M5 Stuart of the 1st Marine Division, Cape Goucester, January 16, 1944.
Cape Gloucester was officially secured, although mopping up operations would continue into April.
Dwight D. Eisenhower formally assumed the duties of the Commander in Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, although he had been acting in that capacity for some time.
The Red Army broke through German defenses north of Velikiye Luki.
Today in World War II History—January 16, 1944: Lt. Stewart Graham of the US Coast Guard becomes the first person to make a helicopter takeoff and landing aboard a ship underway—in a Sikorsky HNS-1
Sarah Sundin.
Today In Wyoming's History: January 16: 1944 USS Johnson County, which was not named that at the time, but later renamed that in honor of several counties in various states, including Wyoming, called that, commissioned.
The renaming
By Jjw - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69657529
Amazingly, she is still afloat as a museum ship. renamed once again, this time as the ROKS Wi Bong, reflecting her transfer to the Republic of Korea in 1958. Having served in World War Two, she served again in the Vietnam War in the Korean Navy. The naming of the ship after Johnson County occured in 1955.
The Japanese submarine I-181 ran aground on Gneisenau Point at Kelanoa Harbour, New Guinea.
Oops
The U-544 was sunk in the Atlantic by rockets and depth charges from Grumman TBF Avenger planes from the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal.
SBD’s on a combat mission off New Georgia Island in the Solomon Islands, January 16, 1944.
1944. Rev. Francis Penny was appointed pastor of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Cody but he resided at St. Barbara's in Powell where he was administrator in the absence of Rev. Fred Kimmett. Rev. Kimmett was serving as Chaplain in the U.S. Armed Services.
The Sears Roebuck in Madison Wisconsin caught on fire.
Raúl Pateras Pescara kept his model 2F helicopter aloft in the air for 8 minutes and 13.8 seconds at Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris. That was a helicopter record.
Gonzalo Córdova was elected President of Ecuador with over 93% of the vote.
María Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado García, better known as Katy Jurado, famous for High Noon, was born in Guadalajara. I don't care for High Noon much, but I do like her performance in it.
Jurado was married twice, once to Víctor Velázquez and then to Ernest Borgnine, and had a number of affairs with notables ranging from Marlon Brando to Louis L'amour. She died in 2002 at age 78.
The Roman Senate, suspending its duties, bestowed the title Augustus on Gaius Octavius, the posthumously adopted son of his uncle, Gaius Julius Caesar, and the Roman Republic ended.
You don't get democracy back on its own, once it's surrendered to a strongman. There's a lesson in there.
The happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.
And so we go headlong into the caucuses and primaries, which will start in mere days. The Iowa Caucus for the GOP is on January 15. The New Hampshire Primary Election is on January 23 (although a Democratic spat keeps Biden off that one).
Candidates can be seen from our prior editions, but the big question, right now, is whether Donald Trump will be found to be disqualified from running in the election and the GOP nomination go to somebody else, or whether he'll be the surprisingly strong candidate against incumbent Joe Biden. There are a surprising number of Republicans running, but the race is down to Trump, trailed by Hailey, DeSantis, and Christie. In the Democratic field, only Biden is really a serious candidate.
Trump was found to be ineligible to run in Colorado by that state's supreme court, although that state's Secretary of State bizarrely is putting him back on the ballot until the U.S. Supreme Court either takes up his appeal there or it doesn't.
Maine has likewise found him ineligible to run, which is also being appealed by Trump.
And so a defective process may give the nation two candidates it does not want.
Locally, in the local Senatorial race, John Barrasso, even though he has not yet officially declared, is running against Reid Rasner, who is running a doomed campaign to the right.
No Democrat has declared.
In the House race, nobody has declared at all, but presumably Harriet Hageman will run for reelection.
January 4, 2023
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Businesses tied to Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump received at least $7.8 million in foreign payments from 20 countries during his four years in the White House, Democratic congressional investigators said Thursday.
