2006: Saddam executed in Iraq

Saddam Hussein, the deposed dictator of Iraq, did not make it to the New Year: Saddam was executed on this day in 2006.   He argued with the guards before the execution, according to some news reports.

In my book, Saddam should have been removed in '98.  This is when he expelled the UN inspectors. Saddam gave the world the middle finger and made a mockery out of the UN, the cease-fire and the rule of law. On top of that, he was shooting at US/UK planes enforcing the UN resolutions and paying $25,000 to the families of terrorists blowing up Israelis.

Why did Saddam do all of this?  Because he knew that President Clinton would not take him out.  

The story finally ended on this day in 2006.

I thought that President Bush made a very good case for removing Hussein.

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Watching “Holiday Affair”.

 

Watching “Holiday Affair”....this is the story: “A young widow is romanced by a sales clerk whom she inadvertently got fired”..........these post-War romantic movies were great.....and Janet Leigh is cute and I suppose that women think the same of Robert Mitchum....fun movie! 

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1856 and a nice Christmas history

How about a Christmas story?    I found this in another blog:

"Massachusetts was the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday, in 1856.

By that time, most of our shared Christmas traditions were set, and Harper's Weekly, on January 3, 1863, featured a drawing of encamped soldiers receiving Christmas gifts from home.

Christmas become a federal holiday under President Ulysses S. Grant's 1870 declaration."

Enjoy your holiday!   

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December 2006: A double standard for Pinochet's funeral

Back in December 2006, General Pinochet's funeral created a little controversy in Chile, and elsewhere.     The outrage over his funeral was silly and confirms that the left treats dictators differently.

Clearly, there is a double standard.  The left suffers from selective indignation.     

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We remember Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007)

We remember Lady Bird Johnson, the former First Lady. (Former First Lady Died at 94). 

She was born Claudia Alta Taylor in Karnack, Texas on this day in 1922 and got the nickname "Lady Bird" as a small child.   The future First Lady married the future president in 1934.

In the 1950's,  Mr. Johnson became US Senate Majority Leader and one of the most powerful men in Washington.  In 1960, he became VP Johnson under President Kennedy.

Everything changed on November 22, 1963.  Many of us remember that incredible picture of LBJ assuming the presidency on Air Force One. He was sworn next to Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Johnson. It was one of the most incredible pictures of the 20th century!

During President Johnson's difficult presidency, Mrs. Johnson had to deal with outrageous attacks on her husband. Nevertheless, she kept her dignity and raised two wonderful daughters.

We miss Mrs. Johnson. She was a wonderful First Lady, wife, mother and grandmother. For more on her life, see this!

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We remember Connie Mack (1862-1956)

What can you say about a man who wore a business suit and managed a major league team for 50 years?    He ran the Philadelphia A's so long that the team was referred to as "The Mackmen".

According to SABR, he was one of the most consequential men in major league baseball history:  

Connie Mack’s Hall of Fame career spanned 65 major-league seasons as a player, manager, team executive, and owner. He posted 3,731 wins, a mark that exceeds any other manager’s total by more than 1,000 victories. He guided the Athletics to nine American League championships and won five World Series titles in eight appearances. He was the first manager to win three World Series titles, and the first to win consecutive titles two times. The valleys were as low as the peaks were high - he also endured a major-league record 3,948 losses, and his team finished last in its league 17 times. He built his dynasties with rising young players, won championships with the stars he developed, and then sold off those stars when he could no longer afford them.

Mack retired in 1950.    The A's moved to Kansas City in 1954 and then Oakland in 1968.     

Mack died in 1956 and spent 66 years in baseball.

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A very nice Christmas tree story with Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

We usually speak with Dr Ileana Johnson-Paugh about the US economy and other related issues.  It's been great having her as a guest this year.

Yesterday, we spent a big part of the show discussing her recent article:  My Christmas Tree

It is a recollection of a young woman growing up in Romania.  She lived in a country that downplayed faith.  It also forced its citizens to live with shortages and under repression.  

It was that way in every communist country, from the USSR to Cuba.

