Showing posts with label Theodore Roosevelt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theodore Roosevelt. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

The Aerodrome: Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.

A portrait was taken at Sagamore Hill.



The Aerodrome: Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Mot...:   Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, the first dedicated airplane manufacturing company, was formed by Glenn Hammond Curtiss and Augustus ...

Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company forms.

 


Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, the first dedicated airplane manufacturing company, was formed by Glenn Hammond Curtiss and Augustus Moore Herring in Hammondsport, New York.  In 1929 it would merge with the Wright Aeronautical to form Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which still exists.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Tuesday, March 18, 1924. The high water mark of the Irish Mutiny.

Forty armed Irish soldiers assembled at a hotel in Dublin to plan the next move in the Irish Army Mutiny.  A possible coup d'état against the Irish government was on the table.  

Loyal Irish troops surrounded the hotel and there was a standoff.  The result was that the young Irish government responded by securing the resignation of Irish Army Council members, along with that of Defense Minister Richard Mulcahy.


The mutiny was of the oldest type, an army rebelling for itself.  Mulcahy would go on to a long career in Irish government, including as Minister of Education.

A soldier bonus bill was passed in the US.


St. Mark's is a major downtown church in Casper today.

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming


This traditionally styled Episcopal Church includes the office buildings for the church a meeting room, kitchen and a day school, so the interior space used for services is smaller than the large exterior might suggest.

The view featured on the bottom photograph could not be seen until recently, as a large house once stood in what is now an open area. The church is across the street from the former St. Anthony's Catholic School, which has moved to a new location across town. The church was built in 1924.

It's stunning to think it was built for $120,000.

The Douglas Fairbanks film, The Thief of Baghdad, was released.


Alice Longworth, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was caught by the paparazzi on the streets of Washington D.C.



Friday, March 1, 2024

Envy and the Easy Life.

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

Well. . . having lived a relatively difficult life, but perhaps not well, I don't know that I can endorse this one.

Saturday, December 2, 2023

Going Feral: Subsistrnce hunter/fisherman of the week. Theodore Roosevelt

Going Feral: Subsistence hunter/fisherman of the week. Theodore...

Subsistance hunter/fisherman of the week. Theodore Roosevelt

Perhaps no American, and indeed perhaps no human, has done more for the cause of wildlife conservation than was done by President Theodore Roosevelt.


A great naturalist, a great man, and a great President, he was also an avid hunter and fisherman.

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Friday, June 4, 1943. Giraud takes command.

Henri Giraud was appointed Commander In Chief of the Free French Forces.

Giraud was a career French Army officer, as we would of course expect, who had entered the army in 1900.  He was serving with the Zouave's in North Africa when World War One broke out and was badly wounded leading a Zouave charge earlier in the war, resulting in his capture by the Germans after he'd been left for dead.  He'd escaped German captivity posing as s circus roustabout after his recovery.

He was captured by the Germans a second time in May 1940, and escaped again in November 1942, as we discussed here:

Saturday, November 7, 1942. Giraud escapes France.

The British submarine Seraph smuggled French general Henri Giraud out of France.


Giraud was an opponent of the Vichy regime and had escaped German captivity, for Switzerland, back in April.  Vichy tried to lure him back, but he demurred.

While all in anticipation of Torch, the submarine took Giraud to Gibraltar, where he remained until November 9.  Relationships between the Free French officers were always highly complicated and tense, in part because their legitimacy was really legally questionable, which their organization, supported by the Allies, reflected. The Allies always tried to split the difference between outright firebrand rebels, like DeGaulle, and those who still held some ties to Vichy as the legal government.  Those in a position in between, like Giraud, were in an odd spot.

He received Allied support as the leader of the Free French following the assassination of Admiral Darlan. At the time, the Allies were trying to balance the personalities in the French leadership which varied from DeGaulle, who had gone into rebellion against Vichy from the onset, to individuals like Darlan who had not been sympathetic with the Nazis but who were unwilling, at first, to rebel against the established legal government.  Giroud appeared to be a good compromise between the two.  In that, he may have been misread.  An early sign of that was when Gen. Eisenhower asked him to take command of French troops in North Africa during Operation Torch, and he declined at first as he felt his honor demanded command of Torch itself, although he soon relented.

As it was, French forces in North Africa refused to recognize Giraud and instead continued to follow the orders of Admiral Darlan.  Darlan was accordingly recognized by the Allies as the head of French forces in North Africa, in spite of his association with Vichy.  Giraud's position was thereafter under Darlan.  Upon Darlan's assassination, Giraud's overall leadership of the French forces was forced through by the Allies.

Giraud had not been, however, a perfect choice, as he wished to retain French racial laws and he had made comments sympathetic to the accomplishments of Nazi Germany.  He'd ultimately fell when he acted independently of the Allies in sending French ships to help French resistance movements in Corsica in September without informing the Allies.  At this point, it was learned that he was maintaining an independent intelligence service.  This led to his wartime retirement.  

He served in the Assembly after the war, and died in 1949 at age 70.

Argentina's government fell in a coup d'etate which removed Ramon Castillo, who had maintained a strict neutrality position over World War Two, in favor of Gen. Arturo Rawson, who yielded nearly immediately to Gen. Pedro Ramirez, who continued the neutrality policy.  As this might demonstrate, the coup and Argentine politics were in a highly confused state, and would remain that way for many years.  Its military was clearly a danger, however, to civilian leadership of the country.

Belle and Kermit Roosevelt.

Kermit Roosevelt, serving as a Major in the U.S. Army, but also suffering from years of illness and alcoholism, committed suicide in Alaska.  He was 52 years old.

Adventuresome, like his father, but subject to alcoholism like his uncle.  He served in the British and American armies during World War One.  He'd accompanied his father on the legendary River of Doubt expedition in South America before the war, an event which contributed to Theodore Roosevelt's late in life declining health.  Like his father, Kermit Roosevelt nearly died during the expedition and also like his father, a branch of the river was named for him.

He served a second hitch in the British Army early in World War Two, participating in the Battle of Narvik.  He resumed heavy drinking after an injury in that battle, which he had previously given up, and was plagued by liver problems that was compounded by malaria. He was subsequently medically discharged from British service.  His drinking was so bad that Archie Roosevelt sought to place him in a sanitarium for a year upon his return, and he agreed to a four-month stay.  He took a commission in the U.S. Army as a major at that time and was stationed at Ft. Richardson, Alaska.