Of course, it'd be asking too much for Republicans accusing Joe Biden of impropriety due to his son's business dealings to now focus on Donald Trump, or to cease the focus in this area on Biden.
Cont:
Harriet Hageman announced her bid to be reelected with the release of a video:
January 5, 2024
Speaking of videos, somebody made this pro Trump video that Trump apparently shared on his social media:
Worship of a person to this degree is absolutely frightening, when you consider that some actually think this way.
And that Trump would share is appalling.
Cont:
The United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the certified Colorado case on February 8, after the Iowa Caucus. It's likely to take up the Maine case as well and combine them.
The 2nd Judicial District in Wyoming dismissed the lawsuit challenging Trump's position on the Wyoming ballot, as well as Cynthia Lummis' today. It might as well be mentioned that if the court in Wyoming had allowed the challenge to go forward, the presiding judge would undoubtedly have stood a good chance of losing her seat when she came up for retention. I'm not saying that was the basis of her decision, but almost any Wyoming jurist would have had to have that in mind. It'll be interesting to see if that decision is appealed, but my guess is that it will be.
January 10, 2024
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso has endorsed Trump.
I suppose this is no surprise, but it is an example of how politicians feel compelled to compromise what they really believe. I suspect that Barrasso has little love for Trump in reality, but feels that he must do to this or give some ammo to his competitor from the right.
Cont:
Not only did Barrasso endorse Trump, he's the first membership of the Senate leadership to do so. McConnell declined to do so recently.
Cont:
I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win
Chris Christie.
And so the last actual Republican dropped out of the race.
January 11, 2024
January 13, 2024
Cynthia Lummis has now endorsed Trump as well. No surprise.
June 15, 2024
Martin Luther King Day
Wyoming Equality Day
Iowa Caucus Day
On This Week, a Democratic member of Congress noted that Republican politicians who had opposed Trump were now rushing to endorse him, least they meet the ire of the MAGA crowed.
Probably two of the recent Wyoming endorsements fit that category.
Tonight at 7:00 p.m. the Iowa Caucus's will open in frigid weather, apparently not taking note that this is at least technically a day off for a lot of people (it isn't for most people). Gathering at 7:00 p.m. in order to choose a candidate for your party will be weighed, by many, against the agony of going out in the cold.
That's the only hope for those running against Trump.
It cannot help but be noted that the Iowa Caucus, while it probably made sense at one time, emphasizes the antiquated and downright stupid way the US picks its President. States position themselves to be first to pick, which none of them have the right to be. At least caucuses are party elections, not funded (I think) by the state. Most states have primaries which are party elections on the state's dime, which isn't just, and is arguably, in my view, unconstitutional.
To add to things, this year, Trump's ability to even hold office is presently in front of the United States Supreme Court.
Given all of this, I'm going to close this issue out with a few predictions, giving percentages.
I think Trump will take Iowa, and I'd give that a 100% chance. Biden will of course take Iowa.
I'm giving Haley a 60% chance of taking New Hampshire. New Hampshire doesn't like to look like Iowa's lapdog and it is a East Coast state with a history of acting independently.
Irrespective of that, if I'm wrong on the matters noted below, there's a 75% chance that Trump is the GOP nominee and a 100% chance Biden is the Democratic nominee.
Now, here's where some will think we're off the rails.
I think there's a 60% chance the United States Supreme Court will find Trump an insurrectionist unqualified to hold office.
When they do that, if they do, there will be a massive outbreak of right wing violence across the country.
If they do that, Haley will be the nominee.
I feel there's a 55% chance that Trump, who is an old man, who looks unhealthy, and who in my view is showing signs of dementia, will die before the election. He's showing signs of decline every day.
If he dies, and I think he will, Haley will be the nominee.
I feel there's a 40% chance that Biden will pass away of natural causes before the election.
If he dies, and I don't think he will, I have no idea who the nominee will be.
In a Biden v. Trump rematch, Trump will win. I don't want him to, but he will.
