almost certainly the only authentic image of Shakespeare made from life.

So without much further ado (about nothing?), here is (perhaps) the real Shakespeare:

 

I think he and Virginia Woolf are related:

 

Then again, I look like Hugh Jackman, so....

But I digress.

Idiot Elected Leaders

From Columbus Dispatch:

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.

I don't care if it provides job stimulus or not; clearly there needs to be an influx of money to the Ohio education system.

The Tunnel

When I lived in Brooklyn, I had heard rumors of a "secret tunnel" not more than two blocks from where I lived.  It was supposedly an old railroad tunnel built to run dozens of blocks underneath Atlantic Avenue, making it (effectively) the first subway in the world.

Unknown to me at the time was that the secret tunnel was more than a mere rumor.  Several years earlier, an interpid teenager, hearing the same rumors, actually went down a manhole on Atlantic Avenue and discovered the tunnel.

The tunnel was built in 1841 and abandoned in the late 1850's.  After its disuse, it was supposed to be completely filled in.  But the less-than-honest contractor hired for the job merely plugged up the ends of it, and capped the holes leading to the street.  Very few knew of this of course, and years later the tunnel was forgotten. 

At 17 feet high, 21 feet wide and 1,611 feet long, the Atlantic Avenue tunnel purportedly holds more than empty space.  It is believed to contain within its walls, the bones of a tunnel building supervisor, who was shot and killed by Irish laborers after informing them that they had to work on Sunday.  Others have written that the tunnel contains pages from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.  Six blocks of the tunnel -- almost half its length -- are still blocked off by a large brick wall, and many believe that an actual British locomotive may lie on the other side.  (Plans to break through the wall are slated for this year).

Tours of the tunnel are rare -- once or twice a year -- but the tour guide is Bob Diamond, the teenager who "re-discovered" the tunnel in 1980.

A nice little story of modern-day archeology.

For more info, read here.  Or watch this, from the upcoming documentary, What's Behind The Wall.

Ants

A satellite photo of the Washington mall taken at 11:19 a.m. yesterday.

Dr. King's Prediction

BBC has unearthed a video of Dr. King, in 1964, predicting an African American president in 40 years.

It's Official

NOTE: The White House website has changed already -- in the span of 3 minutes.

UPDATE --  The full text of the address below the fold...

THOUGHTS:  Good speech.  Lofty and inspirational.  A bit tweaky of the Bush policies, but I'm sure unintentionally so. 

Cheney in the wheelchair looked like Mr. Potter from "It's A Wonderful Life".

An Historic Day

I'm talking, of course, about the 5th anniversary of this blog.

The first post was January 21, 2004, a passing reference to a State of the Union drinking game.  I had blogged for several years prior to that -- at a group blog called "Freespeech" -- but this was my first foray into something of my own.

So it's been five years -- 6517 posts, 1148 comments, and over 533,000 visitors.  You would think I would have something profound or reflective to say, but no.  It's just a blog.

Speaking of historic days, I hear this Obama guy takes office in 45 minutes.  Again, I lack anything profound to say.  I am astounded by the TV shots of 2 million people on the mall.  I'm interested to hear his address, and find the "ask not what you can do for your country can do for you..." moment.

Here at work (for those who made it in -- we had an inch of snow) there are TV monitors in every floor.  Our conference room has a projection screen.  And I will pop in.  But I'm not much for ceremony, finding myself more interested in Obama as President, than Obama becoming President.  I'm far more interested in our long national nightmare being over.

Dramatic License

Interesting discussions (here and here) over at Mother Jones regarding films depicting historical events.  Just how much liberty with the historical facts will viewers tolerate?  Or does anyone care?

There are a few historical films out now.  Valkyrie for one.  Frost/Nixon for another.  And Milk.

Frost/Nixon is Ron Howard's third historically-based film, having done Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind.  I knew there were some inaccuracies in Apollo 13.  Things were condensed, and situations made more "dramatic" than they were.  I didn't mind it too much: I think a little dramatic license is necessary to create, well, drama.  And I wasn't troubled by the liberties taken in A Beautiful Mind, because I knew nothing of the story beforehand.  As for Frost/Nixon, I haven't seen it (I'm seeing the national tour of the play next month), but I suspect it won't stray too far from the truth.

Being a Titanic buff and a JFK assassination buff, I was trepidatious about Titanic and Oliver Stone's JFK.  I was pleasantly surprised by Titanic.  Obviously, the DiCaprio-Winslet characters were fictional, as was their story.  But the facts of the Titanic -- its structure, sinking, etc. -- were fairly accurate, with the notable exception of Murdock (a real person) wielding a gun at the masses of panicking people, shooting one, and then killing himself.  There were rumors of that happening, but that was largely debunked decades ago.

JFK was problematic for me because it was a conspiracy film.  It's hard to say whether a conspiracy, unsolved today, can be deemed "accurate" when depicted on film.  The main problem with JFK for me, however, was that it tried to touch on various aspects of all the conspiracies, and of course, many of the conspiracies themselves are contradictory.  I mean, they simply can't all be true.

From The New Yorker on the
5th anniversary of 9/11 More problematic for me is a little-known but excellent film called Man On Wire, which came out this year and won the Sundance Jury Prize for Best Documentary.  One of my favorite films of the tear -- check it out if you get the opportunity.  The film chronicles the incredible feat of Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who, in 1974, rigged a wire between the two WTC towers and spent 45 minutes walking between them in a highly illegal act that become beloved by New Yorkers.  Without narration, the film merely relies on interviews of the players involved, including Petit, his girlfriend, and co-conspirators.  

I saw Man On Wire in the theater; I now have the DVD.  And in the DVD extras, there is an interview with Petit apparently conducted after the film was put together.  In one part, he criticizes the film for depicting him as abandoning his girlfriend and close friends shortly after his successful stunt and instant fame and notoriety.  I'm not sure the film really says that, although one could certainly get that implication, I suppose.  

But here now, we're talking about a documentary.  An award-winning documentary at that.  And the issue of there being dramatic license taken by a filmmaker there -- in a documentary -- well, that doesn't quite seem that right to me.

