We remember Barbara Tuchman (1912-89)

Barbara Tuchman was born in New York City on this day in 1912.    She died in 1989.

She wrote several books such as "The march of folly" that I read in the 1980's.     However, it was ''The Guns of August,'' a book about World War I, that made her famous.   It was about the background and events that led the world to war in 1914.

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1933: The Lone Ranger debut on the radio

Like some of you, I grew up watching "The Lone Ranger" on TV.  In my case, it was the Spanish "dubbed" version of the show before we came to the US.  

As I learned, the show started on the radio many years ago.   In 2010,  I heard some of these old radio shows and they were great.   

Eventually, radio became TV and "The Lone Ranger" was seen by millions of kids like me.

 

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We remember Sandy Amoros (1930-1992)

Edmundo (Isasi) Amoros was born in La Habana on this day in 1930. He died in Miami in 1992.

He was an extra outfielder in those great Brooklyn teams who played the New York Yankees in 6 World Series between 1947 and 1956.   The Yankees and Dodgers were the two best teams in baseball during that period. 

We remember Sandy Amoros for the  the big catch that saved Johnny Podres’ shutout in game 7 of the 1955 World Series.

It was the only World Series victory for the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers.

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We remember Thomas Paine

We remember  Thomas Paine who was born in the UK on this day in 1737.

In 1774, Paine arrived in Philadelphia and soon came to support American independence.  

"Common sense" should be required reading in high school.   Every American kid should be introduced to Paine's ideas.

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We remember General Douglas McArthur (1880-1964)

We remember General Douglas McArthur, who was born on this day in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1880.  

He graduated from West Point in 1903 and went on to serve in World War I.    In World War II, McArthur was the commander of Allied forces in the Pacific.    In 1951, President Truman dismissed him for differences over the Korean War.    The general died in 1964.

 

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1888: The National Geographic Society was founded

On this day in 1888, a group of geographers, explorers, teachers, lawyers, cartographers, military officers and financiers met in Washington DC.    They eventually founded The National Geographic Society.    

Nine months later, the Society started publishing the magazine that we grew up reading.

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We remember Paul Newman and the movie "Exodus"....

We remember Paul Newman, who was born on this day in 1925.   One of his great movies was "Exodus":

"Exodus".....Paul Newman (1925-2008)........... https://t.co/T9vq9zN2xJ via @amazon

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) January 27, 2018

We remember Paul Newman (1925-2008)

We remember Paul Newman, who was born in Cleveland on this day in 1925.      

He became one of the top movie stars of the 20th century, from "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) to "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' (1958) to "Exodus" (1960) to "The Hustler" (1961) to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) to "The sting" (1974).      

It was a long and successful career.   Newman died in 2008.

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We remember Cesar Gutierrez (1943-2005)

Cesar Gutierrez was born in Venezuela on this day in 1943.     He died in 2005.

He hit .235 over 223 games.   His best season was 1970 when he played in 135 games with Detroit.

We remember him for going 7-for-7 in a 12-inning game in 1970.      He had 128 career hits but 7 in the aforementioned game.   

His contract was purchased by the Expos but did not play in 1972.   

Cesar's big day earned him a place in baseball history books.

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A couple of songs about the girl in the window...

A few days ago, I heard "Silhouette" by Herman's Hermits. 

This song was originally recorded back in the late 1950'ss by The Rays, a "doo wop" group.

Herman's Hermits released it during the days of the so-called British Invasion of the US pop charts, or 1964-66.  

Herman's Hermits was very popular in our home.  In fact, my sister's pet canary was named Herman, a.k.a. Peter Noone!

My sister had Herman posters all over her room, along with Paul McCartney, Barry Gibb, Davy Jones and a few others! 

"Silhouette" is one of two songs that I can recall about watching "a girl" in the window.

The other is "From a window" recorded by Billy J Kramer in 1964, or in the middle of Beatlemania & The British Invasion mentioned above.  It was written by Lennon-McCartney but never released by The Beatles.