Here is the article:

"As long as I can remember, my Dad came home every December with a scraggly blue spruce, fragrant with the scent of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches. The frozen miniature crystal daggers would melt quickly on Mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked where he had found it, or how he could afford it. His modest salary of $70 a month barely covered the rent, utilities, and food. Mom had to work as well to afford our clothes. Prices were subsidized by the government and salaries were very low for everybody regardless of education and skill. We had to make do with very little.No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me. Two metal bars forged by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom. Our tiny apartment only had one bedroom where my parents slept.
Decorating it was a fun job every year since I made new decorations from colorful crepe paper. We had to be creative; we could not afford glass ornaments. We made paper cones covered with craftily rolled crepe paper and filled with candy. I hung small apples with red string, tiny pretzels, home-made butter cookies, candied fruit, raisins, and an occasional orange wrapped in tissue paper with strange lettering, coming all the way from Israel. Each year we bought 12 small red and green candles which we attached to the tree with small metal clips. We were careful to clamp them at the tip of the branch to keep the tree from catching fire when the candles were lit. The tree would live for two weeks before the prickly needles fell all over the living room floor.
One year I spent Christmas with uncle Ion and his wife. A gifted mechanical engineer, Ion could fix and build anything. He promised that he would fashion lights for his Christmas tree. He worked painstakingly for weeks, soldering tiny copper wires into bundles that stretched along the branches of the tree like a magical cascade to which he soldered at least 200 tiny bulbs sold as bike lights. It was a labor of love! When the wires were finally attached to a relay, the bulbs lit up like a waterfall. Nobody had such a fantastically blazing tree in the whole country. I was amazed at his dedication and craftiness and never forgot his fairytale Christmas fir.
We did not have a tree skirt but we used one of Mom’s hand-stitched table cloths. The whole apartment smelled like the fragrant mountains and, for a couple of weeks we forgot the misery that surrounded us. We lit up the 12 candles on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.
Every night for two weeks, I would admire my enchanted tree until I fell asleep, wondering what special treat I would find under my pillow on Christmas morning. It was never much, but it was such a cherished joy!
Saint Nicholas Day was celebrated on December 6th. We really didn’t know much about the real St. Nicholas, Santa Claus’s namesake. St. Nicholas was a popular saint in the Orthodox Church and presumed the bishop of Myra in Turkey in the 300s. There were many legends of St. Nicholas - the more famous story that he was the son of a wealthy family in Patara, Lycia. When his parents died, he gave away his fortune. One such random act of kindness involved throwing three bags of gold through the windows of three girls who were going to be forced into prostitution.On Saint Nicholas Day, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with sticks and another with candy and a chocolate bar.
Grandpa never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garland made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting wool. 
The warm adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing glow on the tree decked with tokens of food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular holiday.
On Christmas Eve, after we ate Mom’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted pork, baked chicken, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga (corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight service at the Orthodox Church not far from our house. Sometimes it was a sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes shining in the weak street lights. We had to bundle up well – the church was not heated and we circled it three times during the procession with burning candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and comfortable, keeping my body warm.
I decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart fills with loving memories of Christmases past and of family members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.

It is a great article.  Merry Christmas!    Get a young person a copy of her book about growing up in a communist country.

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1974: Vice President Nelson Rockefeller

We remember Nelson Rockefeller as the governor of New York and a man who ran for president a couple of times.  On this day in 1974, he was sworn in as Vice President under President Ford.  All of this happened because President Nixon resigned in August 1974.

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1915: President Wilson married Edith Galt

We remember President Wilson for World War I and for many more things.   He was elected in 1912 and reelected in 1916.

He also married Edith Galt on this day in 1915 after his first wife Ellen died in 1914.  

First Lady Edith Wilson became a controversial figure for her role after President Wilson suffered a stroke.  

No one really knows for sure whether Mrs. Wilson "ran the country" as some have suggested.    

Many people have written that Mrs. Wilson turned into an acting president, or the person who handled all of the president's documents, and apparently, made decisions for him.

We don't know for sure.   We do know that President Wilson was disabled and that The League of Nations died in the US Senate.    

Mr. Wilson died in 1924 and Mrs. Wilson in 1961.

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We remember Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979)

We remember one of the great American musicians of the 20th century.    

Arthur Fiedler was born in Massachusetts on this day in 1894.   His father was a violinist and his mother a pianist.   In other words, he was probably listening to music from a very early age.

In 1930, he became the conductor of The Boston Pops.  His obituary said it all:

For more than half a century, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra were joined in a musical union that, through concerts, recordings, radio broadcasts and television programs, brought untold musical pleasure to millions of Americans.

Indeed he did.   I recall watching many of his performances with my father who loved his musical arrangements.

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