On the other hand, since this movie relies on past recollections by the participants in the "crime", perhaps the "historical truth" is gray and subjective.  And the documentary is not "wrong" in presenting subjective viewpoints.  After all, Petit was not the only one on the inside at the time, and his post-film griping might be a reflection of his subjective view of history, rather than the objective truth.  Perhaps, about some things, there is no objective truth.

Still, I do have some concern that people may see some of these "historical" films and that becomes the "new" history of events that happened, despite the fact that many of these films give the disclaimer that "dramatic events have been added, characters have been composited, etc."  I wonder if that's a good thing when historical drama creates such misinformation.

Real Love Is Fiction

Oprah called it ""the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air." 

And she made the memoir of the story one of her books-of-the-month.  It has been featured on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime Television, and CBS News.

And the story is this:

The author, Herman Rosenblat, who is a retired television repairman now living in Miami, recounts his experience as a teenage boy during the Holocaust at Schlieben, a sub-division of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. In the winter of 1945, Herman meets a nine-year-old girl--herself a Jew masquerading as a Christian at a nearby farm--when she shows up one day outside the camp and tosses him an apple over the barbed-wire fence. For the next seven months, the girl at the fence delivers Herman food each day, until he is suddenly transferred to another camp. Fast forward to Coney Island, 1957: Herman, now in his 20s and settled in New York, reluctantly agrees to a blind date with a young Polish immigrant named Roma Radzicki. They speak of their time during the war. Roma mentions a boy she had helped to survive in a camp. She said she fed him apples. A flash of recognition. Months later, Herman marries Roma, his angel at the fence.

Nice story, except for the fact that the only place where the apples could have been tossed from the women's camp to the men's camp was right beside the SS guard bunker.

Also, the man told the woman he could no longer see her because he was being gassed the next day (because that's what he thought; he was transferred instead).

Nice story, except for the fact that Jews typically weren't informed in advance that they were to be gassed.

And, oh yeah, Schliebem didn't have a gas chamber.

So, yeah.  The hoax got exposed.

LBJ Was So Classy

From an actual audiotape, August 9, 1964.  President Johnson is ordering pants from Joe Haggar:

Operator: Go ahead sir

LBJ: Mr. Haggar?

JH: Yes this is Joe Haggar

LBJ: Joe, is your father the one that makes clothes?

JH: Yes sir - we're all together

LBJ: Uh huh. You all made me some real lightweight slacks, uh, that he just made up on his own and sent to me 3 or 4 months ago. There's a light brown and a light green, a rather soft green, a soft brown.

JH: Yes sir

LBJ: and they're real lightweight now and I need about six pairs for summer wear.

JH: yes sir

LBJ: I want a couple, maybe three of the light brown kind of a almost powder color like a powder on a ladies face. Then they were some green and some light pair, if you had a blue in that or a black, then I'd have one blue and one black. I need about six pairs to wear around in the evening when I come in from work

JH: yes sir

LBJ: I need...they're about a half a inch too tight in the waist.

JH: Do you recall sir the exact size, I just want to make sure we get them right for you

LBJ: No, I don't know - you all just guessed at 'em I think, some - wouldn't you the measurement there?

JH: we can find it for you

LBJ: well I can send you a pair. I want them half a inch larger in the waist than they were before except I want two or three inches of stuff left back in there so I can take them up. I vary ten or 15 pounds a month.

JH: alright sir

LBJ: So leave me at least two and a half, three inches in the back where I can let them out or take them up. And make these a half an inch bigger in the waist. And make the pockets at least an inch longer, my money, my knife, everything falls out - wait just a minute.

Operator: Would you hold on a minute please?

[conversation on hold for two minutes]

LBJ: Now the pockets, when you sit down, everything falls out, your money, your knife, everything, so I need at least another inch in the pockets. And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I've had anywhere in the United States,

JH: Fine

LBJ: But, uh when I gain a little weight they cut me under there. So, leave me , you never do have much of margin there. See if you can't leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to.

JH: Right

LBJ: Now be sure you have the best zippers in them. These are good that I have. If you get those to me I would sure be grateful

JH: Fine, Now where would you like them sent please?

LBJ: White House.

JH: Fine

It's the "(burps)" that makes it comedy gold.

The Missiles Of December

Russian Warships Bound For Cuba says the headline.

Didn't we already do this once?

More Nixon Tapes Released

With Frost/Nixon making its way to the big screen, this is timely.  The National Archives has released more Nixon White House tapes, and once again, they show just how dirty and corrupt Nixon was.

Here, for example, is a newly-released tape from July 1, 1971.  Nixon instructs Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to have someone break into the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.:

"I can't have a high-minded lawyer ... I want a son-of-a-b----. I want someone just as tough as I am. ... We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy that will use any means. We are going to use any means... . Get it done. I want it done. I want the Brookings Institution cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that has somebody else take the blame."

Man, if that had come out in 1972, Nixon would be toast.  He's ordering a crime... and a cover-up.

UPDATE:  And those hippies marching in the street over Vietnam? Turns out they did have an effect -- they actually did put pressure on the White House and its Vietnam policy.

"The Doves Were Right"

Interesting new book out by Gordon M. Goldstein called Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. 

The author originally wrote the book in conjunction with McGeorge Bundy.  Bundy was JFK's national security advisor -- one of the "best and the brightest", albeit with strong Republican roots.  It was Bundy who was urged Kennedy to send "advisors" into Vietnam, and who pushed the United States into southeast Asia.

Bundy died while working on the book, so the book became about Bundy.

One of history's great what-if questions has always been: If Kennedy had not been assassinated, would he have escalated the conflict in Vietnam (as Johnson did), or would he have withdrawn?  Since his retirement from the public eye, Bundy rarely discussed the Vietnam War, although when he did, he supported it.  But still, it haunted him. 

In this book, based on Bundy's notes, we learn Bundy's response to that what-if question -- no, Kennedy would not have created the full-blown Vietnam War.  Apparently Bundy, in his later years, came to terms with what he had helped wrought.

Copernucus Found

This is a story that appeals to me and maybe three other people:

Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books. The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

I mean, they've figured it out because some of his hair fell out into a book!

The Cotton Belt

Fun with maps.

The top map shows the 2008 Presidential results.  Blue counties voted for Obama, red ones for McCain (darker hues representing larger majorities).

The bottom map dates from 1860 (i.e. the eve of the Civil War), and indicates where cotton was produced at that time, each dot representing 2,000 bales of the stuff.

