CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 149th Edition. Abandoning Ship.

The first significant administration departure.

Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post as White House Press Secretary.

There's going to be a lot of speculation as to why she did this, but let's credit what she said. She's 28 years old, and just had a baby.

Her second.

Her husband is 32 years her senior.

Leavitt is a Catholic, as am I, but she's completely ignored the Catholic injunction against lying.  Lying on serious matters is a serious sin.  Personally, while I can not know her mind, I think she knows she's a liar.

I think she likely knows at this point, at age 28, that she needs to reform and repent.  Her first child was born out of wedlock with her current husband, Nicholas Riccio.  The second was born within the union.  Her affiliation with Trump has locked her into a web of lies for which she'll always be remembered.  Indeed, while this blog entry is somewhat forgiving, most pundits will not be, witness:

Karoline Leavitt Will Soon Lie Somewhere Else

From The New Republic.

I bet she knows that, and that it's time to get out while she can.  Get out, confess, and get clear.  Even at that, the burden she has of repenting from such a public life of outright lying is a heavy one.

I bet she tackles that.  A tell all book will be forthcoming. . . it'll be out before Trump leaves office at the end of this term, if old age doesn't take him to his reward, or lack of one, before that.

Well, may she find a path to peace. She needs it. 

So do her two children.

It won't be easy, overall, we might note.  Lots of people eventually confront their sins and reform, but very few have to confront the public record of it, which in the modern age lasts forever.  Leavitt is, as The New Republic notes, an outrageous liar and that will follower her the rest of her life.

Indeed, if you look at people who had really vile roles serving really vile people, and Leavitt's role has been vile and Donald Trump is a vile person, it's really hard to find anyone who overcomes it.  Albert Speer probably came as close to it as anyone, but even he, as charming as he was, never really did.  Georgy Malenkov, part of Stalin's government, completely fell after Stalin and eventually became a Russian Orthodox Lector, a sort of clerical position in the Eastern Rite churches.

The American things, of course, is to try to convert your infamy into a sort of fame, which is always sort of pathetic.  Monica Lewinsky is the prime example.

Well, as noted, my guess is that Leavitt, while home raising her children, will start working on a tell all book.  By the time its released she's  reveal, I'm guessing, how she never loved Donald Trump.

I also bet that Trump, right now, lives in fear of what that book will reveal.

Mini Mutinies.

Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln have been trying to jump overboard to their deaths.  

At least those are the reports, confirmed in at least one case by the spouse of a sailor who tried to do just that.  "Big T" Pete Hegseth called the reports "fake news", with the Trump administration branding anything that is actually true as fake.

The ship, launched in 1988, has experienced food shortages, moldy showers, broken toilets, dead laundry facilities, and a lack of basics necessities such as soap and toothpaste during its ninth month deployment.

It's interesting in part because such conditions, while appalling, would not have been that much out of the norm in earlier eras.  Sailors just endured it.  But then, they endured a lot of similar conditions in daily life.  People were, in fact, tougher than they are now.

But it's also interesting as it might reveal something else going on.

The lats time the US Navy had really serious shipboard problems of this type was during the late stages of the Vietnam War, when the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Constellation endured mutinies the Navy has refused to acknowledge as mutinies. These were serious events and they came at a point in time at which US military morale was at its lowest point since the Mexican War, during which time it had such low morale in some quarters that troops had deserted to join the Mexican Army.

The problem had expressed itself first in the Army, with the Army starting to experience everything from quiet disobedience in Vietnam to some outright revolts in the US.  The Kitty Hawk incident occured in 1972 with the Constellation event happening the following year.  Nothing like that has happened since.

The Kitty Hawk had a hard Vietnam War deployment of eight months before it was ordered back into combat and the event began.  That's notable, as the Abraham Lincoln has been out nine months.