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January 1968: Remembering that time when North Korea committed an act of war against the USA

(My new American Thinker post)

 As we contemplate Putin's next move in Ukraine or China and Taiwan or Iran and the talks, we remember today another anniversary of the 1968 Pueblo incident.  Back then, North Korea seized the ship, the sailors were taken prisoner, and the Johnson administration was caught off guard, as David Welma wrote in 2018 on the 50th anniversary:

North Korea's brazen capture of the Pueblo caught Washington flat-footed.

"What's your speculation on what happened?" President Lyndon Johnson is recorded asking the next morning in a phone call to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

"Mr. President, I honestly don't know," McNamara replies. "I think we need a Cuban missile crisis approach to this, and goddamn it, we ought to get locked in a room and you ought to keep us there, insist we stay there, until we come up with answers to three questions: what was the Korean objective, why did they do it; secondly, what are they going to do now — blackmail us, let it go; and thirdly, what should we do now?"

Why did they do it?  North Korea saw a Johnson administration with too much on its plate, from the Tet Offensive to the deteriorating political situation over here.  It saw an opportunity and made their move.  The Johnson administration took the punch and did not punch back.

The crew of the USS Pueblo spent eleven months in North Korea.  Why didn't the U.S. respond to a clear act of war?  Again, weakness always sends the wrong message.  It invites more, not less!

History does not repeat itself exactly.  Nevertheless, the bad guys can see a weak U.S. president a mile away.  My guess is that they saw more of that weakness during the press conference last week.

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“The Black Scorpion” is not a bad movie at all

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On a scale of 1  to 10, I’d rank "The Black Scorpion" about a 3.    In other words, I  have seen a lot worst movies.   

The story is about a giant scorpion freed after volcanic activity in Mexico.   Everything gets interesting when the giant scorpion threatens the countryside and then heads to Mexico City.     The Mexican Army goes on offense and you see tanks and soldiers with machine guns shooting at the scorpion.

The lead actor was Richard Denning, who apparently made a bunch of these science fictions movies about monsters.   The leading lady was Mara Corday, a very pretty woman indeed.    

I love the trailer.

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1945: # 4 for FDR

On this day in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for the 4th time.    

A few months later, the president died and VP Truman took over.     The Constitution was subsequently amended limiting the presidency to two terms.

FDR's 4th election had a lot to do with World War II.   It was argued that it made no sense to change "horses in mid-stream".  In reality, President Roosevelt was exhausted and looked it.   

FDR did carry 36 states, 432 Electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote against Governor Dewey of New York.

FDR did not see the official end of the war.  He died weeks before VE Day and it was President Truman who had to make the tough calls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that summer.

 

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1966: Ted Williams elected to The Hall of Fame

The great Ted Williams was selected to the Hall of Fame on this day in 1966.   

He was probably the greatest hitter in history.  His numbers must take into consideration military service in World War II and Korea:  .344 career batting average, a .482 On Base Average, 2,654 hits, 2,021 walks, 521 HR and 1,839 RBI.   

Williams hit .406 in 1941, the last hitter to do so, and flirted again in 1957 with .388!

Williams was a bit temperamental with fans and the media.   However, there was not a better hitter once the game started.

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Winchester '73 is still a great movie

What's the test of a good movie?   In my opinion, a great movie is one that you can watch years later and still enjoy.   Or one where you pick up a few new things that you missed the first time.

"Winchester '73" is such a movie.  It stars Jimmy Stewart.   He is not "George Bailey" or the idealistic senator who goes to Washington.    He is a rough guy in this film.

It is the story of that famous rifle in the hands of several men.

Intense?  Very intense!  

You can get a copy here!