Obviously, there's a strong relationship going on.  Clearly, not a mere coincidence.

Let's superimpose the two maps, and you'll see the effect is more startling...

So what's going on?

Well, obviously... this has little to do with cotton, and more to do with the African-American population.  While there has been much migration to the north of the African-American community, large segments of the community have located not far from their cotton-picking slave ancestors in these communities.

And these communities voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

One interesting outlier was in southern Tennessee in Lawrence County.  I'm sure there's an explanation.  Perhaps a significant proportion of the black community migrated to nearby Nashville.

War Candidates Usually Lose

Hey, he's right.

It's been 48 years since a war hero candidate won when running against a candidate who has never seen combat.  Whoever had the most combat/war experience, always lost. 

Well, except in 1988, but still:

John McCain entered the 2008 presidential campaign with a strong advantage shared by John Kerry in 2004, Bob Dole in 1996, and George H.W. Bush in 1992. All four were war heroes whose opponents bore no record of military service. (Dubya's spotty attendance in the Air National Guard doesn't count.) Yet Kerry, Dole, and Bush père lost, and McCain will almost certainly lose, too. If you broaden the McCain category from "war hero" to "wartime veteran," then add Al Gore (2000) to the roster of vets defeated by nonvets in presidential elections.

Presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan were all World War II veterans, but their service records were unexceptional. Yet they beat out George McGovern, a bomber pilot who flew 35 combat missions; Barry Goldwater, who flew missions to war zones in Asia and Africa and, as a reservist, later rose to the rank of major general; and Jimmy Carter, a pioneering submariner in the nuclear Navy. Carter's seven years in the Navy trumps Ronald Reagan's three years in the Army making wartime propaganda films in Culver City, Calif. But Gerald Ford's near-drowning and heroic rescue work in a typhoon during his wartime Navy service in the South Pacific trumps Carter's peacetime service. Yet Carter beat Ford in 1976.

Why is that?  I think Matt Yglesius make sense:

I think the important larger point to recall is that the evidence suggests that candidate attributes in general don’t matter very much in presidential elections. The hard part is winning your party’s nomination, where amidst a field of ideologically similar members of the same party these kind of things can help you stand out. What’s a bit curious is that the idea that personal courage in battle was a big asset every took hold. The traditional military-to-presidency route involved being a general. But that’s not just a biographical fact, it’s like being a Senator or a Governor — a high-level public sector job that qualifies you for an even higher-level job.

In other words, the soldier-to-president route only seems to work if you are ranked general, as opposed to being Audie Murphy.  Which is why Colin could win, if he ever chose to run.

Timeline Of U.S. Presidential Elections

Go here and use the horizontal scroll....

Nice maps, including this one showing the squeaker in 1796

Election Trivia

Q. When was the last U.S. presidential election the Republican Party won without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket?

Answer below the fold....

"The Mediator Of The Head And The Heart"

If you consider yourself a science fiction movie fan, and have never heard of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, then you are no science fiction movie fan.

Metropolis is widely-considered the first serious science fiction film (the Georges Méliès' 1902 short A Trip to the Moon cannot be considered high science fiction), and most science fiction classics, from Blade Runner to Star Wars to The Matrix all are derived, whether they realize it or not, from this 1927 German work.

At the time is was made, Metropolis was the most expensive silent film of the time, costing approximately 7 million Reichsmark (equivalent, by some estimate to about $200 million U.S. dollars) to make.

The movie is a strange mixture of political speculation political parable, apocalyptic fantasy, and religious allegory.

Basically, the film is set in the year 2026, a world marked by extraordinary Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, known as Metropolis. Set designer Erich Kettlehut's designs for the city Golden Age science fiction, with a characteristically pre-Nazi German architectural flavor.

The society of Metropolis has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel).

The beautiful and evangelical figure Maria (Brigitte Helm -- who was 17 when the film was made) takes up the cause of the workers. She advises the desperate workers not to start a revolution, and instead wait for the arrival of "The Mediator", who, she says, will unite the two halves of society.

The son of Joh, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), becomes infatuated with Maria, and follows her down into the working underworld. In the underworld, he experiences firsthand the toiling lifestyle of the workers, and observes the casual attitude of their employers (he is disgusted after seeing an explosion at the "M-Machine", when the employers bring in new workers to keep the machine running before taking care of the men wounded or killed in the accident). Shocked at the workers' living conditions, he joins her cause.

Meanwhile Freder's father, Joh, consults with a scientist named Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge).  Rotwang is an old companion and rival of Joh.  Years ago we learn, they both pursued a woman named Hel.  Joe won over Hel and went on to run Metropolis, while Rotwang languished in anonymity.  Hel, we learn, died while giving birth to Freder.

From Rotwang, Joh learns that the papers found with dead workers are plans of the catacombs and witnesses a speech by Maria. Maria has given the workers hope by preaching about the coming of a "mediator" who would be the "heart" between the "head" (i.e., Joh, the conceiver of the city) and the "hands" (or the people who labor to make it a reality).

Joh also learns that Rotwang has built a femaile robot. Rotwang wants to give the robot the appearance of Hel, his former lover who left him for Joh and died giving birth to Freder. Joh persuades him instead to give the robot Maria's appearance, as he wants to use the robot to tighten his control over the workers. Rotwang complies out of ulterior motives: he knows of Freder's and Maria's love and wants to use the robot to deprive Joh of his son.

To complete the transformation of his robot, Rotwang enters the catacombs and captures Maria.  Maria is imprisoned in Rotwang's house in Metropolis, while the now-transformed robot Maria is first showcast as an exotic dancer in the upper city's Yoshiwara nightclub, fomenting discord among the rich young men of Metropolis.

Freder catches his father and the mechanical Maria together, is shocked into sickness and hallucinations.

Eventually, Rotwang relents, he wants to back out of the plan. He and Joh fight; Rotwang is knocked unconscious while Maria escapes. She runs to the underground city which is now deserted, except for its children; the workers, in full revolt under the robot’s leadership, are demolishing machinery—some of which controls reservoirs above.