Also notable for the 1972 and 1973 events is that everyone had completely lost faith in the Vietnam War by that time, and frankly in the military itself.  Rarely noted during the revision of the history of the war, the Vietnam War had destroyed the American Army as a combat effective force.  The US was lucky that none of our adversaries attempted any sort of additional war at the time. We likely could not have successfully contested one.

Servicemen who served in peacetime Navy before the Second World War were sort of their own breed.  A lot of them were tough careerist for whom the Navy itself was their home.  Set in that era, the movie The Sand Pebbles does a good job of showing what their view was like, and of course it came from a novel by a veteran who had served in that time.  A sort of oddly nostalgic look at the same thing, but set in 1973, is Cinderella Liberty, one of two sort of cynical Navy movies released that year, the other being The Last Detail.

During World War Two sailors, most of whom were wartime volunteers, knew what they were fighting for.  In the Cold War, for the most part, they did too.  Mutinies came when that was no longer clear.

It sure isn't clear now.  American servicemen aren't serving in a just cause and all of the military actions during the Second Trump Administration have been illegal, with one, the boat destruction off of South America, constituting murder of the targets.  The current war shows ever sign of being endless and pointless, and the men know it.

Some honorable commanders have simply resigned.  Enlisted men can't do that.  Serving in an illegal war on a ship that's a craphole, they're serving an administration in which many of them are not the right kind of people, as the administration sees it.  US resources are now really stretched on top of it.  All in all, what's going on board on the USS Abraham Lincoln isn't a good sign.

Toy boats

Part of what's not very honorable is the insane playing along which amounts to marking time until Trump is out of office. The Navy is doing that with the Trump Class of big missile cruisers which King Donny wants built.  Termed "battleships", because Trump knowns nothing about this topic and apparently thinks that battleships are nifty, rather than rendered obsolete decades ago, the CBO estimates that if built they'll cost the country $275B over 30 years.

They won't be built.

They are already costing the country money however.

Like the ballroom, this will keep dragging along until Trump is retired or falls face first in a Big Mac, at which time it'll be terminated.

Monuments to failure

On costs, it's now estimated that all of Trump's D.C. projects will cost nearly 1B.

The country doesn't have this kind of money and we know it.

Had Joe Biden proposed spending 1B on D.C. renovations, Republicans would be howling around the city crying "fiscal responsibility!" and people like Gray, Ranser, and Friess would be warning about the republic being on the verge of ending.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus would be howling.

Not one Republican is going to say a word about this.

Part of the outrageous nature of the expense is what the administration is planning on.  Building is expensive and tearing down is expensive also.

The Democrats can be planned on to have angst about the expense of tearing things down as its expensive.  They already are.  Additionally, the Democrats remain dedicated to the law, whereas the GOP does not.  The GOP knows that as well and is no doubt planning that the process of tearing crap down will be tied up by worries about the expense and legalities of it.

Well, on this one, the next President should in fact take a page out of Trump's book.  Within an  hour after the inauguration the Corps of Engineers should be ordered to remove whatever has been constructed of the ballroom with in 24 hours, tear down what ever has been built of an arch within the same time frame, and de-guild the bronze statues, even if it means their destruction, with in six hours.  By the end of the 24 hours all the gold or gold appearing nicknacks in the White House ought to be removed to the bunker and the entire thing filled with cement. The reflecting pool should be drained and the Rhino Lining torn up.

Contracts with anyone who contributed to these atrocities should be cancelled and the entities barred from future government contracts.  

Radical reconstruction.

Replacement?

People are already wondering who will replace Leavitt as Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.  Fortunately, Wyoming offers the perfect solution.

By Tony Webster - Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=169386648

Chuck Gray.

Chuck loves Donald Trump more than Karline Leavitt ever did.  Chuck would never leave.  And he already as experience as a spoken media figure, having had a radio show on his daddy's radio station, and he is a really experienced liar.