Friday, May 19, 2023

Wednesday, May 19, 1943. Penicillin.

The Army Medical Corps cleared the release of penicillin.  It would be administered for the first time two days later to an unidentified soldier.

Penicillin's possibilities had been known for fifteen years, but it wasn't until 1942 when a particularly potent strain of the mold it is from was discovered in Peoria, Illinois, the critical sample of which was donated by an unknown woman who brought in a moldy antelope.

Churchill addressed Congress.


The speech is a famous one, but I cannot find a written transcript of it, which is unusual for his speeches.  There are some well known exerts of it, including:

Sure I am that this day, now, we are the masters of our fate. That the task which has been set us is not above our strength. That its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause, and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.

And:

All this gives the lie to the Nazi and Fascist talk that the parliamentary democracies are incapable of waging an effective war. We will punish them with further examples.

Joseph Goebbels declared Berlin to be free of Jews.

He was incorrect.

Berlin had certainly suffered an enormous decline in its Jewish population, and there had been a large effort to detain and expel (to fatal consequences) Jewish Berliners in the Spring of 1943.  8,600 Jews were expelled in the early months of hte year.  However, 6,790 Mischlinge (half Jews), members of Mischehen (mixed marriages), Jewish widows and widowers of non-Jews, and Jewish citizens of neutral countries or German allies still resided in the city in the summer of the year.  Over the course of the war, 55,000 Jewish Berliners would be reduced down, however, to only about 1,000 by the war's end.

The U-954 was sunk off of Greenland, taking down with it Peter Dönitz, a son of the head of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz.  Of Dönitz's three children, only his daughter would survive the war, dying in 1990, outliving her father by only a decade.  His son Klaus had been withdrawn from combat duties under a Nazi policy regarding the deaths of other sons of leading figures, but was killed on an E-boat after persuading friends to allow him to ride along on a raid.

Pope Pius XII wrote to Franklin Roosevelt

Your Excellency,

Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of ail and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, We appealed (August 24, 1939) to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the cairn, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding. «Nothing was to be lost by peace; everything might be lost by war». And when the awful powers of destruction broke loose and swept over a large part of Europe, though Our Apostolic Office places Us above and beyond ail participation in armed conflicts, We did not fail to do what We could to keep out of the war nations not yet involved and to mitigate as far as possible for millions of innocent men, women and children, defenceless against the circumstances in which they have to live, the sorrows and sufferings that would inevitably follow along the constantly widening swath of desolation and death cut by the machines of modern warfare.

The succeeding years unfortunately have seen heart-rending tragedies increase and multiply; yet We have not for that reason, as Our conscience bears witness, given over Our hopes and Our efforts in behalf of the afflicted members of the great human family everywhere. And as the Episcopal See of the Popes is Rome, from where through these long centuries they have ruled the flock entrusted to them by the divine Shepherd of souls, it is natural that amid all the vicissitudes of their complex and chequered history the faithful of Italy should d feel themselves bound by more than ordinary ties to this Holy See, and have learned to look to it for protection and comfort especially in hours of crisis.

In such an hour today their pleading voices reach Us carried on their steady confidence that they will not go unanswered. Fathers and mothers, old and young every day are appealing for Our help; and We, whose paternal heart beats in unison with the sufferings and sorrows of ail mankind, cannot but respond with the deepest feelings of Our soul to such insistent prayers, lest the poor and humble shall have placed their confidence in Us in vain.

And so very sincerely and confidently We address Ourselves to Your Excellency, sure that no one will recognize more clearly than the Chief Executive of the great American nation the voice of humanity that speaks in these appeals to Us, and the affection of a father that inspires Our response.

The assurance given to Us in 1941 by Your Excellency’s esteemed Ambassador Mr. Myron Taylor and spontaneously repeated by him in 1942 that «America has no hatred of the Italian people» gives Us confidence that they will be treated with consideration and understanding; and if they have had to mourn the untimely death of dear ones, they will yet in their present circumstances be spared as far as possible further pain and devastation, and their many treasured shrines of Religion and Art, – precious heritage not of one people but of ail human and Christian civilization – will be saved from irreparable ruin. This is a hope and prayer very dear to Our paternal heart, and We have thought that its realization could not be more effectively ensured than by ex- pressing it very simply to Your Excellency.

With heartfelt prayer We beg God’s blessings on Your Excellency and the people of the United States.


Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Oops.

I'm a bit late to this but, um, no, that was Grant.

Roosevelt was just 13 years old at the time.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if the same thing was attempted today, Wyoming's Congressional representation would oppose it, and probably the senior elected officials in the state as well.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Wednesday, January 31, 1923. Hockey first.

For the first time in history, a National Hockey League match concluded with no penalties having been imposed.  The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Hamilton Tigers, 5 to 4.


Hockey, unlike football, is not boring.


Italy required public school students to start using the extended arm fascist salute, claimed to have been derived from Rome, but with little historical support for the proposition.

The general gesture was in vogue at the time, having been popularized in the United States as the Bellamy Salute.  It's co-opting by fascism, forever associated it with fascist movements.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr., occupying the position that his father had leading up to the Spanish American War, and his cousin had during World War One,  addressed the midyear graduating class of the Peter Force School, a school he had attended during his father's occupancy of the office. The class planted a Lombardy Poplar in memory of Quentin Roosevelt, aviator, who had died in action in World War One.


The school had been founded in 1879 and was named for a former Washington, D.C. mayor.  Many children of important personages attended the school, including the late Quentin Roosevelt and Charles Taft, the son of President Taft.

The school would not have a much longer run.  It was abandoned in 1939 and demolished in 1962 in order to make way for the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Vice Pres. Coolidge and House Speaker Gillett exercising in House gym. Jan. 31, 1923

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Wednesday, January 24, 1923. The U.S. Army withdraws from Germany, Theodore Roosevelt Indian School established.

The United States withdrew its last occupation forces from Germany, with the 156th French Infantry playing The Star Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise as they departed for Antwerp.

Ft. Apache was made a school for Native Americans children by statute, which provided:

§277. Former Apache military post established as Theodore Roosevelt Indian School

The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to establish and maintain the former Fort Apache military post as an Indian boarding school for the purpose of carrying out treaty obligations, to be known as the Theodore Roosevelt Indian School: Provided, That the Fort Apache military post, and land appurtenant thereto, shall remain in the possession and custody of the Secretary of the Interior so long as they shall be required for Indian school purposes.