After descending to the worker's city, the robot Maria encourages the workers into a full-scale rebellion, and they destroy the "Heart Machine", the power station of the city. Neither Freder nor Grot, the foreman of the Heart Machine, can stop them. As the machine is destroyed, the city's reservoirs overflow, flooding the workers' underground city and seemingly drowning the children, who were left behind in the riot.

But the children have not drowned.  Freder and Maria have saved them in a heroic rescue, without the workers' knowledge. (It's not clear how Freder showed up after his hallucinations; much of this part of the print as been lost -- more on that below)

When the workers realize the damage they have done and that their children are lost, they attack the upper city. Under the leadership of Grot, they chase the human Maria, whom they hold responsible for their riot. As they break into the city's entertainment district, they run into the Yoshiwara crowd and capture the robot Maria, while the human Maria manages to escape. The workers burn the captured (robot) Maria at the stake; Freder, believing this to be the human Maria, despairs.

But then he and the workers realize that the burned Maria is in fact a robot.

Meanwhile, the human Maria is chased by Rotwang along the battlements of the city's cathedral. Freder chases after Rotwang, resulting in a climactic scene in which Joh watches in terror as his son struggles with Rotwang on the cathedral's roof. Rotwang falls to his death, and Maria and Freder return to the street, where Freder unites Joh (the "head") and Grot (the "hands"), fulfilling his role as the "Mediator" (the "heart").

That's it in a nutshell.  Here's a montage of scenes from the original film, so you can get a sense, if nothing else, of its style.

The appeal of Metropolis comes as a piece of film history, not as a film itself.  Lang's cut of Metropolis premiered in Berlin at more than three and a half hours; the studio cut it drastically soon after its release (almost in half), and much of the cut material has been thought to be lost for good. Over the years different versions of the film exhibiting varying degrees of quality have circulated (often with new soundtracks), with some versions coming in at less than 90 minutes.  [When discussing the running time of Metropolis - the original or subsequent versions - one must use caution; nobody can agree on what speed the film was intended to be shown at, and that makes a difference]

So the problem, you see, is that there are so many cuts of the film, that even my above plot synopsis may not be accurate... and certainly not complete.  Many of the cuts made over the years are simply baffling: the entire subplot concerning the man Fredersen sends to spy on his son; the scenes explaining the origin of Rotwang’s enmity toward the city’s ruler; and the struggle between the rival geniuses that allows the real Maria to escape from Rotwang’s clutches.

This makes Metropolis an excruciating film to watch.  The half-explained plot twists (in incomplete versions), plus the very non-Hollywood style of story-telling, coupled with religious and iconic imagery, all combine to send the typical viewer into fits of apoplexy, as they wonder aloud "WTF am I watching?!?"  I suspect that even without cuts, the film is pretty inaccessible (but at least, one hopes, there aren't gaps).

I happen to own four DVDs of the movie.  Why four?

Well, the first one I bought shortly after DVDs came out.  Cost a couple of bucks.  It's a scratchy, public domain version.

The second one I bought was a "restored" version.  Pretty much the same as my earlier version, but cleaner.  With 1927 orchestrations played by a contemporary orchestra.

The third version I bought was the 1984 "restoration" of Metropolis, a re-edit of the film that was compiled by Giorgio Moroder.   Moroder’s version of the film introduced a new modern rock-and-roll soundtrack for the film. Although it restored a number of previously missing scenes and plot details from the original release, his version of the film runs to only 80 minutes in length.  The 1984 re-edit also attempted to fill in plot gaps by using publicity still photos from the original Lang movie to create montages.  Morodor also used color overlays for different scenes, getting away from the black & white/sepia look.  Here's a clip:

I can't say that the I enjoyed the Morodor remake very much.  The pop soundtrack was bizarre.  The whole thing still suffered from being uneven.  But it was, well, interesting.

Finally, the 4th version I bought was a recent re-release by Kino, containing recently discovered footage, a documentary, and some film historians guessing at the plot holes based on archival material (still photos, working scripts, etc.).   It is the most definitive version -- the closest to the original -- that has been mass-marketed to date.

FYI:  Metropolis was also adapted to a stage musical which took the theme and story of "Metropolis"> It was produced as a contemporary piece, while suggesting much of the mood of the original 1920's vision of the future.  From what I understand, it was not well-received.

OKAY.  SO WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT METROPOLIS?

Because of the news, which, I confess, I cannot believe I missed a few weeks ago.  Earlier this month, they found what appears to be the full uncut original as intended by Fritz Lang:

A long-lost original cut of the classic sci-fi film Metropolis, with extra scenes, has recently been unearthed and screened for the first time in decades.

Bad journalistic writing here.  If it's the original, then those scenes aren't "extra".  Know what I mean?

The original version of the 1927 film by Austrian-born director Fritz Lang was parked for 80 years, first in a private collection and then at the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires. That's where it was re-discovered in April with images that hadn't been seen since 1927.

"We no longer believed we'd see this. Time and again we had had calls about supposed footage but were disappointed," said Helmut Possmann, head of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, Germany, which owns the rights to to the film.

Possmann said up to 25 minutes of extra scenes help flesh out secondary characters as well as the plot.

The cinema museum's director, Paula Felix-Didier, said theirs is the only copy of Lang's complete film and it is being guarded very carefully.

***

The cinema museum's director, Paula Felix-Didier, said theirs is the only copy of Lang's complete film and it is being guarded very carefully.

Metropolis was written by Lang and his actress wife, Thea von Harbou.

The film depicts a 21st-century dystopic world split into a class of underworld workers and an elite who control them.

Soon after its initial release, distributors cut Lang's masterpiece into a 114-minute version.

According to Felix-Didier, a private collector carried an original version to Argentina in 1928.

In the 1980s, Argentine film fan Fernando Pena heard rumours about a man who used to spend hours screening a version of Metropolis.

It took many years of begging by Pena, but employees at the Buenos Aires museum finally decided to check their archives this year to see whether they had a version of the film. In April, researchers uncovered the reels in the museum's archive.

In June, Felix-Didier carried a DVD copy of the long version to the Murnau foundation in Germany, where researchers confirmed its authenticity.

As for a cinematic distribution, it's too soon to say whether the original will be re-issued.

No, I expect it won't be released theatrically.  Maybe at museums.  But I would like to see that sucker on DVD.