Leavitt said some really outrageous stuff while she was spokesman, but they don't hold a candle to the sting of accusations that Chuck retouinely hurls out. Why he'd be calling people communists, Marxist, fascist, abiogenist,dogmatist,lutist, prologistableist, dramatist, in no time.

His only disadvantage would be that he's not a woman.  Most of the recent ones have been.  On the other hand, he's not married and he can't get pregnant (shoot, he's never even seen with women, or men, or mammals) so he won't be going anywhere.

And this gets him out of having to pretend that he's a Wyomingite nad having to buy all that Westerware.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 148th Edition. The Aerodrome: Substitute. The C-32A and Donald Trump.

"Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. "

Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance or assent to the adulterous connection.

Law of the State of Texas prior to 1973.

Frankly, whatever the law is anywhere now, if I were on a jury, I'd consider not convicting under these circumstances.  Of course, that's exactly why I'd never be on such a jury.  I probably would, but I wouldn't be keen on it.

Indeed, you have to take an oath that you'll uphold the law, and killing somebody is flat out wrong, but I'd not like that duty.

For that matter, I'd be a poor choice for a juror when an "ex" spouse killing a "new" spouse of his former spouse, as that is adultery, as divorce itself is a civil sham.  Same story there.  I guess I'd uphold my obligations as a juror, if I survived voir dire, which I probably wouldn't.

In some ways, the weeneyness of the current law is a shame.

Maybe the dilution of the current law is the real shame.  The old law, including the "heart balm" laws, were regarded as harsh.  They weren't harsh, they were realistic.  The decline in realism in this area since May 9, 1960, has not bee a good thing in every conceivable way.

Wednesday, June 9, 1926. The Kingdom of Afghanistan founded.

The Kingdom of Afghanistan came into existence when Emir Amanullah Khan Barakzai of the British protectorate of Afghanistan declared the independence with British approval and himself king.

A  heavy handed ruler, and also a dedicated reformer, his rule faced continual opposition and rebellions and he'd only retain power into 1929.  He died in exile in Switzerland in 1960.  The kingdom he founded, however, lasted until 1973.

Last edition:

1926 Mobile Telephone

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Blog Mirror, Communications, Railroads, telephone

Tuesday, October 23, 1945. Signing Robinson.

It was announced that Jackie Robinson had signed with the Kansas City Royals, although he was not to play under the arrangement for a full season, going to the Montreal Royals for the 1946 season.

Robinson in 1946 as a Montreal Royal.

Robinson was a great man, and is justly celebrated, but there's a fair number of myths regarding his pioneering role in integrated baseball.  He was not, for one thing, the first black player in the major leagues.  That honor would inaccurately go to Moses Fleetwood Walker, although he had played in the 19th Century, and is inaccurate itself as William Edward White had played a single major league game prior to that.  White didn't reveal  his race, and therefore is often not credited, but Walker's brother Weldy Walker did, and he also played major league baseball

Moses Fleetwood Walker.

So, in reality, Robinson was the fourth African American ball player known to have played in the majors and the third to acknowledge his racial identify.

Weldy Walker.

1883 letter to editor by Weldy Walker.

Additionally Robinson was not the only black player in the majors in 1947, Larry Doby appeared in the American League two months later, something that has also been planned as far back as 1945.  His appearance, however, had not been accompanied by advance press, as Branch Rickey had done with Robinson.  It just happened.

A surprising part of the story is that Robinson being picked upset a fair number of players in the Negro Leagues who well knew that their talents were superior to Robinson's.  It was Robinson's character, of course, that had lead Ricky to pick him.

If the entire story is pieced together, it makes for an interesting focus on racism in the United States following the Civil War and before the Civil Rights Era.  Racism was intense the entire time, but it can be argued it actually got worse towards the end of the 19th Century.  The Navy had been integrated going into the Spanish American War but forces were at work to end that, and soon did.  Breaking the color barrier was hard for athletes in team sports, but was possible in the 19th Century up until the late 1880s when it became much harder, with it being harder in baseball, where the color barrier was absolute, as opposed to football, where a few men crossed it here and there before the 1946 groundbreaking season.  