(Jan. 24, 1923, ch. 42, 42 Stat. 1187.)

As most readers here know, such schools have been subject to enduring controversy.   This school, however, still exists under this name.

Theodore Roosevelt Indian School.

Saturday, August 13, 2022

The Idle Rich and Noblesse obligee.

Territorial seal of Wyoming, depicting rich people from other areas moving in to control the state's politics. . . oh, wait. . . it mostly depicts work.

And I'm gonna tell you workers,

'fore you cash in your checks 

They say "America First," 

but they mean "America Next!"

Woody Guthrie, Lindbergh.

This was originally going to be a post in the election thread, as it comes up in that context.

Here's how.

Recently former Wyoming Secretary of State Max Maxfield filed an election complaint against Chuck Gray which in essence stated that Mr. Gray only reports $11,000 in income per year, but loaned his abandoned campaign against Liz Cheney over $200,000.  The math, Mr. Maxfield maintains, doesn't add up for a guy whose only been in the state for a decade and who must be in his early 30s.  In other words, how can a guy with no visible means of support earning money at the poverty level loan himself that kind of dough.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious.  Gray has external funding sources.

In the recent debate with his opponent Tara Nethercott he accused her of being behind the Maxfield effort, for which there is no evidence at all.  Nethercott surely didn't start it, but she has made use of it, noting that his connection with work is pretty thin.  Gray has attempted to defend himself by accusing Nethercott of being a "lawyer/politician".

That's ironic for Gray, as he's also a politician. They both have been in the legislature the same length of time.  Moreover, while I can't find it now, while Gray was at Wharton he gave an interview to some sort of school journal in which he said his ambition was to become a lawyer.  So his disdain of lawyers apparently comes more recently.

Gray said in the debate that he had inherited the money that he loaned to his campaign, which in some ways, although he probably doesn't realize it, makes this story worse.  As does this:

August 11, 2022

The Trib ran an article on this date on campaign donations and the various candidates.

Perhaps the most remarkable figures where for Secretary of State, where Chuch Gray has raised $528,000 to Nethercott's $333,000.  Of that, $500,000 of Gray's money was donated by his father and $10,000 from himself, meaning he's really raised $18,000.  Nethercott loaned her campaign $95,000.

Gray has seemingly been able to get by in the state for a decade with a light attraction to what most people would regard as substantial work, assuming that his role at his family's radio station isn't accounted for in some other fashion that's allowable under the IRS code but which isn't regarded as income.  I have no idea.  That may be the case.  At any rate, however, most people's parents aren't in a situation to give them $500,000 in their early 30s in order to mount a bid for office.

Which raises a number of topics.

The first is, in regard to Gray, does this matter?

I'd think so.

What a person does with their own money is their own business, to an extent. But when it comes to spending money in order to obtain a public office, that's everyone's business.  One of Gray's recent television advertisements complains that Nethercott voted for a bill to raise the Secretary of State's wages to $125,000, for instance.

This would suggest that Gray thinks $125,000 for that office is a lot, but it's not.  The median income for Wyoming is $33,000, which is very low, so for a lot of people that would be a lot, but Nethercott will probably be taking a pay cut if she wins.  Gray will be getting a big pay raise, but apparently his situation is such that this doesn't really matter.

Of course, it's a four-year position, which also means that Nethercott will have to work the better part of a year to pay back the load to herself.  Gray won't have to, but the $500,000 investment on the part of his father?  Well, I guess that's also like spending your inheritance.  That somebody is willing to spend a half million dollars to obtain a job that will take several years in pay in order to recoup the loss raises, yet again, more questions.

All of which gets to this.

Very few people are in the category of "idle rich". Even most of the rich aren't in the category of idle rich, where they have so much surplus cash they really don't have to do anything.

If a person is in that category, what they do with their cash is their own business, as long as they are honest about it, and their employment of their resources doesn't work to the detriment of other people.

And that's the problem with what Gray is doing.

Wyoming has experienced an influx of money in recent years, with there being some really spectacular examples.  Susan Gore, who has funded far right political movements, is one such example.  She's not from here, but more than that, she's not of here either.  Her efforts are funding attempts to make the state into something it's never been, under the banner of "liberty".  Gray is part of that same effort.  

Gore is one example, but Gray's quite another.  The resources presumably are nowhere equal, but the thought of a young man seemingly employing his efforts at doing little else other than to try to advance in politics in a state he has virtually no connection with is, well, disturbing.  I can't really imagine it myself.  That is, if I had surplus money, I don't think I'd go, let's say, to Alaska and try to influence their politics.

But that's what Gray has being doing from day one here, and that's what people like Susan Gore and Foster Friess have been attempting as well.  To make it worse, the Wyoming they're trying to recreate is an imaginary one that they don't really know.  The state they moved to isn't the one they think it was, and what they're attempting to make it into isn't where most of us would have wanted to go.

At one time, having vast idle wealth in the country bound a person to obligation.  We only recently mentioned the two Roosevelts who were elected President in this blog, as they were rich men. They were both examples of this, however.

But they were also examples of noblesse oblige, the sense that "being nobility obligates".

This was particularly true in the case of Theodore Roosevelt.  His father was wealthy, but he'd also been dedicated to the cause of poor newsboys, something that was a real problem in his era.  Theodore Roosevelt senior also made it plain to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. that their wealth would enable the younger man to choose a career of his liking that didn't have to pay well, but he'd have to choose one.  Originally, the later President had intended to be a scientist, and indeed was published and well regarded in natural history.

Indeed, while Theodore Roosevelt, following his father's death, turned to the then disreputable career of politician in years as tender as that of Gray's, he never really quit working.  He wrote, he published, he studied, and he ranched.  His finances were not always great by any means as he's overspend in his endeavors, but his capacity for work was literally manic.

Wealthy New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve at great hazard in the Spanish American War.  We don't see too many wealthy Americans doing this sort of service anymore.

I know less about his cousin Franklin, but Franklin always admired Theodore.  He came to the nation's attention first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, something Theodore Roosevelt had also been.  So he entered public service. . . as a type of bureaucrat. . . .  before he was a politician.


And other examples abound.  Winston Churchill, who was from a wealthy family (although he always overspent his resources, as did his mother) served as a British Army cavalryman in his early years, with that being his intended career in an era in which those born into British wealth were not expected to "work" but to go into public service in the military or the clergy, or perhaps engage in agriculture.  He took a break from that to act as a correspondent, and then later served in the Army again in the early part of World War One before entering politics.  T. E. Lawrence, from the same class, and burdened with the same cultural expectation not to "work", was first an archeologist before entering the British Army during the Great War.