The BBC adds this:

Around 20 to 25 minutes of footage that fleshes out secondary characters and sheds light on the plot would be added to the film pending restoration, Possmann said, but around 5 minutes of the original was probably still missing.

Eh... five minutes?  I'll live.

[FYI:  What's my real interest in Metropolis?  I have a confession.  I've been working on a stage musical version of this -- for grins and giggles -- for a number of years.  Employing the discography of The Thompson Twins which, remarkably, fits in stylistically and lyrically with the plot.  Don't tell anybody.]

A Useful Set of Graphs

Presidents and the economy.

In the graphs, the parties are color-coded by the traditional Republican red and Democratic blue. Individual terms are in a lighter shade, and the party average is the darker shade.

Technical note Unless otherwise noted, the figure shown is average annual growth rate for a president’s term, from the year, quarter, or month of inauguration to the quarter or month of the next inauguration. For two-term presidents, results are the averages of both terms.

The bottom line is that, on average, Democratic administrations post better growth numbers, lower unemployment rates, lower federal deficits, higher stock growth, and more equality.  It helps explain why Americans have a sense that Democrats are better at economic issues than their Republican counterparts.

But here's the graphic summaries....

GDP

Strong advantage Dems.  Almost down the line, Dems have done better on this metric that Republicans.  Even the Carter years weren't that bad.

Employment

Strong advantage Dems.  Like GDP, a clear difference with Democratic all recent Democratic presidents doing better than all recent Republican presidents.

It should be noted that Reagan's first term, marked by recession, dragged down his average.  His second term had an emplotment growth rate of 2.7%, slightly stronger than Clinton's 8 year average.

Unemployment

Strong advantage Dems.  With the exception of Reagan, unemployment has gone up under every recent Republican candidate's watch, and down for almost every Democrat's watch.  On average, the jobless rate has risen by 1.0 points under the GOP, and fallen by 1.9 points under Dems (–1.3 points if you start in 1949).

Inflation

Slight advantage Republican.  Really a mixed bag here, with both parties almost equally split on the zero mark.  On average, Democrats preside over a small increase in inflation, and Republicans over a small decrease.  The Carter and Reagan administrations are clearly outliers, but the basic truth holds: Republicans are slightly better at curbing inflation.

Deficit/Surplus

Advantage Dems.  This might be a surprise to some, as the label of "tax and spend" Democrats seems to have stuck.  This term "fiscal shift" means the move toward either a deficit or a larger deficit (negative numbers), as opposed to moving toward a surplus or a larger surplus (postive numbers). 

On average, a Republican in the White House has meant a shift of –1.9% of GDP in the government’s budget balance (i.e., towards smaller surpluses or bigger deficits), while a Dem has meant a 1.5% improvement in the budget position (or 1.8%, if you start in 1949, thereby omitting the huge World War II deficit).

This graph, in my view, may not be particularly helpful, as the changes in fiscal shift may come about as the result of tax policies from prior administrations.  So keep that in mind.

Stock Market

Slight advantage Dems.  The blue years have an edge on stock returns, with the S&P 500 rising an average of 4.7% a year in real terms (price only, excluding dividends, deflated by the CPI) under Democratic administrations, compared with 2.9% under Republicans. (Starting the clock in 1949 raises the Dem average to 6.9%.).

Of course, the stock market doesn't go up or down based on who occupies the White House; there are tons of other outside factors.  But again, it's a correlative phenomenon which might explain the perception -- misguided or not -- that the stock market does better (albeit slightly) when a Democrat is in charge.

Bond Market

Strong advantage Republicans.  Republicans are a lot more bond-friendly. Real total returns—price plus coupon, deflated by the CPI—averaged +4.2% a year under Republicans, vs. –2.1% under Democrats.

Income Distribution

Strong advantage Democratic.  A metric that is near and dear to me.  The Gini index is an economic figure which shows the varience in income levels among Americans.  For example, if the Gini index is zero, that means that all Americans are making the same income; nobody is richer or poorer than anybody else. 

This graph notes the changes in the Gini index under each administration.  When the Gini index goes up, that means that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer (i.e., more income inequality) during that adminstration.  When it goes down, that mean that there is less income inequality over the course of that administration.

On average, inequality has risen in Republican administrations, and fallen in Democratic ones.

I say this graph shows a "strong advantage for Democrats", but this of course assumes that having less income inequality is a good thing.  Some might disagree, and argue that our country should have uber-rich and uber-poor.  It all depends on what you want, I guess.

Anyway, food for thought in this election season.

Jimmy Carter Stole My Solution Retroactively

This afternoon, I wrote a lengthy post about the gas crisis, and I proposed that the best solution to get us out of this mess would be a concerted national effort to ween ourselves off of oil and gas.  I wrote:

If a President were to annouce a serious national effort to develop new (and hopefully clean) technology for running our cars -- a national effort along the lines of the Manhatten Project or the NASA Mission to the Moon -- that announcement alone would affect the oil and gas commodity markets, and bring some price relief as soon as it was announced.

Irony or ironies, a President did come pretty close to doing just that.... 29 years ago to the day when I wrote the above words.  Jimmy Carter delivered a televised speech on July 15, 1979, and had to say this about the energy crisis:

...We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. I'm announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation I will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America's energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans. These funds will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I'm asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our nation's utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

[...]

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act. We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation's deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980s. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made three years ago, and I intend to keep them.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.

Emphasis added.

Now there were certain parts in that speech where his cadence was very Kennedy Man-on-the-Moon-before-this-decade-is-out-esque.  And this is Jimmy Carter we're talking about!

Of course, it never came to pass, because the following year, Republicans played the fear card over the Big Red Menace, and Ronald Reagan was voted into America.  America was treated to "Morning in America" ads featuring wheat thrashers and some such nonsense, and the whole Carter plan was thankfully forgotten.

Kind of wish your parents had listened to him, huh kids?

That Was Then....

WorldNutDaily informs us:

The original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white, according to a new television program and book, which describe how the Democrats started the KKK and for decades harassed the GOP with lynchings and threats.

The book is by David Barton, who is, shall we say, not the most reliable of historians.