World War Two had a lot to do with the color barrier fracturing.

Considerations were being made about the post war military, including a proposal to have a single service (something the Canadians in fact did).  Also proposed was something akin to the pre war German system, a small professional army with a large conscript reserve.

Neither proposal found favor at the time.

Of course, in just a couple of years conscription would in fact be revived, and would remain a feature of American life until 1973.  Watching current events, however, a good argument can be made for just what Truman had proposed here, a very small professional Army with a conscript reserve.  Conscripts are a lot less likely to fire on their friends and neighbors than professionals or volunteers are.

Last edition:

Monday, October 22, 1945. The Handan Campaign (邯郸战役) launched.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Chinese Civil War, Egypt, It was because of World War Two, Nationalist Chinese Army, People's Liberation Army, The Handan Campaign (邯郸战役), United Nations, Winston Churchill, World War Two

Wednesday, May 14, 1975. Hmong evacuation.

Thousands of Hmong soldiers and officers and their families who had assisted the CIA during the Laotian Civil War, reported to the Long Chieng airbase in Laos for air evacuation.  Only two cargo planes were assigned the duty, but they managed to take out 2,500 Hmong.

This brings back up the discussion here earlier of Ma Yang, a Hmong was deported by the U.S. to Laos even though she only speaks English and has lived in the US since she was eight months old.  As far as I know, nothing has yet been done to address her plight.

Today is Hmong American Day in the United States, which is set on this day in recognition of the evacuation and ultimately that a population of the Hmong Diaspora relocated to the U.S.  The largest population of Hmong live in China, which is actually where the ethnic group originates, with Vietnam having the second largest population.

Dalton Trumbo was presented an Academy Award for his 1956 script for The Brave Ones, which had been earlier awarded under a pseudonym due to Trumbo then being blacklisted.

Dalton and Cleo Trumbo at a 1947 House Committee on UnAmerican Affairs hearing.

Trumbo actually was a Communist and pretty up front about it.  1973's Papillon was his last screenplay to be produced prior to his death in 1976.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 13, 1975. Breakthrough at Long Tieng.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Central Intelligence Agency, Hmong People, Laotian Civil War, North Vietnamese Army, Pathet Lao, Personalities, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam War

Related Threads:

Ma Yang

Labels: Crime, Hmong People, Immigration, It was because of the Vietnam War, Laos, law, Marijuana, Monday at the bar

Movies In History: 5-25-77 and Licorice Pizza.

Okay, these are unusual entries for this website, and he second one is downright weird for this site.  In fact I only watched the second one because of the first one, and I'm not entirely sure that I don't regret watching it, frankly.

5-25-77

5-25-77 is a coming of age film released in 2022 that I think I've actually watched twice.  Indeed, I started a review a long time ago, and like some other lingering posts, I thought I'd already posted it.  Set in 1977 its a movie about and by somebody actually in the movie industry about his youth in the Midwest and his early obsession with movies, most specifically the movie Star Wars.  The title of the movie is taken from the release date for the film.  The conclusion of the film actually depicts the actual people the film portrays, at the time in which the film is set.

Apparently the director and producer of the film was simply obsessed with Star Wars when it was released.  Much of the movie revolves around his efforts to see the film upon its initial release, but it also deals with a trip to California brought about through the efforts of his mother to try to introduce him to industry figures, and through persistence he does get to meet Steven Spielberg.  The movie also involves a frustrating romance with a girl in his high school and (spoiler alert) her pushing him away as she wants him to pursue  his dream of being a movie maker, while she wishes to stay in their small town in Illinois.