In a Biden v. Haley match, Haley will win. The Democrats seem incapable of accepting that they're going with an unelectable candidate.
Assuming that Biden and Trump are the nominees, at some point after Super Tuesday, there's a 55% chance that somebody announces a major third party run. I'm not sure who it will be, but Christie, Manchin and Cheney are all figures in that. My guess is that it will be Manchin for President, with Christie as VP.
Everyone always states that no third parties ever win, even the GOP itself was a third party that in fact won, displacing the dying Whigs. A third party here would displace the dying GOP. I'd give a third party as 60% chance of winning.
Given the furor he stirs up, there are a lot of things I fear this election many feature that I'm not going to post, as I don't want them to look like something I'm endorsing by mentioning them. Indeed, I'm afraid that they'll happen and desperately hope they do not.
This will close this edition. The next one will come out on the morning after, so to speak, of the Iowa Caucus.
Happy Days, the legendary sitcom, appeared to mixed reviews.
1974 Happy Days cast.
Clearly riffing off of 1950s nostalgia, less than 20 years after the end of the decade, the show had more or less been laid a path to success by the recent film American Graffiti, which also featured Ron Howard portraying a major character. Even before that, however, nostalgia had seen the rise of the rise of the band Sha Na Na which appeared in 1969 in sufficient time in which to appear at Woodstock.
American Graffiti, as we've noted here before, actually takes place in 1962, not the 1950s, but its not recalled that way. Howard, for his part, had grown up on television as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show, which had run from 1960 to 1968, but which is also commonly thought as taking place in the 1950s, even though there's no effort whatsoever to suggest that in the show, and contemporary audiences would not have taken it that way.
As the name of Happy Days implied, the American public, troubled by the news of the ear, or perhaps of the entire 1960s, conceived of the 50s as "happy days", irrespective of what they had actually been. The series would run for a decade. During that time, it had a pretty substantial impact on the pop culture of the era. My family didn't regularly watch it, probably as they'd all lived through the 50s and weren't nostalgic about it, but I can recall the revival of 1950s rock and roll it caused. And at the junior high I was attending, there were dances called "sock hops", which was a revival of a term strongly associated with the 1950s.
College shock hop, 1948. Sock hops were called that as students took off their shoes to dance on gym floors.
I was too shy to attend them.
On the same day, a panel of experts testified that the 18.5 minute gap in the now infamous Nixon tape conversation with H. R. Halderman of June 20, 1972, was made by serial erasures.
In Indonesia, a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka turned into a riot featuring an attack, oddly, on Chinese Indonesians.
The disappointing Comet Kohoutek made its closest pass by Earth. I recall going outside to look for it and, like thousands of others, being disappointed by not really being able to see much in spite of predictions to the contrary.
John Wayne visited Harvard at the invitation of The Harvard Lampoon to debate students on his all but forgotten film, McQ. He traveled to Harvard Square in an armored personnel carrier from Ft. Devens. Native Americans interrupted his travels to protest events at Wounded Knee. Wayne ignored a question about supporting the Hollywood blacklist.
All of which shows why people were nostalgic about the 1950s.
Proving that natural disasters do not take time out for war, the San Juan earthquake in Argentina killed 10,000 people and left 1/3d of San Juan's province's residents homeless.
Injured housed outdoors due to collapse of hospital.
The II Corps captured Monte Trecchio. Part of the offensive operations resulting in the capture were designed as a diversion for upcoming landings at Anzio.
Heavy fighting occurs north and sought of Leningrad as the Red Army begins to reverse a 900 day siege.
Australian forces on the Huon Peninsula of New Guinea take Sio.
Swordfish bill imbedded in a 2’ piece of sub-chaser hull. January 15, 1944.
The U-377 disappeared, probably sunk by the HMS Wanderer on January 17.
Actress Irene Dunne christened the SS Carole Lombard as Clark Gable, back from Army Air Force service, and Louis B. Mayer looked on. She was honored with the name, posthumously, due to her record-breaking war bond work prior to her tragic death.