John F. Kennedy in World War Two.

Turning back to our own shores, I'll be frank that I'm not a fan of the Kennedy family, including John F. Kennedy. But the President of the early 1960s had served, and heroically, in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. That's definitely work.

Yet another interesting example would be George S. Patton, whose family was very wealthy.  Patton had a career as a soldier, quite obviously, as that was something people in his class did.

Patton in World War One.

We don't seem to see things like this much anymore.

Gray, according to what little we know of him, went right from Wharton to a Wyoming radio station.  A really blistering article in WyoFile notes his career and that he was reported as an executive at the station.  That article goes on to note that the radio entity in Wyoming seems to facially be out of compliance with registration requirements   The article is so extensive that about all you can do is quote from it, rather than try to summarize it, as it notes:

He has listed Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. as his sole employment — initially working as a program director, then later as an operations manager — on each of his requisite elected official financial disclosure forms.  

According to records from the secretary of state’s office — and later confirmed by a department spokesperson — Mount Rushmore Broadcasting was administratively dissolved by the state almost two decades ago for failing to file annual reports and pay its license fees to Wyoming. Gray’s father, Jan Charles Gray, is president of the Delaware-based entity, according to state records. The entity uses a registered agent in its Wyoming filings, but 2016 documents from the Federal Communications Commission indicate that the elder Gray is also owner of the corporation. 

Like all out-of-state entities, it was required to obtain a certificate of authority from the secretary of state’s office before transacting business in the state. It did so in 1993, according to state records, but failed to file requisite annual reports and pay yearly fees based on its assets located and employed in Wyoming. Mount Rushmore entered into a 24-month period during which it could have paid a reinstatement fee, as well as what was already owed. But the company did not comply within the two-year window, after which Wyoming statute does not allow entities to be brought back into good standing. 

Monique Meese with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office confirmed that Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. was administratively dissolved on June 10, 2003 and thereby lost the ability to be reinstated. At press time, the entity was not under review by the office, Meese said, because no written complaints had been submitted. 

On his most recent state elected officials financial disclosure form dated Jan. 28, 2022, Gray listed operations manager of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting as his employment. According to his campaign website, he began his career there in 2013 “as a radio executive and hosted a conservative radio show,” until 2019.

During a July candidate forum in Casper, Gray said he became a permanent resident of Wyoming in 2012. He spent his childhood summers here with his father after his parents divorced, he said. 

Prior to going to work for his father, Gray graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s of science and bachelor’s of arts degrees, according to his lawmaker bio

When WyoFile approached Gray to clarify his professional experience immediately following the forum in Casper, he declined to answer questions, but said he would respond to written questions over email. WyoFile sent several written questions to the lawmaker, including a request for more details regarding his duties as an employee of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting and how his academic and professional resumes qualified him for the position. Gray responded with a statement about ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting — he feels both are threats to election integrity — but no further information on his background. WyoFile sent a subsequent email asking about his employer conducting business in Wyoming without a certificate of authority. The lawmaker did not respond. 

Mount Rushmore Broadcasting is currently the licensee for two AM stations and five FM stations in Wyoming, according to Federal Communications Commission records. Most of those stations are in Casper, and all but one of those can currently be heard on the air.

In 2016, three years after Gray claims to have begun working there, Mount Rushmore entered into a consent decree with the FCC for failing to maintain a full-time management and staff presence at the main studio of two of its stations during regular business hours, among other things. One term of the settlement was a $25,000 civil penalty, which was less than the originally proposed penalty. Mount Rushmore Broadcasting submitted a sworn statement along with several years of tax returns indicating an inability to pay all forfeitures, according to the consent decree. The original amount was just under $160,000, according to the FCC. Part of the agreement required Mount Rushmore Broadcasting to pay the remainder of the originally proposed penalties if the FCC found it misled the commission regarding its financial status. The commission declined to say whether that occurred. 

In 2015, Mount Rushmore Broadcasting paid almost $5,000 in back wages to former employees, after the U.S. Department of Labor sued the entity for not properly paying its workers. 

Between April 2020 and March 2021, it received more than $28,000 in federal dollars through the Paycheck Protection Program in order to retain two jobs. Gray, a vocal opponent of federal subsidies, voted during the 2022 Legislative session against a bill authorizing the state to spend other pandemic relief funds. He declined to answer questions on the matter when WyoFile contacted him for previous reporting.

I'd note that there could be explanations for why it is seemingly out of compliance with filing requirements in Wyoming, and indeed for all of this, but it does raise questions.

Maybe the bigger question, however, is this.  Does simply graduating from school really mean that you are now qualified to legislate and govern?

I guess the voters can and will decide that. But quite frankly, those who were not born wealthy, and have had to work, have rounder experiences than those who simply benefitted from the circumstances of their births.  Those born wealthy, however, who have educated themselves in school and out in the world have different qualifications yet, and are often quite admirable.

The Roosevelts, we'd note, were champions of the poor.  Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't even be qualified to walk into a county Republican Party meeting today, in spite of still being admired as a Republican President.  John F. Kennedy, for all his faults, was concerned with the same class as well.  Churchill had to be restrained from directly entering into combat a couple of times during World War Two.

Noblesse Oblige.

Monday, June 13, 2022

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Wednesday October 5, 1921. The Yankees v. The Giants

Elmer Miller scores in Yankee-Giant World Series game on 10/5/1921 in Polo Grounds.

October 5, 1921, was the opening game of the 1921 World Series.


The Yankees beat the Giants, 3 to 0.


It was the first World Series broadcast on the radio.

On the same day, President Harding presented President Theodore Roosevelt's chair to the Roosevelt Memorial Society.


President Roosevelt's friend, Gen. Leonard Wood, became the Governor General of the Philippines.  He'd once been a serious contender for the Oval Office.

The Interstate Commerce Commission was photographed.


Wednesday, March 10, 2021

March 10, 1921. Royalty


 Newly appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. on this day in 1921.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., whom friend called "Ted", was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the same position that his father had held in the first McKinley administration and his cousin Franklin had held in the Wilson administration.

Like his father, his personal connection with the military was in the army.  His father was an officer in the New York National Guard prior to his appointment, and of course went on to become a cavalry colonel in the Spanish American War, winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, conferred very much posthumously, for his leadership of the assault on Kettle Hill.  Ted Roosevelt had served as an officer during the Great War and would go on to be a Brigadier General during World War Two, also winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, in his case for his role in Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944.