The film is well done, funny, and bittersweet.  It does a really good job with material details and depicting the look and feel of the late 1970s, as well as the hype regarding Star Wars when it first came out, and before it was spoiled, in a way, by the numerous sequels.  A small film, its still worth watching, and not just because May 25 is my birthday (and I saw Star Wars in the theater during its initial run).  It catches the obsessiveness about films that had theater runs when they could be watched in no other fashion really well.  It also catches the fascination that existed with space films of the time pretty well, with 2001 A Space Odyssey showing up as a reference.

It also does a pretty good job of showing teenage culture, at least in the middle of the country, at the time.  A female character gets mixed in as one of the guys, basically, in a way that's really realistic in that she's a pal, and not overly a love interest focus, although the major female character is the main male protagonist's love interest and of course, there's the obligatory sex reference in the film.  It's material details are well done.

This one isn't bad and is worth viewing.

Licorice Pizza

This one isn't.  It varies from weird, to boring, to creepy.

Probably because I watched 5-25-77, this film came up on my feed recommendations and as it vaguely looked remotely similar, I watched it.  The film is really hard to describe in more ways than one.  It seems to have drawn critical favoritism and I'm not sure why.

This film deals with a high school student who may or may not be going to a school for young actors (it's hard to tell).  On the first day of school when he's 15 (maybe his freshman year?) he meets a young woman whose working at the school who is an adult.  Later in the film she gives her age as 25, at which time the male protagonist might still be 15, or maybe 16.  It's hard to tell.

It's hard to tell what the plot of the story even is.  On day one he asks the older girl, Alana, to dinner that night and he inexplicably is able to leave his house, where he seems to be in charge of his younger brother, to go to the restaurant to find that the 20 something girl is in fact there.  From there, there's an endless serious of highly improbable developments that center around the teenage boy's business talents (he seem to have access to money at a rate that few teenagers so).  He goes into the waterbed business (seriously) and later in the movie opens an arcade (seriously?).  He introduces the girl to his acting agent (his acting career seems to have died with commercials as a child) at her requests, which leads later on to an argument (she feels she should have said she'd appear in films topless) which leads to her exposing herself (we only see her back) to her 15 year old male friend.

After a tour through vandalism, which makes no sense in the film whatsoever, a scene involving Sean Penn as an older actor, and lots of running, she declares her love for the male protagonist and they kiss.

If it had a male older actor and a teenage girl, it would be something like Lolita except in Lolita, I think, the creepy male predator comes across as a creepy male predator.  Here, Alana is never condemned for what really is predatory behavior.

I'm not sure why people like this movie, but it's really creepy.

The film is set in the very early 1970s.  1973 is mentioned at one point.  The clothing and hair styles are basically correct, although with the actresses the director or design person clearly took a braless trend that existed at the time and grossly over emphasized it, unless it had more of a following in Encino where this movie is set.  As noted, the movie is creepy.

In watching it, I thought the film probably riffed off of 5-25-77 in that it has all young actors and is mostly retrospective in a weird sort of way.  But this film is actually from 2021.

If the film has one virtue, which is doubtful, it's the seen with Sean Penn.  The movie casts Penn as an older actor and there are sufficient references such that its clear he's supposed to be a combination Jack Holden and Steve McQueen.  The movie The Bridges at Toko Ri are referenced with a barely disguised title. McQueen's ability with a motorcycle is used.   A bar scene features a director who is fairly clearly supposed to be John Ford, who in fact died in 1973.  The short portion of the film with both of them in it is the only part watching, if anything is worth watching, which it really isn't.

Don't bother.

Wednesday, December 13, 1944. USS Goshen commissioned.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 13: Today is St. Lucy's Day. She is one of the patrons of writers. 

1944 The USS Goshen, originally named the Sea Hare, commissioned.  She was a fast attack transport.

The USS Goshen was sold in 1947 to American Mail Lines Ltd and renamed Canada Mail. In 1963 her name was changed to California Mail. In 1968, she was sold to Waterman Steamship, re-registered as the La Fayette. She was scrapped in 1973.

The US prevailed in the Battle of Metz.

The First Battle of Kesternich began on the German border with Belgium.

The Battle of Mindoro began in the Philippines

The Myōkō was  damaged beyond repair by the USS Bergall.

The USS Nashville was severely damaged off Negros Island by a kamikaze attack.

The U-365 was sunk in the Artic Ocean by a Fairey Swordfish.

The Great Snowstorm of 1944 ended.

Last edition:

Tuesday, December 12, 1944. Heavy artillery.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, boats and ships, British Army, Dekemvriana (Δεκεμβριανά), Germany, Greek Civil War, Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre, Royal Air Force, World War Two

Notable passing. William J. Calley.

 

William J. Calley, who was convicted for his commanding role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, has died at age 80.

Calley only served three years under house arrest at his military apartment for the crime, before being released and cashiered from the Army.  About 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed before a helicopter pilot heroically intervened, with some ground troops assisting him.  Calley was convicted on 22 counts of murder, having been originally charged with about 100, but only served three days behind bars before President Nixon confined him to house arrest.

He kept to himself after release, but maintained the classic "only following orders" defense, which is no defense at all.  He became a successful businessman in Columbus Georgia.  In later years he admitted to friends that he'd committed the acts charged with.  In 2009 he issued a public apology, stating:

There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.

He was in some ways an interesting example of the officer corps at the time, in that he had gone to, but failed to complete, college. He entered the Army due to poverty in 1966.

Four solders were charged with crimes due to the massacre, but only Calley went forward to conviction.  There was at the time some reason to believe his "following orders" story, but in a general, rather than specific, sense.

Oddly, on this day, I'm drinking Vietnamese coffee.  I have some baseball type "patrol" caps from Australia around here that were made in Vietnam.  Vietnam is courted by the US as an ally against the country's traditional enemy, China, even though it remains a Communist state controlled country and economy.  A vast amount of the shrimp served on American tables comes from Vietnamese waters.  The country has become a tourist destination for Americans, and there is, bizarrely given the build of the Vietnamese, a Victoria's Secret in Hanoi.

Most Americans, and Most Vietnamese, were born after his conviction in 1973.

The world moved on, save for those whose lives ended that day, or were impacted by those events over 50 years ago.  Calley, at 80, was a member, however, of the generation which is only now beginning to lose its grip on power.  Joe Biden is just about the same age.  Donald Trump, who was not impoverished, is two years younger and obtained four student draft deferments while being deemed fit for military service.  In 1968, the year of My Lai, he was classified as eligible to serve but later that same year he was classified 1-Y, a conditional medical deferment, and in 1972, as the draft was winding down, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs.  No combat veteran of the Vietnam War has been elected President and none every will be, as they begin to pass on.  Al Gore, agre 76, who served in the country as a photographer, was a Vietnam Veteran, however, and George Bush II, age 78, was an Air National Guard pilot who did volunteer for service in the country, but who did not receive it.

Calley's generation, which is now rapidly passing, was the most influential in American history, and in many ways which were not good ones, which is not to say that there weren't ways in which they were positive influences.  They'll soon be a memory, like the generation that fought World War One became some twenty or so years ago, and the generation that fought World War Two basically has been.  

Calley's death serves as a reminder and a reflection of a lot of things.

Monday, February 4, 1974. Patty Hearst kidnapped.

Patty Hearst, a grandchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by the  Symbionese Liberation Army.  She was 19 at the time.

Hearst right during later bank robbery.

The group had first appeared in November when it had murdered Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn.

The name of the entity, it might be noted, came from this, according to the organization:

The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.

It's hard to seem how murdering public school superintendents fits that supposed goal.  Robert Blackburn, who survived his wounds, noted:

These were not political radicals, They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.

Emblematic of the times, the goof ball entity was a kind of sort of Communist terrorist cell that rapidly became disenchanted with "the people" after distributions of food, which it had demanded as a ransom in Berkeley, didn't go well.

In April, the group raided a bank in San Francisco, in which Hearst seemed to take part, although she denied doing so willingly. She nonetheless was convicted due to the actions and served two years out of a seven-year sentence before Jimmy Carter, ever the kind man, had her released.  Bill Clinton pardoned her.

In May the organization moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they got into a shootout at a sporting goods store where Hearst, on guard duty, fired shots.  A shootout a couple of days later at a supposed safe house killed six of them.

Hearst was arrested in September 1975, back at a San Francisco safe house.

Hearst, as noted, was convicted, but she claimed she had never participated willingly, and had been raped and threatened while a captive.  Given the nature of the SLA, that's certainly possible. Early on, however, after her arrest she had said that she comported her thoughts to theirs and was given a choice of being freed or fighting with them, and she elected to fight.

After her release, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail.  They had two children.  He died in 2013.

The Provisional IRA bombed a bus on the M62 Motorway in England, killing nine solders and three civilians, including two children.

The Yom Kippur War resumed, but only as between Syria and Israel, with 500 Cuban soldiers joining a Syrian tank unit.  Fighting resumed in the Golan Heights.

Time Magazine featured Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on the cover, with the caption "The Impeachment Congress.

Last edition:

Monday, January 28, 1974. End of the Siege of Suez.

Labels: 1970s, 1974, Bolivia, boxing, Egypt, Indonesia, inflation, Israel, pornography, Siege of Suez, Sports, Suez Canal, Suez Egypt, The Great Inflation, Watergate, Yom Kippur War

The moment the fatal wounds were afflicted.

How did we end up with two ancient, disliked men being advanced by their parties?

Well, we ended up here as the Democrats quit believing in democracy, favoring rule by the courts, until the courts decided they believed in democracy, and because both parties lied to their rank and file, working class, constituents for a period of fifty years.

We've dealt with this before.

However, it can nearly be determined with precision.

The date of the wounds were:

• January 22, 1973

That's the date the United States Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision, replacing its judgment for that of state legislatures. As the dissent noted:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

And Democrats concluded they didn't really need to persuade voters anymore, the Courts would impose a new liberal regime on the besotted and benighted public without their participation.

And:

• July 17, 1980.

That's the date that the GOP nominated Ronald Reagan for President. Reagan would go on to use the Southern Strategy to draw in Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats who had lied to as the post World War Two economic prosperity collapsed. Thing is, the GOP didn't really listen to their concerns, just as the Democrats had quit doing. 

Seven years in which we went from two functioning political parties and put them on the path to being pure machines, breaking what they claimed to serve.

Friday, December 28, 1973. The Endangered Species Act.

On this day in 1973, the Endangered Species Act, having passed by the House of Representatives, 355 to 4, with the only opposing votes coming from Congressmen Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, H. R. Gross of Iowa, Robin Beard of Tennessee and Bob Price of Texas, was signed into law.

The Nixon Administration, now mostly remembered for Watergate, and the duplicitous end to the Vietnam War, had a remarkable record of passing environmental legislation, including this landmark example.  Perhaps more remarkable, at this point in time, Wyoming's Congressman, Teno Roncolio, voted for it.

My, how things have changed.

And more amazing yet, Teno Roncalio, was a Democrat, the last Wyoming Democrat to hold that position.  For that matter, one of the two Senators from Wyoming, Gale McGee, was as well.  McGee is the last member of the Democratic Party to hold that office in Wyoming.

Presently to admit that the ESA is a great piece of litigation is to invite castigation in Wyoming, and the world "Democrat" is nearly slanderous in nature.

On the same day, Nixon signed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) which provided to train workers for jobs in public service.

Whatever else may be the case about him, the country owes a debt to Nixon for legislation passed during his administration.

Solzhenitsyn's tome The Gulag Archipelago was published. The very first published edition on the horrors of the Soviet penal system were in French.