But on this particular thesis, Barton is right -- a lot of racism from decates ago came from Republicans.  But that was then, as Matt Yglesius explains:

Decades ago, the Democratic Party was, among other things, the political home of white supremacy in the United States. In the 1960s, the party's leadership decisively broke with that record. At around the same time, part of the rise of the conservative movement inside the Republican Party was the growing prominence of folks like Barry Goldwater who opposed the Civil Rights Act and who found in his 1964 campaign that the main electoral constituency for his brand of conservatism was . . . white supremacists. Other white supremacist politicians (some of whom, unlike Goldwater, would forever remain unrepentant) like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms moved into the GOP column. And of course while explicit advocacy of segregation has long since vanished from the top ranks of the Republican Party, major conservative leaders have been heard in recent years issuing paens to the work of Thurmond and Helms, with key legislative leaders specifically regretting that Thurmond's 1948 white supremacist presidential campaign failed, and pointing to Helms as exemplifying what conservatism is all about.

But, yes, decades ago things were different.

Indeed, they were.  In the 1960's, Kennedy and Johnson moved on civil rights.  And southern racist politicians moved from the Democratic Party to the GOP:

It's about the political choices Republicans made in the 1960's to ''go hunting where the ducks are'' -- code language for winning over white segregationists who abandoned the Democratic Party in the South. It's about continuing to benefit from racial prejudice through subtle and not-so-subtle sound bites that play to the Republican Party's far-right base. It's about the choice today to deny that the party is as much the party of Thurmond as it is the party of Lincoln.

Unforuntately, that kind of, well, truth is lost on certain people who read WND, and go "a-HA!  Democrats are racist!  So now I can vote against Obama with a clear conscience!"

How It All Started: A Reminder

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Michael Medved And The Nazi/Gay Issue

Seriously stupid:

Germany recently unveiled a memorial to what the press called “the Nazis’ long-ignored gay victims.” Across the road from Berlin’s monument to Jewish Holocaust victims, the new shrine features a pavilion-sized concrete slab with a window through which visitors view a video of two men kissing.

Ok....

This commemoration follows a longstanding, misleading attempt to depict homosexuals as prime targets of Hitler.

Whoa, whoa, whoa there Michael!  Who exactly has been saying that homosexuals were a prime target of Hitler?  Certainly they were one of them along with Jews, intellectuals, Catholics, etc.  Let's roll the videotape of Heinrich Himmler:

I would like to develop a couple of ideas for you on the question of homosexuality. There are those homosexuals who take the view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter. However, all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation, signify world power...

After likening the homosexual who was killed and thrown into a peat bog to the weeding process in a garden, Himmler continued his tirade:

...In the SS, today, we still have about one case of homosexuality a month. In a whole year, about eight to ten cases occur in the entire SS. I have now decided upon the following: in each case, these people will naturally be publicly degraded, expelled, and handed over to the courts. Following completion of the punishment imposed by the court, they will be sent, by my order, to a concentration camp, and they will be shot in the concentration camp, while attempting to escape. I will make that known by order to the unit to which the person so infected belonged. Thereby, I hope finally to have done with persons of this type in the SS, and the increasingly healthy blood which we are cultivating for Germany, will be kept pure.

But back to Medved:

In fact, even historical material released with the memorial noted only “an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men deported to concentration camps” – and by no means all of them were killed.

No, just about 60% of them, according to historians.  So that's about 6,000 to 8,000 people killed.

While homosexuals surely outnumbered the less-than-one-percent of the German population that was Jewish, Jewish victims of Nazi death camps outnumbered estimated gay victims by more than 500 to 1.

Your point, Mike?

Persecution of any group deserves condemnation and remembrance, but it’s wrong to exaggerate the extent of victimization for politically correct P.R. purposes.

Who exaaggerated?  Mike, you just cited as authority the numbers from the "historical material released with the memorial"!  Roughly 7,000 men and women were killed for being gay!  That's not worthy of a memorial???

What Michael also omits is the fact that in 1935, Nazis made homosexuality illegal.  50,000 were convicted that crime, and roughly 25% of them went to concentration camps.  The remaining (who survived) had a criminal conviction on their records, and many were re-arrested after WWII.  They finally received pardons... in 2002.

Medved the Moustache gives lip service to the "condemnation" of this persecuted group, but he has trouble with a memorial for that purpose?

Pictured above: Michael Medved, a not gay man.

Bobby We Hardly Knew Ye

40 years ago today (from the movie "Bobby"):

Real footage:

The funeral train:

The L.A. Times has a nice rememberance page.

Is history repeating itself?

Through both violent tragedy and political intrigue, Election 1968 had been transformed from a hopeful opportunity to change the country into an ugly case study of how easy it is to snuff out idealism and decency.

In many ways, Election 1968 charted the course that the United States would follow for most of the next four decades. On one side, there would be aggressive, win-at-all-costs Republicans; on the other side, timid, don’t-get-too-rowdy Democrats.

Not surprisingly, the youthful idealism of the 1960s devolved into world-weary cynicism that would be passed down like some bitter legacy from the Baby Boomers to their children …

By and large, political apathy among the youth held sway – at least until Campaign 2008 when a new generation was caught up in the inspirational message of Barack Obama.

I first encountered the Obama phenomenon when I visited my youngest son, Jeff, at Savannah College of Art and Design in spring 2007. At an arts festival where a park was set aside for students to do chalk drawings on the sidewalks, the only drawings of an American politician were of Obama.

The youth movement for Obama – this new children’s crusade – has influenced some prominent mothers to endorse the 46-year-old African-American senator from Illinois. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, said it was her three children who convinced her to come out publicly for Obama.

“I am happy that two of my own children are here with me,” she said at American University in Washington on Jan. 28, “because they were the first people who made me realize that Barack Obama is the President we need. He is already inspiring all Americans, young and old, to believe in ourselves, tying that belief to our highest ideals – ideals of hope, justice, opportunity and peace – and urging us to imagine that together we can do great things.”

Now, with Obama cinching the Democratic nomination on June 3, Hillary Clinton and many of her loyal supporters will be faced with a decision not dissimilar to what their parents confronted during the Vietnam War:

Will they do what they feel is in their personal interest – or will they trust and protect their children?

Click here to visit Bobby Kennedy's Myspace page.  Yes. he has a Myspace page.

MLK Assassination: 40 Years Ago

Here's part of the prescient speech he gave in Memphis the night before he was killed:

He seemed to know, huh?