Ted Roosevelt was a rising figure in politics at the time, but after the election of his cousin Franklin, which he opposed, he retired from that pursuit seemingly with all of the remaining descendants of his famous father.

Helen of Greece and Denmark.

Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, daughter of the deposed King of Greece, married the louse Crown Prince Carol II of Romania.  He'd ultimately abandon her some years later, renounce his thrown (he was then the king) and take up permanently with a mistress.

She went on to be the Queen Mother of Romania as her son Michael grew up.  Michael would go on to be the last King of Romania, occupying that position during World War Two and, fairly amazingly, for a time after it even as the country had Communism foisted upon it.  Helen and her son would be tragic figures, but Helen is notable for her efforts to save Romanian Jews during the Holocaust, for which she was later counted as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Somehow I missed the fact that the master biographer Edmund Morris died last May.

He was 78 years old.

His series on Theodore Roosevelt, started as work when he was a graduate student, is an absolute masterpiece.  The three volume work was interrupted by his biography on Ronald Reagan, which I haven't read, but in which he included unusual writing techniques including the acknowledge inclusion of fiction in order to illustrate events which actually happened, a technique which lead the work to be condemned and which I suspect was done to address the problem that Ronald Reagan's early years simply weren't that interesting.

Morris was born in Kenya and had a clipped upper class English accent.  His early career was not in history or writing and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, his first book, was not issued until he was 40 years old.  His last well known work, Colonel Roosevelt, and the second volume of his history of Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, were delayed by his twelve year effort researching Reagan, an effort that lead him to the conclusion that Reagan was almost impossible to understand.  

Morris wrote only seven books, with his final work on Edison being published after his death.  He'll always be remembered for his three volume set on Theodore Roosevelt.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

The Interior Conflict

"We'll be here, " Wilbarger said.  "You won't have to hunt us up"
"Wait a minute, " Call said.  "What's your horse brand, or do you have one?"
"I have one, " Wilbarger said".  "I brand HIC on the left hip."
"Are your horses shod?" Call asked
"All shod," Willbager said.  "Bring 'em if you see 'em".
"What HIC stand for?" Augustus said.
"Well, it's Latin," Wilbarger said.  "Easier than what you wrote on that sign."
"Oh," August said.  "Where'd you study Latin?"
"Yale college," Wilbarger said. Then he and Chick trotted off.
"I figure he's a liar,"Augustus said.  "A man that went to Yale college wouldn't need to trail cattle for a living."
"How do you know?"  Call said.  "Maybe the family went broke.  Or maybe he just wanted an outdoor life."
Lonesome Dove, page 105.*

Every now and then somebody I know will claim that I look like Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1904/05.  Colorado.

I don't see it myself and I'm certainly making no effort to.  I think people say that as I have a heavy mustache, as Roosevelt did, and I wear very round glasses, as Roosevelt also did.  Having said that, Roosevelt normally wore the now long gone pince nez type of glasses which were more or less the contact lenses of their day.**  He wore more conventional glasses when doing something outdoors.  I have adopted contact lenses, which I hate, recently because I have to work with a computer daily and that allows me to wear reading glasses and therefore not be constantly changing glasses during the day.  When I wear glasses, which I almost always do outside of the office, I wear B&L rimless temple frames, which Roosevelt did not and which I don't think even existed in his day.  I wear those as they have small lenses and I hate large lenses.  I also just like the style of them.

All of which basically goes to say that if you have a heavy mustache and you work in town, people are going to claim you look like Theodore Roosevelt or Pancho Villa, depending upon your mindset and maybe the color of your hair.

Emiliano Zapata.  Now that's a mustache.

Now, I like Roosevelt, so I don't want to be taken to be holding otherwise.  I just don't want to be regarded as a Roosevelt impersonator.  That's not, however, why I'm bringing this topic up here.

I've been posting some fairly grim posts here recently.  One of them might be, although I hadn't considered it to be, my post on my occupational history the other day.  About the same time that I posted that I made a similar remark to two friends of mine, who happen to be married to each other.  The husband in that family is a lawyer, but also a psychologist of a specific type, and had an immediate reaction to it, which the wife also did in less scientific terms.

The basic gist of it was that "you're an intellectual and would have been miserable in any other occupation other than the law".  He's said something similar in the past and, as he's a European, he expanded that out a bit to include "the clergy and the law".

That's a really common view in a broad sense and one of the interesting things about it is that the view actually operates in society to keep you doing certain things.  Another interesting thing about it is the belief, and perhaps it's true, that a person who has that sort of makeup, an intellectual frame of mind and a strong attraction to the outdoors, is in someway at war with themselves.

Maybe, however, it's the modern world that's at war with people of that mindset.

The Roosevelt analogy people make is interesting in that Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a child. So was I. Indeed, the only really good written description of what its like to have asthma is given in David McCullough's biography of Roosevelt's youth, Mornings on Horseback, which is an excellent read.  McCullough there, and Edmund Morris in his masterpiece first volume on Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, go on to describe how TR's father told him as a child that he "had the mind" but "didn't have the body", and he'd have to "make the body".  Roosevelt certain did that.  Anyhow, as part of that, he not only conquered his asthma, but he developed an immense existenail fondness for the outdoor life.

My parents never said anything like that to me, but what they did do was simply raise me normally and make sure that I did have physical activity, which was mostly swimming.  I developed an immense existential love of the outdoors simply by being around my father and by being raised in rural conditions.  My attraction to the outdoor life, however vastly exceeded that of my father's, which is saying something.  I've never gotten over it in any fashion and its as intense now as it was when I was a teenager.

Morris notes in his book, although I'm not sure of where the quote can be found, that when Roosevelt was a young man an observer noted to him that as a man with a strong mind and a deep attraction to the outdoor life, he'd always be in an internal struggle.  If that's true, Roosevelt certainly managed it well.  But is that true?

Well, it may be.  But maybe people just don't like the idea very much.

Indeed, it's true now, it wasn't always true.  For one thing, people's careers tended to be much more fluid at one time and for that reason people didn't really think it weird to be a lawyer and a farmer simultaneously.  John Adams was.  And there's any numbers of similar examples.

I don't find that to be anywhere near the case now, although there are examples.  Indeed, usually a person who tries to do two things such as that is regarded as occupying the more outdoorsy one as a hobby or a retirement position.  And because its regarded as a hobby, or retirement, avocation, it's not taken seriously.

Cowboy, 1887.  At this time being a cowboy was a glamourous occupation.

Even rarer are examples of people who have pretty high intellects and opt for something that doesn't seem, in society's view, to reflect that.  Society tolerates, although only barely, a person being in agriculture if they were born into it. So a person born a farmer can stay in the family business.  But somebody breaking into it from the outside is pretty rare.  Rarer yet are people who simply enter an outdoor career as a "hand", so to speak, and economics is part of that.  Hands don't get paid as well and therefore people tend not to enter those fields, except perhaps temporarily, if they can do something else.  It's the great economic motivator.  Put another way, being an actual cowboy, as opposed to being a rancher, puts you in a state of lifelong poverty that most people will probably seek to avoid.

This has particularly been the case since World War Two.  Prior to the Second World War entire classes of Americans opted for occupations that didn't require university in part because not as many did, but in part also because it was foreclosed to them.***

Indeed, one of the great myths of the practice of law is that it's always been a profession of the elite. That's far from true.  For much of the post World War Two era it was the blue collar world's introduction into the white collar world. Indeed, a lot of blue collar parents pushed their children into it under the belief that: 1) it didn't actually involve work, and 2) every lawyer was rich.  Neither of those things was in any fashion true.  At any rate, if you know lawyers whose parents came of age during the Second World War or earlier you probably know somebody whose experience is just that.  A lawyer I practiced with for years had a father who was a career railroader.  Another one had a father who was a bar owner.  There are a lot of such examples.

Mistaken impression or not, what's come to be the case is a subtle, or sometimes outright, push towards certain types of careers.  Adding to that push is the fact that our modern world has eliminated outdoor jobs at a blistering rate so that people are really left with a selection of indoor ones, not all of which everyone can occupy.  You have to be good at math, for example, to be an engineer.

That also has meant that the push exists in a continual and understated way that few really grasp.  It's part of our culture.  In the film Stand By Me, for example, we learn that one of the early teen kids whose really smart, but from a blue collar family, overcomes what is portrayed as a negative fate by becoming, of course, a lawyer.  That's all the more there is to it. He's smart, so he becomes a lawyer.  Voila, success.

And maybe it is, but a person has to at least wonder how we got to this point.  And maybe that should give us pause.

In other words, in 1982 or 83 (can't remember which, probably 83) my CC history teacher suggested that I consider a career in the law based upon my written papers, was he acting responsibly?  No doubt he believed so, and I believe now he was as well. But he didn't really know me.  And its remarkable that only two figures I knew at the time every commented on it.  One was a geology professor I knew really well, also at CC, whom I caught back up with as I was getting to go to law school.  He mentioned another student who had done the same (I didn't know him) and regarded the decision with disdain.  The other was the mother of one of my friends whom I'd known forever, and who I, as an adult, regarded as a friend.  "I don't see you as a lawyer" was her comment, although I later became her lawyer.

________________________________________________________________________________

*Hic translates as "this".

**Which are oddly making a comeback as portable reading glasses.

***An aspect of that change is that its now the case that single wage earner households have become rare and the sort of situation that existed mid 20th Century, in which a person might work in some of them and still enjoy a middle class income on one job has ended.

Monday, April 20, 2020

The USS Theodore Roosevelt. What happened, why it matters, and why the press dropped the ball.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is not a cruise ship.



The ship with its complimentary ships left San Diego on January 17, 2020. At the time, COVID 19 tests basically didn't exist in any sort of quantity in the United States and the Pandemic hadn't yet become that.  It was, at that time, a Chinese epidemic.  There would have, therefore, been no reason to include test kits in its medical supplies and it's very unlikely that the disease was present among the 4,865 sailors on board ship.

On January 20, the first reported case of COVID 19 surfaced in the US in Washington States.

It arrived in Guam for a port visit on February 7. By that time, the Pandemic was rolling and was known to be in the U.S. and Italy, but it still wasn't regarded as a pandemic yet and still wasn't appreciated. The Italian cases had only surfaced on January 31.

On February 26 Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered combat commanders to inform him before they made Coronavirus related protection decisions in order to keep the military from being scene to contract President Trump's declaration that the number of COVID 19 cases, fifteen, would "be close to zero" "within a couple of days."  Two days later Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stated that the 7th Fleet, of which the USS Roosevelt was part, would be spend fourteen days between port visits in order to slow the virus, however.

On March 5 the Roosevelt put in at Danang, Vietnam.  Vietnam had already reported sixteen cases but it also reported them all as having been resolved.  Crew from the ship were allowed liberty in Vietnam, but were also screened for COVID symptoms upon returning to the ship.  We now know, of course, that not everyone who picks up the virus exhibits symptoms.  Three days later new cases of COVID 19 are reported in Vietnam, including in two British tourists in Danang.   The Roosevelt leaves Vietnam the next day, although not because of that.

The Roosevelt is an aircraft carrier, of course, and flying missions, some of which leave the ship and return to it, keep on keeping on.

On March 15 sailors based in San Diego begin to report with the disease. 

On March 22, the first sailor on board the Roosevelt is diagnosed with it.  Two more are the following day. All re medicated off the ship, but reports keep coming in. 

On March 26, the entire ship's crew starts getting tested.  The Acting Navy Secretary reports that the ship will put in at Guam in a scheduled stop but the crew will not be allowed to leave the pier other than those who are to be evacuated for medical treatment there.  It puts in on the following day and eight sailors are removed for treatment.

On March 29, the Navy Secretary asks his chief of staff to contact the commander of the vessel and the two exchange emails. The commander and his officers were struggling with what to do.  They senior officers of the ship were joined by two Admirals who were senior to the commander, Cpt. Crozier, in regular fleet roles.  They favored smaller mitigation efforts than Cpt. Crozier as they did not want the Roosevelt removed from action as a surface asset.

Let's repeat that, they didn't want the Roosevelt removed as a surface asset in the Pacific. This is a critical pint.

The following day the deputy spoke to Crozier who complained that his superiors were not reacting to the ships situation properly.

Later that day, March 30, Crozier sent a four page unclassified memorandum via email to at least twenty Navy personnel including his staff and individuals inside and outside of his chain of command that asked for urgent help in executing all but 10% of his crew from the ship least sailors "die unnecessarily".  Crozier's commander, Rear Adm. Baker, learned of the email when he boarded the ship later that day.  Following that the Acting Secretary held a conference call regarding the situation.  Following that, Corzier posted to the ship's Facebook page (yes, it has a Facebook page) that “The TR Team is working with the great folks at Naval Base Guam to get Sailors off the ship and into facilities on base to help spread the crew out.”

The next day Crozier's letter hits the San Francisco Chronicle.  Sailors begin to be evacuated.

By the following day, April 1, up to 1,273 sailors have been tested, of whom 93 have tested positive, of which 7 were asymptomatic.  593 tested negative.  A plan to leave a skeleton crew onboard the ship, which carriers nuclear weapons, is developed.  Later in the day, according to the Secretary, the Secretary begins to receive communications from sailors on board the ship contesting Crozier's descriptions of the level of the emergency.  The Secretary and the Department of the Navy publicly supports Crozier but Moldy indicates privately that he's now inclined to relieve Crozier.

By April 2, 114 of the ship's crew have tested positive.  On that day Moldy states he's reached a conclusion about Crozier, that being;
“Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally when acting professionally was what was needed most at the time. We do and we should expect more from the commanding officer of our aircraft carriers…It unnecessarily raised alarms with the families of our sailors and Marines with no plan to address those concerns. It raised concerns about the operational capabilities and operational security of that ship that could have emboldened our adversaries to seek advantage. And it undermined the chain of command, who had been moving and adjusting as rapidly as possible to get him the help he needed"
He later announced publicly that he'd decided to relieve Crozier of command.

By the following day, 137 of the ship's crew is positive for COVID 19, 95 of them whom are symptomatic.  Crozier leaves the vessel to the cheers of its sailors.  The number would keep climbing, and would include Crozier, but as of the current date, it does not exceed 300.  It does climb, however, every day.

On Monday, April 6, Secretary Moldy addressed the ship's crew and stated:
If [Crozier] didn’t think that information was going to get out into the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was A, too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose. And that’s a serious violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which you are all familiar with.
This goes on, with back comments from the crew in support of their commander.

So, the net results is that in a relatively short amount of time it appears around 300 sailors (guessing) from the USS Roosevelt came down with COVID 19.  Had the ship remained at sea on deployment, which actually was never exactly what was being pondered, the numbers would have grown catastrophic.  The Navy, however, after becoming aware of the problem, did develop a plan, but it was likely not an adequate one under the circumstances.  It likely was a plan, however, that comported with the evidence at the time.  Cpt. Crozier didn't agree with the plan, went around his commanders for help, and caused a situation that necessitated another result.  He's been relieved and now the Acting Secretary of the Navy has resigned.

Which leaves us with these questions?
  • How did this whole thing happen in a time of pandemic?
  • Was the Acting Secretary right to relieve Crozier?
  • Was the firing, which is more or less what it was, of Secretary Moldy the right thing to do?
  • Should anyone else be disciplined, and if so, how?
The answer to all of these, save for the first one that can't be answered yes or no, is an absolutely clear yes.

Let's break it down.

How did this whole thing happen in a time of pandemic?

The short answer to this would be realpolitik, which is often pretty ugly and aggravating.


We should likely assume that the Roosevelt left the United States with no COVID 19 on board, although we don't really know that. The timelines would suggest that, however.  It appears pretty clear that the disease was picked up in Vietnam.

But why was the ship putting in at Danang in the first place, and why now of all times.

Starting with the first question first, the U.S. Navy has started to put in at Danang as the Vietnamese Communist fear the Chinese Communist more than they do anyone else, and for good reason.  The People's Republic of China may have aided North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, as it very much did, even supplying 100,000 troops to man air defense artillery in the North during the war, but under their respective Marxism, the Chinese remain Chinese and the Vietnamese remain Vietnamese, and they do not like each other.  The Vietnamese fear the Chinese for the same reasons that many (maybe all) of China's neighbors do; the big country is territoriality aggressive.

Japan, Taiwan (itself a Chinese nation), the former European colonies on mainland China, and just about everyone else who is near China, worries about it. And for a long time the PRC has been getting pushy in a 19th Century colonial expansion sort of way.  There's good reason to worry about China, if you are near it. And Vietnam has a longer history of being invaded by China than it does for being invaded by anyone else.

So the US, the late Vietnam War aside, is a good pal to have if you live on the same block as China.

And like China, Vietnam's modern Communist state is still Communist, sort of, or not, or just hard to figure out, economy wise.  It's not a democracy, but Karl "I'd rather be a sitting on my arse in the British Library than working" Marx wouldn't recognize it as a Marxist country if he stepped out of a Tardis in Ho Chi Minh City and looked for the library.  He'd probably not make it past the Victoria's Secret before busting into tears.  Indeed, the only nation in the world that old Karl would probably feel happy about is the unhappy land of North Korea, a real Communist state.

None of which makes Vietnam a Jeffersonian democracy.

But 's sort of the reason that we put in there.  We're trying to block the Chinese and the Vietnamese need some blocking.  Besides, as both we and the Chinese know, Vietnam is a tenacious combatant when adequately supplied and that's handy if something bad occurs.

None of which is a good reason to put into Danang is an epidemic.

Granted, the Vietnamese were reporting that they had COVID 19 eradicated at the time. Still, when you put in, in a port, sailors go ashore on liberty, and if there's anything circulating in a society, they're going to get it.

And hence the first mistake.  The USS Roosevelt should not have put in, in Danang. An excuse could have been made.

And that's the product of the first real error, which we've set out above:
On February 26 Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered combat commanders to inform him before they made Coronavirus related protection decisions in order to keep the military from being scene to contract President Trump's declaration that the number of COVID 19 cases, fifteen, would "be close to zero" "within a couple of days."  Two days later Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stated that the 7th Fleet, of which the USS Roosevelt was part, would be spend fourteen days between port visits in order to slow the virus, however.
The President isn't an epidemiologist.   The military can't openly say "whoa there. . . we don't agree with that", but it can take reasonable steps to address a situation.  On February 26 the Roosevelt had already been to Guam.  It can be argued that it really shouldn't have put in there, but that would be asking a bit much.  On February 26, the better call would have been for the Navy to ban port calls in Asia, which it easily could have done, and a pretext for it could have been found.

Heck, North Korea always provides a pretext for a redeployment.  That could have been used.

A "heads shall roll" type of mistake?  Maybe.

So we can't really fault the commander of the Roosevelt for putting into Danang, although I've seen a back channel comment that does just that.  It was a pre scheduled port call.  The decision to go there was a bad one, and the decision to route all sorts of stuff so as to not contradict the Administration could have been done differently.

So that's how COVID 19 boarded the USS Roosevelt.

But what then?

Was the Acting Secretary right to relieve Crozier?

What happened then is that  the disease, which is serious, became known on the ship and the commander either; 1) freaked out, or 2) purposely took an action that he knew would end up in his being relieved. We don't know which really occurred. What is clear is that he was massively insubordinate and had to be relieved.

Looking at it long term, it's clear that Crozier understood the threat better than his immediate superiors did, both of whom were on the vessel at various times during the early stages of the crisis.  Crozier would have stripped the ship of all but a skeleton crew and made due.  That may not have worked, quite frankly, but if something was going to arrest the spread of the disease, that would have. That was probably the only thing that would have by the time the infection was detected.

But that would have also taken a major combat asset in a tense part of the globe, one equipped with nuclear weapons and one which is a major deterrent to North Korea and China, pretty much off the table.

And there's real reasons not to do that, if you can avoid it.

China is brutal enough that it welded the doors shut of apartments where COVID 19 was present.  It's quarantine was effective, if it was, because of its extreme and brutal nature.  An extreme and brutal regime, it is a smart one, and there's no reason to think that China would take advantage of a pandemic to strike its neighbors, but it's not impossible.  If it did so, it would likely be in the guise of a humanitarian action, and quite limited, probably directed at Hong Kong, with which it was having a great deal of trouble just prior to the epidemic.  If it did occupy Hong Kong that would be unlikely to result in a larger conflict with anyone, but it's not impossible.

Indeed, if there was a larger event, it would likely be directed at North Korea, which is a pain for everyone. But there's every reason to believe that the Coronavirus Pandemic is probably a royal mess in North Korea and the Chinese would not want to bother with that.  Being cynical by policy and nature, it'd probably let hundreds of thousands of North Koreans die before it stepped in with a "humanitarian mission".

Which takes us to North Korea.

If a Chinese strike against anyone in this context is unlikely, a North Korean one is not.

North Korea has close and continual contact with China and COVID 19 is there for sure.  And the nation, other than its capacity for sheer brutality, has no real ability to deal with anything of this type.

Given that, the infection is probably severe and is probably basically unaddressed.  It's also undoubtedly in its army.

The leadership of North Korea is not only brutal, its paranoid.  The nation is weak to start with and more isolated every day.  If it could seize South Korea, it'd massively boost its economic position, briefly, and it'd boost its strategic position, sort of.  And seizing South Korea wold prevent South Korea from seizing it.  South Korean isn't going to try that, but North Korean no doubt fears that it will.

With an army ravished by COVID 19 and with a paranoid leadership, why not try to strike while you still have an army and with the United States completely distracted? 

The military has to plan for contingencies like that. And that is a real one.  And that's why the Navy doesn't announce "gosh, we need to take the Roosevelt off the map" any more than it would state "gosh, the 2nd Infantry Division is at 50% strength due to COVID 19".  It won't do it, it can't, and it shouldn't.

But that's basically what Crozier did.

Now, Crozier disagreed with his superiors and there's every reason now to believe he was right in his assessment.  Btu announcing that in the clear created a global strategic problem for the Navy that was contrary to the desires and expressed views of his superiors.  Going around them is so far off the Navy chain of command map that it was completely improper.  Crozier had to know that.

Which leads me to believe that he knew that he'd have to resign.

Which leads to this.  He should have resigned first.

It's the old Napoleonic maxim that an officer who disagrees with an order has two choices; 1) follow them, or 2) resign.  Going around the chain of command is almost never proper and it wasn't here. 

It's that which required Crozier to be relieved, not anything else.  A military can't tolerate officers doing this.

It can't tolerate enlisted men doing it either, which we will get to in a moment.

But was Crozier right?

He may have been.

That sounds like we're talking cross purposes, but since all of this occured one sailor had died and it's perfectly reasonable to believe that more would have.  Crozier may have been 100% correct in his actions and felt the safety of his crew mattered more than his carrier.

There is precedent for things like this.  Theodore Roosevelt, for example, went over the heads of his superiors in 1898 when the members of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry began to come down with malaria at a disastrous rate in Cuba.  Now, of course, Roosevelt wasn't a career officer, but the move wasn't without its risks and it probably did help keep him from being considered for a command during World War One, although that wasn't the only reason, to be sure.

The point is, in some circumstances, a person  must follow the dictates of their conscience even in a military organization knowing that it's going to go badly for you personally.  Crozier likely did just that.

Was the firing, which is more or less what it was, of Secretary Moldy the right thing to do?

A democratic government also doesn't put itself in a situation in which its leaders get into an open spat in public with a military leader.

Truman didn't do that with MacArthur.  He simply relieved him.  He didn't fly to his last command and call MacArthur a dangerous wackadoodle in his declining years in public.  People were mad at Truman but he just endured it.

Secretary Moldy going to the Roosevelt to address the crew was completely improper.  He made a bad situation worse, and his "resignation" was completely appropriate.

Should anyone else be disciplined, and if so, how?

Yes, top and low.

 Moldy's actions at the Roosevelt provoked an exchange with the sailors.  This is unprecedented.

There are instances of relieved commanders being cheered by troops, but not in such a  public manner.  The last I can think of involved the relief of Gen. Terry Allen and Gen. Theodore Roosevelt in Italy in World War Two. They were beloved by their men and were lauded upon their being relieved.  But neither was relieved for a disciplinary reasons (and both came back into later service during the war). 

The crewmen of the Roosevelt cheering their CO was perhaps inappropriate but Crozier should have known that an enlisted celebration of insubordination shouldn't occur and would likely lead to bad results for those who did it.  He should have tried to stop them. Simply calling them into attention likely would have worked, maybe.

Moldy going to the vessel was simply delusional.  But Navy enlisted men arguing and commenting with him is completely inappropriate in the military system and an act of rank insubordination.

Things like this are really rare in the US military, but generally when they occur they are career enders for those involved.  The discipline tends to be disguised and in the form of rank reductions and dead end assignments.  As it can't really be known how many men were involved, it simply becomes a disciplinary sanction on all of them. And that should occur here. The Roosevelt is in port and most of the men are off. They should be reassigned to command individually once cleared and it made known why this is occuring. Those assignments should make it clear that they aren't wanted and that they should leave as soon as possible.