Bobby Darin (Walden Robert Cassotto) died at age 37 following a surgery to repair artificial heart valves he had received three years prior.

Darin had been a major Ameican entertainer of the 50s and 60s.  Of Sicilian descent, his early life was complicated, having had a grandfather that was a member of the mafia.  He was raised believing that his mother, who had borne him out of wedlock at age 17, was his sister, something she did not reveal to him until he was 32.

Friday, December 23, 1973. The Geneva Conference opens.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 23: 1973  1973  Larry Larom, founding president of the Dude Ranchers Association, died in Cody.

The Geneva Conference opened in order to try to negotiate a solution to the Israeli Arab conflict.  Ultimately disengagement agreements would be worked out, the following year, between Israel, Egypt and Syrian. An agreement on the Sinai Peninsula was worked out in 1975.

Tuesday, December 18, 1973. Fate unknown.

The Palestinian terrorists in Rome ordered a Lufthansa plane to fly to Kuwait, where the remaining hostages were freed.  A year later, Kuwait turned them over to the PLO, which promised to put them on trial. Their fate is unknown.

Monday, December 17, 1973. Terrorism at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

Palestinian terrorists killed 32 people at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport near Rome by seizing a terminal and then throwing grenades in the open doors of a Boeing 707.

Because killing innocent people is a mature and rational way to get what you want . . . 

Canada and Denmark signed a treating delineating their territorial waters.

Tuesday, December 7, 1973. Women join the Coast Guard on a regular basis.

The United States Coast Guard accepted its first regular female members, Chief Warrant Officer Alice T. Jefferson, Yeoman First Class Wanda May Parr and Yeoman Second Class Margaret A. Blackman.

This came about due to the elimination of the Coast Guard's Women's Reserve.

Jefferson had jointed the SPARS in 1943 and remained in the Coast Guard until 1984, when she retired.  She passed away in 2019 at age 96.

The world's most dangerous airline, Aeroflot, crashed is Flight 964 at Moscow's airport, killing 16 out of 75 people on board.

Convicted child murderer Lester Eubanks was released for unsupervised Christmas shopping in Ohio and disappeared.  He remains a fugtive.

Blog Mirror: Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023. War criminal

I was surprised to see this article by Reich, and I thought it would be on the late stages of the Vietnam War, but I'll note that I too am not a Kissinger fan.

Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023. War criminal

Tuesday, November 27, 1973. Gerald Ford sworn in as Vice President.

Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn into that office.  Only three votes were cast against his appointment.

The Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act was signed into law in order to allocate petroleum distribution and control prices. This came about, of course, due to the Arab Oil Embargo.

The effort at price control and allocation would prove to be a failure, as generally such measures prove to be.

The House of Representatives passed a bill to put the US on Daylight Savings Time year around.  A similar bill recently passed the Senate, and then went nowhere.

This act passed and went into effect in 1974, and very rapidly it went from being popular to unpopular.  I can remember the reason why.  As a kid, we now went to school in darkness.

It escapes me why these bills always choose Daylight Savings Time over natural time.  

Monday, November 26, 1973. Oops.

Mary Woods testified in Federal Court that she's accidentally caused part of the 18-1/2-minute gap in a White House tape.

Thursday, November 22, 1973. Oily shifting sands and tides.

Japan, which had not yet come under the Arab oil embargo, dropped its support for Israel and joined the United Nations in calling for a separate Palestinian state.  In doing so, it was seeking to avoid the oil sanction.

Saudi Arabia warned the US that it would reduce oil production by 80% if the US did not stop supporting Israel, and that the country would destroy its oil wells if attacked.

Saturday, November 17, 1973. Richard Nixon - "I'm not a crook"

It's almost charming to think that there was a time when the Republican President had to assure the American people of his morality.

The Athens Polytechnic Uprising, which had started on November 14 as a student protest, was put down by the Greek Army.