King George V and Queen Mary opened a new session of Parliament.
The first radio play, ever, was broadcast by the BBC. The play was entitled Danger. The play, which as endured and been rebroadcast over the years, involves a plot featuring a young couple and an older man trapped in a pitch-black flooding mine.
The French Cabinet drafted a plan to stabilize the cascading franc. It called for tax hikes and a reduction in the size of the civil service.
The SMS Berlin of the republican German navy, the Reichsmarine left for a two-month tour of the North Atlantic, the first German warship to do so since World War One.
Ensign of the Reichsmarine.
The current German Navy is called the Deutsch Marine. Its ensign is as follows:
The Berlin was a prewar ship that had been retained under the Versailles Treaty. She would not be in service much longer, being decommissioned in 1929, even though she had been modernized and recommissioned in 1922. She became a barracks ship in Kiel that year, and survived World War Two. in 1947 she was loaded with chemical weapons and towed out and sank thereby becoming a lasting problem to later generations.
Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895. Depiction of a wake in Spain.
I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I certainly knew of him.1 Somehow or another, I also knew that a student that was in school with us, and who my cousins knew, was not only his daughter, but also one of his students. Apparently that was awkward.
I don't do a good job of keeping track of former teachers. I probably couldn't tell you where a single one of them was, even the ones I really liked, let alone those I only sort of knew by association. In his case, there was our classmate, whom I also didn't know (she was a couple of years ahead of me), but he was also known to our parents. Without knowing for sure, in looking at it, I think that must have been because he was from a Catholic family here in town.
My classmate died the year before last. She was 62.
I read his obituary as he was so well known locally. And then I recalled there were bits and pieces of his story I'd picked up over the years.
His wife was also a teacher.
Sometime after I left high school, the couple apparently civilly divorced.2 He remarried, and apparently to an apparently significantly younger women whom I take was also a teacher. According to the obit, they had a child after he retired, who would now be about 31. He would have been about 56 when she was born. I can dimly recall my parents and my father's siblings talking about this as well, mostly in a somewhat bemused manner, given the difficulties of raising an infant, in their view, when you are that old.
When my classmate died, her mother was mentioned in the obituary. Indeed, her obituary characterizes both of her parents as loving, and contains praise of them.
His obituary mentioned both of his daughters by his first marriage, and then goes on about his second. His wife, the mother of my classmate, isn't mentioned at all. The obituary is profuse on his latter "marriage", calling that individual, named in the obituary, the "love of his life" amongst other things.
Of course, the dead don't write their obituaries. If they did, who knows how they'd read? We might all fear how they'd be penned. I've read plenty where a "first" and "second" spouse are mentioned. This one is profuse on his love of one woman that he had children by and which the civil law would regard as his wife, but totally silent as to his wife who was the mother of my classmate. My classmate's obituary mentions her, and kindly, using the Americanism "step" to describe her as her "stepmother", which is polite, but the second "wife" of a divorced person isn't anything, relationship wise, to a child of the "first" marriage at all.3 Children, of a later marriage of any kind are, of course, as they're related by blood, i.e., genetically. Of course, children born out of wedlock to an illicit partner, to which I am in no way comparing this situation other than to note it, are "half" siblings as well.4
It must be a later child of the second union that wrote the obituary, as it concluded with the funeral details, those being an apparently civil funeral, followed by an "Irish wake", the latter something not really understood by Americans. A real wake comes before, not after, the ceremony, and the body of the deceased is present. Indeed, the body is key to the wake, and the dead's family and friends do not allow the body to be left alone. Prayer for the dead is a feature of it, but there is also food and drink and even courting, which in part has to do with the fact that life goes on, but in part because in more natural societies people live much closer to death than they do in our false one.
Everywhere, real wakes have much diminished.5
But then, so has our understanding of, and appreciation of the metaphysical and the existential, and as most people do not dwell deeply on those topics, and the culture has drifted many of those who drift with it bear no fault for having done so.