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We remember Mike Fornieles (1932-1998)

 

We remember Mike Fornieles who was born Jose Miguel (Torres) Fornieles  in Havana on this day in 1932.   Mike, as he was known, broke into the majors in 1952 with the then Washington Senators now Minnesota Twins.  He played for Chicago, Baltimore and Boston.   He was an effective bullpen pitcher saving 40 games for Boston in 1959-61.  

Mike died in Tampa in 1998.  He was a closer before we called them that.

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We remember Curt Flood (1938-97)

We remember Curt Flood who was born on this day in 1938.  

Curt was a pretty good baseball player.  He was a career .293 hitter and an important piece of the St Louis power team that won 3 National League pennants in 1964, 1967 and 1968.   

Flood played on a team that included Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Orlando Cepeda, Tim Mc Carver and quite a few others.

Back in 1970, Curt Flood filed a lawsuit against major league baseball.

However, he lost the case in 1972 when the Supreme Court favored baseball:

“On June 19, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against Curt Flood in Flood v. Kuhn, denying Flood free agency as a baseball player. Flood was trying to break the reserve clause that had tied baseball players to one franchise since the establishment of professional baseball.”

Eventually, the players’ union won the “free agency” fight in 1976 after 2 strikes and several court appeals.  The net result is that “Free agency” changed the game and blew up the owners’ monopoly.  

Flood never got to make the big bucks but he had a lot to do with the benefits that the players enjoy today.  He was the one who challenged the system and took a bullet for the union.

Flood died in 1997.

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We remember Don Zimmer (1931-2014)

We remember Don Zimmer who was born in Cincinnati on this day in 1931.   He was drafted by the Dodgers in 1949 as a shortstop.    As a player, he hit .235 over 1,095 games with 5 teams.   

Most of us remember him as a manager and Joe Torre's dugout coach with  the Yankees.       

As a manager, he won 885 and lost 858.   He led the 1989 Cubs to the NL East but lost to the Giants in the NLCS.    He did win several World Series titles under Joe Torre.

Great guy who spent 66 years in baseball.   He died in 2014.

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1961: President Eisenhower's farewell address

President Eisenhower said goodbye on this day in 1961.    His speech came after 8 years as president nd an impressive military career.    

Many remember this speech for one line about the "military industrial complex".   

Some say that his speech was misunderstood or that the line was taken out of context.   Others say that he was warning us about a corrupt relationship between government and the military industry., it was not the anti-military speech that so many in the left make it out to be, as David Greenberg pointed out.  

Overall, a good speech that should be read for what it said, i.e. spend wisely and watch for corruption.   

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The Eisenhower Farewell continues to be Misunderstood

Four days before turning the presidency to John F Kennedy, President Eisenhower delivered a speech that is remembered because of one line:

"In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the "military-industrial complex" that has developed in the post-World War II years.

A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. 

In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. 

No longer could the U.S. afford the "emergency improvisation" that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was "compelled to create a permanent armaments industry" and a huge military force. 

He admitted that the Cold War made clear the "imperative need for this development," but he was gravely concerned about "the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex." 

In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."  

First, the speech is worth reading. It shows how thoughtful and serious our 34th president was. He was a pre-television man and used the word rather than the image to make his point.

Second, President Eisenhower was concerned about corruption, or the close relationship between the defense industry and members of Congress. 

Last, and not least, it was not the anti-military speech that so many in the left make it out to be, as David Greenberg pointed out:

"Eisenhower's fears about standing military power never outweighed his conviction that it was necessary. 

As Ledbetter writes, Ike was, "by any definition, a leading figure in that complex." 

He loved the Army and devoted his life to it. 

Within the Republican Party, his great accomplishment was to drag the rank and file into the age of internationalism with his triumph over Robert Taft for the 1952 presidential nomination, which isolated the isolationists in the GOP."

Overall, a good speech that should be read for what it said, i.e. spend wisely and watch for corruption.   

It would be wise for a president today to deliver a speech but warn us about "the public-sector unions" and their influence on our politics. The corrupt relationship between the public-sector unions and elected leaders is more dangerous than the military industrial complex ever was, is, or will ever be.