The Oldest Audio Recording Recently Discovered

The New York Times had a great piece yesterday on an 1860 phonautogram of the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" sung by an unknown Frenchman.

Click here to hear it.  It's mp3 format and lasts about 10 seconds.  It's very scratchy; you can barely make out the song.

It is the oldest known recording of a human voice.  The reason this is important is that the recording predates Edison’s famous audio recordings by almost thirty years.  (Up to now, most experts agree that the first audio recording was made in 1888 - Edison's recording of a snippet of a Handel oratorio)

The phonautograph audio transcription device was invented by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in the late 1850s.

Here's the cool thing:  Scott's machine was intended to record audio waves onto a visual medium (in this case, black paper).  It wasn't designed to be played back.  Scott's idea was to visually examine the audio waves in order to study acoustics. He was trying to find a way to "write speech," not record sound per se. 

But modern day scientists have found a way to take Scott's "audio waves on paper" --  just squiggles on a paper -- and turn them back into the original sound, thus creating the "earliest recorded sound".

Mississippi Voting

With Obama's huge win in Mississippi this week, Meteor Blades, a blogger at Daily Kos, remembers what he was doing 44 years ago in Mississippi -- trying to get black voters registered.  It was the summer when three civil rights workers -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- went missing, and whose bodies were later unearthed in the Mississippi mud.

Good read.

Early Picture Of Helen Keller Discovered

This is thought to be the earliest photo of Ms. Keller.  She's eight years old here, and sits with her teacher, Anne Sullivan...

I'm a bit of an HK "fan", so that's why I post it.  Full story here.

15 Years Ago Today

I am republishing a portion from an earlier post (written in September 2006):

February 26, 1993

I was a third-year law student at NYU in 1993.  As any third-year law student will tell you, a 3L's focus in the second semester is not so much on completing law school and passing law school exams, but preparing for the impending bar exam. 

Throughout law school, I clerked part-time at the law firm of Slotnick & Baker, a small "boutique" law firm specializing in high-profile criminal defense cases.  The firm consisted of 4 lawyers, me, a paralegal, and a secretary.  I had worked there since 1987 (I started as a paralegal).

A few weeks earlier, I had informed the senior partner Barry Slotnick that it was my intention to cut back on my time with the firm during my second semester, so I could focus on BarBri bar exam preparation courses.  So I was there only once or twice a week.

I was not supposed to work on February 26, 1993.  But I made an unscheduled visit to the law office, mostly to tie up some loose ends.

Slotnick & Baker at that time was located at 225 Broadway, just diagonal from the World Trade Center towers.  Pictured here is 225 Broadway on 9/11/01 (it's the tall building on the right side of the photo -- one of the Twin Towers behind it is collapsing).

Every day when I was employed there, I took the subway to work.  I typically would get off at the WTC stop, and come up to the street through the underground concourse mall two stories below the entire WTC complex.

I only planned to be at the firm for only a few hours on February 26.  I had just finished a class that morning, and I had another one sometime in the early afternoon.  I was just going in to get a few things, grab some lunch, and go back to school.

Nadia was glad to see me.  She was the paralegal there, having replaced me a few years earlier when I moved up to "law clerk".  A few days earlier, she had been given an actual office with an actual window.  She no longer had to work in the law library, sitting at a long desk.  "Come see my office," she said.  "I've decorated it."

I was happy to oblige.  Her office, in fact, was my old office (or one of them, I should say).  It was full of girly Nadia-things, as I expected.  We did our usual amount of chit-chat and flirting.  I looked out her window from the 22nd floor, which faces south. 

"Nice view," I said sarcastically. 

"At least I have a view now", Nadia smiled.

We chatted a few minutes more about various things.  Office gossip.  Nadia's second job as a tour guide for Big Apple NYC Bus Tours.  More flirting.

Suddenly, the building shook.  The window, which I was leaning against, rattled.  And a large bang.

"Bangs" are not uncommon in New York.  Usually, it's a sanitation vehicle slamming down one of those large green industrial trash bins.  But this is something different.

"Whoa", I said. 

Nadia giggled (because that's what she does).

We speculated as to what it might be, but seeing nothing from her window, we quickly forgot about it.  And ten minutes later, I was saying "so long" and venturing out of the office to get lunch somewhere in the WTC concourse, and eventually return to NYU up in the Village.

As soon as I stepped outside 225 Broadway, I heard the sirens.  I turned the corner and headed toward the WTC and that's when I saw the flashing lights.  I connected it to the blast I heard ten to fifteen minutes ago.  My initial reaction was one of annoyance: will this prevent me from getting lunch in the WTC concourse?

Then I wondered if there might have been a subway accident -- a collision of trains perhaps -- which might explain the bang we heard.

I hovered for several minutes, inching my way closer to what appeared to be the center of attention at the foot of the towers.  Others on the street were craning their necks upward, and so -- like a lemming -- I did, too.

I was almost at the base of the towers, on the plaza (which was surprisingly devoid of people), when I saw them: two women coming out one of the doors on the east side of the North Tower.  They were holding each other and looking very fatigued.  One of them was covered in soot and coughing.

The explosion, as we know now, was a bomb set off in one of the underground parking garages by an al Qaeda terrorist bent on causing one of the towers to collapse.  He grossly underestimated the strength of the building.  However, smoke from the explosion had poured up through the tower's interior, and cut off power inside.  Just as they would eight years later, workers were evacuating the building -- sometimes through smoke -- by stairwell.

I went to the women and asked if they were okay.  One of them -- the sooty one -- asked for water.  I said I didn't have any, but I said I would take them to where I had seen emergency vehicles minutes before.  And the three of us walked.  They asked me what had happened.  I said I didn't know, even though I suspected it had something to do with that "bang" I heard half an hour ago.

As we walked around the base of the building toward the west side.  A fireman saw us approaching and helped the stricken woman to a paramedic vehicle, her friend in tow.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another fireman looking up, and I looked up as well.  There was a plume of smoke coming from one of the high floors in the tower.

Just then, I head a scuffle and looked over to see a man in a gray business suit collapse to the ground.  I assumed he was another worker in the office, although (from the glimpse of him I caught) he didn't appear to be covered in soot.  Several firemen and policemen quickly went to his aid.