There's no Irish wakes without prayer, the deceased, and a sense of the next world having stepped into this one. In our age, however, we expect this world and how we define it to step into the next one.
1. In no small part because he was a well put together athletic man who drew hall monitor duty, but didn't seem to care for it much. Indeed, if you went by him in the hall, when he had it, he didn't bother to ask you where you were going.
2. I'll admit that this entry disregards the topic of Catholic annulment. Did they obtain one? No idea.
To add to that, do I know anything whatsoever about the circumstances of their "divorce" and what brought it about, including who brought it about. No I don't.
3. The etymology of the prefix "step" goes back to the 8th Century and denoted an orphan. It was later extended in Old English to connote a remarriage of a widow.
Some "step" parents, it might be noted, particularly in the case of an early death of an actual parent, or an abandonment by one of them, really step up to the plate and become effectively de facto parents.
The Pogues song Body of an American gives a good description of Irish wakes and how they can be. The movie Road To Perdition, however, gives a very good depiction of a traditional wake, complete with the body iced.
4. Again, as the fraud of civil divorce is so widely recognized as real in the Western World, I am in no way comparing the children of illicit affairs to the children of later contracted civil marriages.
5. I've been to a real wake once, for a deceased second cousin, and it was horrific. My father, who was 1/2 Irish, and 1/2 Westphalian by descent, but whose family did not retain any Irish customs, detested them.
6. Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
and let light perpetual shine upon them.
Thou art worthy to praised, O God, in Zion,
and to thee shall prayer be offered in Jerusalem.
Hear my prayer,
for to thee shall all flesh come.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
and let light perpetual shine upon them.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
DiMaggio, who we would have to assume had a thing for blond starlets, as this notes, would cap his marital attempts at two. Monroe attempted three times. So did Dorothy Arnold, who we would have to characterize as a minor actress. She died in 1970, leaving behind her third spouse.
Arnold and DiMaggio's union resulted in the only child either of them had, the troubled Joseph Paul DiMaggio III. He lived a troubled life, there being a lesson in here, but interestingly remained close to Monroe after his father and the actress divorced. He was one of the last people she called. He died at age 57.
This is an interior shot of St. Jude's Catholic Church in Kapolei, O'ahu, Hawaii. The large simple structure was built in 1998-99 and is slated to be replaced by a large church architecture structure once funds allows.
The Leningrad-Novgorod Offensive commences with the aim of lifting the siege of Leningrad. The Krasnoye Selo–Ropsha offensive also commenced.
Red Army sniper and Kazakh Aliya Nurmuhametqyzy Moldagulova (Russian Алия Нурмухамбетовна Молдагулова, Kazakh: Әлия Нұрмұхамедқызы Молдағұлова/Äliia Nūrmūhamedqyzy Moldağūlova) was killed in action.
The Polish Government In Exile again refused to accept unilateral decisions regarding Polish territory but said it was approaching the British and American governments to mediate questions between Poland and the USSR and that it was optimistic regarding resolutions.
The Red Army took Mozyr and Kalinkovichi.
The Japanese destroyer Sazanami was sun by the submarine USS Albacore off of Yap.
T/4 Clarence Benson of the 272nd QM Bakery on Kiska. 14 January, 1944.
Railroad unions accepted a proposal put forth by the Administration.
Sarah Sundin's blog has a bunch of interesting ones, including this:
'I do not speak rashly, but as I feel and think. I do not think that many bishops are saved, but that those who perish are far more numerous. The reason is that the office requires a great soul. For there are many things to make a bishop swerve from rectitude, and he requires great vigilance on every side.' (St. John Chrysostom)
Edward Peters@canonlaw Nov 20
I think this is right. I have been reflecting lately on the dread that should fill one’s heart when faced with the prospect of taking on an ecclesiastical or secular governing role. The power of office, and thus the personal responsibility for wielding it, is so enormous.
This was of course back in November, so this has been in the hopper for a while.
These two gentlemen were pondering things within the Catholic Church, with one being a Priest and the other a noted Canon Lawyer. They were rather obviously unhappy with some of the things in circulation right then, and there were a lot. Peters in particular has made some other comments like that from around that time.
I'm not going to comment on Bishops, but I am going to comment on politicians.
Catholic theology holds that lying is sinful and that it can be a grave sin. Yet we've seen some whoppers from Catholic politicians recently. Take Elise Stefanik, for example.
Kristen Welker: "Do you think it was a tragic day? Do you think that the people who stormed the Capitol should be held responsible to the full extent of the law?"
Elise Stefanik: "I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages."
Ms. Stefanik, you are a Catholic and lying on something like this is a grave sin.
And you are a mother. Your child is learning to be reprehensible through you.
Ms. Stefanik's behavior is appalling. Assuming she has a brain in her head, and takes her religion even a little seriously, she ought to be recanting this after standing in the Confession line.
And note, a person is obligated to attempt to rectify the impact of their sinful behavior where they can.
For most people, that doesn't amount to much. A run-of-the-mill Catholic can go to Confession, receive absolution, and that's pretty much it. But;
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
Luke, 12: 47-48.
Stefanik isn't the only one, there are lots of examples. On the right, there are Catholic politicians who are going along with populism as it's the current, and holding their tongues on things they shouldn't. On the left, there are Catholic politicians who support infanticide and gender mutilation, as that's to their political benefit.
Anyhow, just watching politics these days, it's hard not to see the system as broken. Watching Catholic politicians, it's hard not to view many of them as having made moral compromises that they may pay for eternally.
Indeed, such is the case it seems for politicians in general. John Barrasso, physician turned politician, Catholic turned Protestant, endorsed Trump last week. Why? Well, almost certainly for political reasons. Barrasso probably doesn't admire Trump, and he knows the election isn't stolen.
So politicians feel compelled to tell people what they want to hear, or those more powerful than themselves what they think that person wants to hear. And at some point you go from something like "no dear, that dress doesn't make you look fat", to something that grossly departs from the truth. And then you become somebody like Stefanik, who tells whoppers she almost certainly doesn't believe, and manages to choke it down and still go to Mass on Sunday, and who tells her little one that the truth matters.
Pope Francis, returning to a topic he's addressed before, apparently twice emphasized yesterday that homilies must be kept short, with the time length limited at 8 minutes. He reported also stated that the homilies "must go straight to the heart, cover issues in daily lives and steer clear of over sophisticated subjects".
The Pope is not a parish priest, but it's interesting to note that Pope Francis has not gained a reputation as a really effective communicator as Pope, with some of his critics accusing him of having injected confusion into the life of the faithful through some of his statements, most notably his recent one on blessing. Additionally, it's surprising to see the Pope address homilies, something that's really at the parish level, while at the same time at least one big issue is unaddressed.
I have to agree with the Pope on the length of homilies, and have noted here before that some lawyers imagine juries listening to them as they drone on and one. I'm not inclined, however, to underestimate the ability of modern audiences to grasp difficult topics, and at least again based on the experience of the law, I think current audiences grasp difficult matters more ably than any in history. At least in my view, some existential matters, such as the ultimate nature of men and women, need to be addressed in the West.
A patrol from the Wiltshire Regt., British X Corps, tries to draw fire from a German MG nest. 13 January, 1944. The soldier in front is carrying an Italian Model 38 submachine gun, the one in the rear a Thompson submachine gun. This is the second photo I've seen of a British soldier carrying a captured Model 38.
Today in World War II History—January 13, 1944: Germans make large-scale arrests of Danish resistance members. Chinese gain control of Tarung River line, driving back the Japanese in the Hukawng Valley .
Sarah Sundin's blog.
The Red Army took Korets. Part of pre-war Poland, it had been a small Jewish city. It is now in Ukraine.
The director of the United States Typhus Commission warned that Naples and southern Italy were seriously threatened by the disease.
The U-231 was sunk by a Vickers Wellington off of the Azores.