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How Super Bowl III taught us never to trust conventional wisdom

Every Super Bowl Sunday reminds me of a few things, especially arriving in the US not knowing a thing about football, and the problems with believing in conventional wisdom.  

I learned about football in a few months watching Bart Starr hand off to Jim Taylor.  

I learned about the pitfalls of conventional wisdom, too.

Back in January 1969, conventional wisdom had the Colts destroying the Jets in Super Bowl III. However, the Jets upset the Colts 16-7 and Joe Namath forced us to take the AFL seriously.   

Let me say it again.  Every Super Bowl reminds me of that Sunday afternoon in Wisconsin when my dad, brother and I watched Joe Namath prove the experts wrong.  

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Remember what Dr. King said?

We celebrate that Dr. Martin Luther King, the late civil rights leader, was born on this day in 1929.

We recall that he once said this:

“I have a dream that my four little chidden will one day
live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color
of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have
a dream…..”

Well, we’ve come a long way baby!

In fact, Dr. King would not recognize the “woke culture” driving the left and Democrats today.

Dr. King’s civil rights movement was about correcting past wrongs and giving his children the opportunities he did not enjoy.

Unfortunately, today’s disciples are all about quotas or something else.

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We remember Rev Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

We remember the late Dr. King who was born on this day in 1929.

Dr. King was born at a time when Democrats were the party of segregation and the KKK.     

Therefore, it should come as no surprise Dr. King supported Republicans as we saw in this post by Frances Rice:    

“During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. 
It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. 
President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. 
Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. 
Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military. 
Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. 
And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. 
President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King. 
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited”. 
A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. 
It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). 
Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. 
Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation’s fist goals and timetables. 
Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.
Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. 
Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. 
Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. 
Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. 
President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans.”

It’s important that we remind the young people that it was Republicans who worked to open the door or end segregation in the South.

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"The search" is a great movie from 1948

"The search" is one of the best movies that I've seen in a while.    It is the story of young boy in post World War II looking for his mother.   

Along the way, the boy comes into contact with a US soldier played by Montgomery Clift.     

Eventually, the boy is reconnected with his mother but the story is worth every minute.

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1951: Robert Stack in "The Bullfighter and the Lady"

We remember today that Robert Stack was born on this day in 1919 in Los Angeles.   

Before he became famous with "The Untouchables", Stack made a few movies like "The Bullfighter and the lady".     It is a romance based in Mexico.

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1964: "Fail safe" with Henry Fonda

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"Fail safe' was in theaters this week in 1964.  The movie gets better with age.    

Maybe it's because I've always lived in a world with nuclear weapons.   Or maybe it's just an intense movie.   Or maybe both!

The story is this:  Human and computer errors order US bombers to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons.   The President tells the Strategic Air Command to help the USSR stop the planes.

It does not get any more intense than this movie, specially the telephone conversation between the President and the pilot of the lead bomber.

It's one of those "must watch movies".     The story comes from a best seller that I have not, but will read.

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2013 post: President Nixon (1913-1994)

A post from 2013:

President Nixon was born in California 100 years ago today.  He continues to be the most controversial president of the last 50 years.  He is admired and hated, loved and despised.

President Nixon was really the first politician that I followed.  I recall the '68 and '72 campaigns as a student.  Who will ever forget his trip to China?  or the resignation speech?  or the farewell speech the day that he left and Pres Ford came in?

Time has actually been kind to President Nixon.  He is now remembered as a great foreign policy strategist who managed the US out of Vietnam and opened the door to China.   His post presidency books are great, from "Leaders" to his incredible memoirs titled "RN".

Of course, Watergate will always be on the resume, too.

President Nixon also had a very nice family.  Mrs Nixon was a wonderful First Lady.  His two daughters are great.

It does not seem possible but Pres Nixon would have turned 100 today.  I guess that it also means that I am getting older too.

Happy birthday Pres Nixon!

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