Apart from me, there were a few other civilians in the immediate area.  I heard a policeman instructing them to move back several blocks.  He was concerned about falling glass from the upper floors plummeting down to the streets below.  Not needing a hint, I left the scene and made my way to the subway, looking back over my shoulder to watch the events.  On my way, I ran into a few other people looking for medical attention, and I directed them to the emergency workers.

I arrived at the subway entrance, where a policeman said that they were closing the subway.  This meant that I would have to walk several city blocks uptown to get to the next station. 

I doubted that the subways were running, so walking to another station didn't make much sense.  With nothing else to do, I stayed around for a while (behind police barricades) watching what I could.

About 20 minutes later, I happened to see an empty cab, which I hailed. I took it to NYU, just in time for class.  The cabbie said he heard it was a bomb on the upper floor (he was wrong, it was in the underground garage).

Six people died that day, and over one thousand were injured, in the first largely forgotten al Qaeda attack on American soil.

**********************

Post script:

6 civilians killed

Over 1,000 injured

105 firefighters injured - 5 admitted to local hospitals

reinforced floors almost 30 inches think blasted away on 3 levels below grade, plus a concourse level floor,leaving a crater about 150 feet in diameter at it's largest point.

On the B1 level, the operations control center of the Port Authority Police Department (and the fire command station forthe complex) was heavily damaged and rendered out of service.

On the B2 level, various walls of elevator shafts and freshair plenums severely damaged, allowing smoke to enter and rise through the cores of both towers.

Numerous concrete walls destroyed or damaged.

200,000 cubic feet of water poured into the lowest grade fromdamaged refrigeration unit supplies (from the Hudson River),sewer lines, fresh domestic water lines, steam pipes, and condensate return. Water 1.5 feet deep across the B6 level.

124 parked cars destroyed, 102 damaged.

Partition walls blown out onto PATH train mezzanine.

Numerous telephone conduits collapsed from ceiling onto cars (but phone service was not cut, miraculously).

Fire alarm and public address systems out of service.

Elevators out of service.

Water cooled emergency generators shut down due to overheating when their water supply was cut. This disabled the emergency lighting.

Sprinklers & standpipes out of service.

2,500 tons of rubble removed.

Clean up effort involved 2,700 workers per day, plus a total of 160,000 gallons of cleaning fluid and 200,00 gallons of detergent.

Restoration cost: $250,000,000.

Tenants began moving back into tower 2 on March 18, 1993,tower 1 on March 29, 1993.

Pictures:

 

A Conversation Between Lee Harvey Oswald And Jack Ruby

An excerpt from the newly-discovered transcript:

Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General.

Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into everything.

Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.

Ruby: How's that?

Lee: I can shoot his brother.

...

Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.

Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting the President?

Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.

Lee: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Yeah, it's bullshit.  If you ever had the opportunity to read an actual transcript of an actual conversation by actual people actually talking, it never sounds like what's printed above. 

Nope, that was written by someone.

Happy President's Day!

Pictured below: Ruby and Oswald during less congenial times

Because It's Friday...

The only known video footage of Mark Twain:

Forty Years Ago Today

On February 1, 1968, this famous photo was taken on a Saigon street. 

Life Magazine places it in its list of "100 Photographs That Changed The World" and describes it this way:

With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon. As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain, AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any, turned public opinion against the war. Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998 that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va., he said, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”

More background on the famous photo here:

The first 24 hours of the Tet Offensive were confusing. Vietcong had penetrated the city and were fighting inside the grounds of the U.S. embassy a few blocks away from the AP office. Eddie concentrated on that action on day one. Vietnamese photographers living across the city reported that Vietcong were fighting in their districts. It was not a time to venture out to find them. Most photos of this first day came from Vietnamese cruising the city on their motorbikes - including a 14-year-old boy photographer, Lo Hung, moving about on a bicycle and bringing back his films every few hours. Another youngster was Huynh Cong Ut, then 18, who was endearingly called Nick Ut by Eddie Adams.

But at the time, Eddie did not like the "kids'" competition.

On day two, news reports came in of fighting around a Buddhist pagoda (known for the monks' opposition to the government) in an area where Saigon becomes Cholon, the Chinese section of the capital. Eddie teamed up with one of NBC's most experienced cameramen - NBC was an office neighbor of AP and tips and transport were often shared. Eddie and Vo Su were driven slowly towards the area where fighting was reported, then walked when they found the streets had become abandoned and litter from a fight was visible.

The pagoda occupied by Viet Cong had been recaptured by Vietnamese marines. Hearing shots, they moved towards the action.

From a later interview Hal Buell, then Eddie's boss in New York, reconstructed what happened next.

He wrote: "Adams watched as two Vietnamese soldiers pulled a prisoner out of a doorway at the end of the street. The soldiers then pushed and pulled what appeared to be a Viet Cong in a plaid shirt, his arms tied behind his back. They escorted the man toward the spot where Adams and Vo Su were located.

"Eddie Adams said, 'I just followed the three of them as they walked towards us, making an occasional picture. When they were close - maybe five feet away - the soldiers stopped and backed away. I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time.'

"The prisoner fell to the pavement, blood gushing," Buell wrote, quoting Eddie. "After a few more pictures of the dead man, Adams left."

The shooter was later identified as Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, police chief of South Vietnam. Adams said he walked up to him and said, "They killed many of my people, and yours, too" and then just walked away.

Adams (who pased away in 2004) also reportedly said:

I won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a photograph of one man shooting another…The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn’t say was, “What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?” General Loan was what you would call a real warrior, admired by his troops. I’m not saying what he did was right, but you have to put yourself in his position.

General Loan died in 1998.

The famous picture, as well as video shot by NBC, was quickly shown around the world, and became a flash point for the peace movement.  (The video, pulled from YouTube, is understandably graphic and difficult to watch).

Sara Jane Moore Released From Prison

She's out.  Sara, now 77, was one of the two women who tried to shoot President Ford on separate occasions in September 1975. 

Moore tried it on September 22, 1975; Squeaky Fromme tried it earlier on September 5.  Fromme, a Charles Manson devotee (unlike Moore, who had her own reasons), is still in prison.

Moore's shot missed Ford of course.  A bystander saw her and actually pulled her arm before she shot, but she managed to squeeze off a single bullet.

Here's video of Sara Jane's failed attempt: